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Listen to My Words: Listen to Coyote
| Article
# : |
11266 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1986 |
1,947 Words |
| Author
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Claire R. Farrer
Claire R. Farrer is professor of anthropology at California
State University in Chico. She wishes to acknowledge her
indebtedness to Bernard Second for his contributions to her
fieldwork on the Mescalero from 1974 until his death in 1988. |
Anthropologists live in and between two worlds, their own and that of the people with whom they work. Sometimes the fit is a comfortable one; at other times it is as though two minds struggle to occupy one body. As an anthropologist one tries to be a cultural relativist, finding a place for beliefs and attitudes foreign to one's own background, and suspending judgments from one's home culture while learning a new culture. But there are times when a schizophrenic model is the best one. What fits and makes sense in one environment simply has no place in the other.
"Listen to my words: listen to Coyote. When you see Coyote and you are travelling, you go home. Maybe someone close to you, someone in your family, will die," she said to me.
She told me these things because I was going on a trip, by myself, with no proper Indian to read the signs and interpret their meaning for me. My ignorance in such matters was well-known. There was never any sense in telling me all the important things at once as I would probably forget them anyway. My people are not known for being able to keep things in their heads. We must always write things down to remember them. Yet writing deprives them of the stretch they need to fit whatever occasion they are called into use for. They become fixed, static and, with no elasticity, dead.
She told me about Coyote the night before I was to go on my trip. "Owl tells you at home," she continued, "but he is small and not fast enough when you are in your car, or maybe a pickup. Coyote runs the road. He tells you. You listen to him."
I listened. Maybe I didn't believe exactly, but I did listen. And I wrote it down, so I would not forget.
Have you ever driven through the American Southwest? It is hard to get excited about population explosions while driving or walking out there--even flying over it. There are miles upon miles of beautiful solitude. One sees no other person, no house; only an arching sky bending so gently over the undulating earth. Father Sky and Mother Earth: of course, how could it be anything else?
The desert is all-encapsulating. It is empty but not lonely; stark but not terrifying; dry but not without sustenance. It demands attention outside of self to preserve self, and reminds people of their proper place as small creatures that are merely part of a limitless
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