A Verdant Ethnography: Henry Green, Navajo Poetry, and Dialogical Ethnopoetics

Anthony Webster

doi:10.18357/anthropologica65120232594

Authors

Anthony Webster https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7083-6087

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica65120232594

Keywords:

Navajo poetry, dialogical ethnopoetics, engaged ethnography, transcriptive practices, Henry Green

Abstract

The endeavour here is to write an ethnography with a sense of living. Using the literary work and theories of Henry Green, as well as concerns with dialogical anthropology, a discourse-centred approach to language and culture (conjoined here as a dialogical ethnopoetics), and Navajo rhetorical practices, I present an aggregate of transcripts from several conversations with Navajo poets over the years. It is the transcripts that give life to ethnography. The first part places this endeavour in an intellectual context; the much longer second part gives the verdant ethnography. A verdant ethnography is predicated on an empirical foundation (transcripts), but also on an obliqueness as well (the stuff of talk).

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Basso, Ellen. 1995. The Last Cannibals. Austin: University of Texas Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7560/708181

Basso, Keith. 1996. Wisdom Sits In Places. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20479518.

Belin, Esther G., Jeff Berglund, Connie Jacobs, Anthony K. Webster, eds. 2021. The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Poetry. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Benally, Timothy. 1994. “Ma’ii Jooldloshí Hane: Stories about Coyote, the one who trots.” In Coming to Light, edited by Brian Swann, 601–613. New York: Random House.

Black, Mary. 1982. “Foreword.” In Clothed-in-Fur and Other Tales: An Introduction to an Ojibwa World View. Thomas Overholt and J. Baird Callicott, xv-xvii. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Collins, James. 1987. “Reported Speech in Navajo Myth Narratives.” In Linguistic Action, edited by Jef Verschueren, 69–85. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.

Cruikshank, Julie. 1998. The Social Life of Stories. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1184843.

Duranti, Alessandro. 2015. The Anthropology of Intentions: Language in a World of Others. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139207706. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139207706

Epps, Patience, Anthony K. Webster and Anthony C. Woodbury. 2017. “A Holistic Humanities of Speaking: Franz Boas and the Continuing Centrality of Texts.” International Journal of American Linguistics. 83 (1): 41–78. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/689547. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/689547

Fabian, Johannes. 1995. “Ethnographic Misunderstanding and the Perils of Context.” American Anthropologist 97(1): 41–50. https://www.jstor.org/stable/682378. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1995.97.1.02a00080

——. 2008. Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive. Durham: Duke University Press. https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/544/Ethnography-as-CommentaryWriting-from-the-Virtual.

Facey, Ellen. 1988. Nguna Voices: Text and Culture from Central Vanuatu. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. https://doi.org/10.7202/1081723ar. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1081723ar

Green, Henry. 2020. Surviving: Stories, Essays, Interviews. New York: New York Review of Books.

Hendricks, Janet W. 1993. To Drink of Death: The Narrative of a Shuar Warrior. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Hymes, Dell. 2003. Now I know only that far. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Jim, Rex Lee. 2000. “A Moment in my Life.” In Here First, edited by Arnold Krupat and Brian Swann, 229–246. New York: Modern Library.

Jim, Rex Lee and Anthony K. Webster. 2022. “Native North America: Notes Towards a Dialogical Ethnopoetics.” In Approaches to Language and Culture, edited by Svenja Völkel and Nico Nassenstein, 385–424. Berlin: Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110726626-014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110726626-014

Kroskrity, Paul V. and Anthony K. Webster, eds. 2015. The Legacy of Dell Hymes: Ethnopoetics, Narrative Inequality, and Voice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330188524_The_Legacy_of_Dell_Hymes

Li, Charles. 1986. “Direct Speech and Indirect Speech: A Functional Study.” In Direct and Indirect Speech, edited by Florian Coulmas, 29–45. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110871968.29. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110871968.29

Maranhão, Tullio and Bernard Streck, eds. 2003. Translation and Ethnography: The Anthropological Challenge of Intercultural Understanding. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1vg7p6r

Mitchell, Blackhorse. 2004. Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navajo Boy. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1t4m2c2. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1t4m2c2

Mitchell, Blackhorse and Anthony K. Webster. 2011. “‘We don’t know what we become:’ Navajo Ethnopoetics and an Expressive Feature in a Poem by Rex Lee Jim.” Anthropological Linguistics 53(3): 259–286. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41756852. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/anl.2011.0015

Molina, Felipe and Larry Evers. 1998. “Like this it stays in your hands: Collaboration and Ethnopoetics.” Oral Tradition 13(1): 15–57. https://journal.oraltradition.org/wp-content/uploads/files/articles/13i/6_molina_and_evers.pdf.

Myers, Fred. 1994. “Culture-Making: Performing Aboriginality at the Asia Society Gallery.” American Ethnologist 21: 679–699. https://www.jstor.org/stable/646835. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1994.21.4.02a00020

Palmer, Andie. 2005. Maps of Experience: The Anchoring of Land to Story in Secwepemc Discourse. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442677005. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442677005

Palmer Jr., Gus. 2003. Telling Stories the Kiowa Way. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1prsrn1

Samuels, David. 2004. Putting a Song on Top of It. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Severi, Carlo and William Hanks, eds. 2015. Translating Worlds: The Epistemological Space of Translation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sherzer, Joel. 1983. Kuna Ways of Speaking: An Ethnographic Perspective. Austin: University of Texas Press.

——. 1987. “A Discourse-Centered Approach to Language and Culture.” American Anthropologist 89: 295–309. https://www.jstor.org/stable/677756. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1987.89.2.02a00010

——. 1992. “Modes of Representation and Translation of Native American Discourse: Examples from the San Blas Kuna.” In On the Translation of Native American Literatures, edited by Brian Swann, 426–440. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Press.

——. 1998. Verbal Art in San Blas: Kuna Culture Through Its Discourse. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Tedlock, Dennis. 1982. “Anthropological Hermeneutics and the Problem of Alphabetic Literacy.” In A Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology, edited by Jay Ruby, 149–161. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv5137jf.11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512806434-009

——. 1983. The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fhpn7.

Toelken, Barre and Tacheeni Scott. 1981. “Poetic Retranslation and the ‘Pretty Languages’ of Yellowman.” In Traditional Literatures of the American Indians, edited by Karl Kroeber, 66–116 Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Urrutia, Anselmo and Joel Sherzer. 1997. “Transcreating Culture and Poetics.” In The Life of Language, edited by Jane Hill, P.J. Mistry, and Lyle Campbell, 355–368. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110811155.355

Valentine, Lisa Philips. 1995. Making it Their Own: Severn Ojibwe Communicative Practices. Toronto: University of Toronto. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487575083

Webster, Anthony K. 2006. ‘Ałk’idáá’ Mą’ii Jooldlosh, Jiní: Poetic Devices in Navajo Oral and Written Poetry. Anthropological Linguistics. 48 (3): 233–265. https://anthonykwebster.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/anthropological20ling.pdf.

——. 2015. Intimate Grammars: An Ethnography of Navajo Poetry. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

——. 2016. “The Art of Failure in Translating a Navajo Poem.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 102(1): 9–41. https://doi.org/10.4000/jsa.14602. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/jsa.14602

——. 2017. “So It’s Got Three Meanings dil dil:” Seductive Ideophony and the Sounds of Navajo Poetry. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique. 62 (2): 173–195. https://doi.org/10.1017/cnj.2017.11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/cnj.2017.11

——. 2019. “(Ethno)Poetics and Perspectivism: On the Hieroglyphic Beauty of Ambiguity.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 29(2): 168–174. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12210. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12210

——. 2020a. Learning to be Satisfied: Navajo poetics, a chattering chipmunk, and ethnopoetics. Oral Tradition 34: 73–104. https://journal.oraltradition.org/learning-to-be-satisfied/.

——. 2020b. “Poetry and Emotion: Poetic Communion, Ordeals of Language, Intimate Grammars, and Complex Remindings.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Emotion, edited by Sonya E. Pritzker, Janina Fenigsen, and James M. Wilce, 182–202. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367855093. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367855093

——. 2021. “Let Them Know How I Was Or Something Like That, You Know:” On Lingual Life Histories, Remembering and Navajo Poetry. Journal of Anthropological Research 77(1): 16–34. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/712286. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/712286

——. Nd. “‘I want people to really see it’: On Poetry, Truth, and the Particularities of Blackhorse Mitchell’s ‘The Beauty of Navajoland.’” Journal of the Southwest.