Strangers to Relatives: The Adoption and Naming of Anthropologists in Native North America

279 Pages·2001·0.79 MB·English

by  Sergei A. Kan

Strangers to Relatives

Strangers to Relatives
The Adoption and Naming of
Anthropologists in Native North America
Edited by Sergei Kan
university of nebraska press
lincoln and london
“What’s in a Name?
Becoming a Real Person in a Yup’ik Community”
by Ann Fienup-Riordan
was previously published in
Hunting Tradition in a Changing World:
Yup’ik Lives in Alaska Today,
ed. Ann Fienup-Riordan
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000)
© 2001 by the
University of Nebraska Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the
United States of America
(cid:2)(cid:2)
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Strangers to relatives :
the adoption and naming
of anthropologists
in Native North America /
edited by
Sergei Kan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical
references and index.
isbn0-8032-2746-9 (cl. : alk. paper) —
isbn0-8032-7797-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Indians of North America.
2. Ethnologists—North America.
3. Ethnology—Field work.
4. Adoption—North America.
5. Names, Indian—North America.
I. Kan, Sergei.
e98.a15 s77 2001 305.897(cid:3)0072—dc21 00-061593
Contents
Editor’s Introduction 1
1 | Lewis H. Morgan and the Senecas 29
Elisabeth Tooker
2 | Ethnographic Deep Play:
Boas, McIlwraith, and Fictive Adoption
on the Northwest Coast 57
Michael E. Harkin
3 | He-Lost-a-Bet (Howanineyao)
of the Seneca Hawk Clan 81
William N. Fenton
4 | Effects of Adoption on
the Round Lake Study 99
Mary Black-Rogers
5 | All My Relations: The Significance of
Adoption in Anthropological Research 119
William K. Powers and
Marla N. Powers
16 | Naming as Humanizing 141
Jay Miller
17 | Adopting Outsiders on
the Lower Klamath River 159
Thomas Buckley
18 | Tell Your Sister to Come Eat 175
Anne S. Straus
19 | Friendship, Family, and Fieldwork:
One Anthropologist’s Adoption
by Two Tlingit Families 185
Sergei Kan
10 | What’s in a Name? Becoming a
Real Person in a Yup’ik Community 219
Ann Fienup-Riordan
Commentary 243
Raymond D. Fogelson
List of Contributors 257
Index 263
Strangers to Relatives
Toksook Bay,
Nelson Island
(Yupiit)
Angoon (Tlingits)
Sitka (Tlingits)
Tsimshians
Heiltsuks
Bella Coolas (Nuxalks)
Round Lake
Ft. Rupert (Kwakwaka’wakws) (Northern Ojibwas)
Colville Reservation Tonawanda
Reservation (Senecas)
Lushootseeds
Northern Cheyenne Reservation
(Tongue River Reservation)
Yuroks Pine Ridge Reservation
(Lakotas)
Cattaraugus
Reservation
Allegany
(Senecas)
Reservation
Delawares (Senecas)
Tewas Muskogees (Creeks)
Primary Native communities and places discussed in the text
Editor’s Introduction
The idea of this volume grew out of my own experience as an anthro-
pologist who has been engaged since 1979 in ethnographic fieldwork
among the Tlingits of southeastern Alaska and whose research has
benefitedgreatlyfrommyhavingbeenadoptedbytwoNativefamilies/
matrilineages (see chapter 9). Although I have always considered my
friendship with the individuals who adopted me and gave me Tlingit
names, as well as close ties with a number of other Tlingit men and
women, to be an important part of my professional and personal life
and although I have often spoken about these relationships with my
students, until recently I was reluctant to discuss them in the context
of a professional meeting or write about them. Having been trained in
history in Russia in the early 1970s and in symbolic/interpretive an-
thropology in the United States in the mid- to late 1970s, I resisted for
a long time the turn toward reflexivity that has occurred in American
anthropology in the past 20 years, especially in the 1990s (Clifford and
Marcus 1986; Marcus and Fischer 1986; Behar and Gordon 1995; Be-
har 1996).
Despite my initial skepticism about the scholarly (rather than the
literary) contribution of works that scrutinized the anthropologist-
informant relationship (e.g., Read 1965; Powdermaker 1967; Briggs
1970; Rabinow 1977; Dumont 1978), I could not disagree with the no-
tion that the personal background and history of the fieldworker—
his or her “race,” gender, ethnicity, religion, age, et cetera—as well
as the nature of the fieldworker’s relationship with his or her infor-
1