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Life lived like a story : cultural constructions of life history by Tagish and Tutchone women Cruikshank, Julie
Abstract
This thesis is based on collaborative research conducted over ten years with three elders of Athapaskan/Tlingit ancestry, in the southern Yukon Territory, Canada Mrs. Angela Sidney, Mrs. Kitty Smith and Mrs. Annie Ned are also authors of this document because their oral accounts of their lives are central to the discussion. One volume examines issues of method and ethnographic writing involved in such research and analyses the accounts provided by these women; a second volume presents their accounts, in their own words, in three appendices. The thesis advanced here is that life history offers two distinct contributions to anthropology. As a method, it provides a model based on collaboration between participants rather than research 'by' an anthropologist 'on' the community. As ethnography, it shows how individuals may use the traditional dimension of culture as a resource to talk about their lives, and explores the extent to which it is possible f or anthropologists to write ethnography grounded in the perceptions and experiences of people whose lives they describe. Narrators provide complex explanations for their experiences and decisions in metaphoric language, raising questions about whether anthropological categories like 'individual', 'society' and 'culture' are uniquely bounded units. The analysis focusses on how these women attach central importance to traditional stories (particularly those with female protagonists), to named landscape features, to accounts of travel, and to inclusion of incidents from the lives of others in their narrated 'life histories'. Procedures associated with both life history analysis and the analysis of oral tradition are used to consider the dynamics of narration. Particular attention is paid to how these women use oral tradition both to talk about the past and to continue to teach younger people appropriate behavior in the present. The persistence of oral tradition as a system of communication and information in the north when so much else has changed suggests that expressive forms like story telling contribute to strategies for adapting to social, economic and cultural change.
Item Metadata
Title |
Life lived like a story : cultural constructions of life history by Tagish and Tutchone women
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Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
1987
|
Description |
This thesis is based on collaborative research conducted
over ten years with three elders of Athapaskan/Tlingit ancestry,
in the southern Yukon Territory, Canada Mrs. Angela Sidney, Mrs.
Kitty Smith and Mrs. Annie Ned are also authors of this document
because their oral accounts of their lives are central to the
discussion. One volume examines issues of method and ethnographic
writing involved in such research and analyses the accounts
provided by these women; a second volume presents their accounts,
in their own words, in three appendices.
The thesis advanced here is that life history offers two
distinct contributions to anthropology. As a method, it
provides a model based on collaboration between participants
rather than research 'by' an anthropologist 'on' the community.
As ethnography, it shows how individuals may use the
traditional dimension of culture as a resource to talk about
their lives, and explores the extent to which it is possible f or
anthropologists to write ethnography grounded in the perceptions
and experiences of people whose lives they describe. Narrators
provide complex explanations for their experiences and decisions
in metaphoric language, raising questions about whether
anthropological categories like 'individual', 'society' and
'culture' are uniquely bounded units. The analysis focusses on how these women attach central
importance to traditional stories (particularly those with female
protagonists), to named landscape features, to accounts of
travel, and to inclusion of incidents from the lives of others in
their narrated 'life histories'. Procedures associated with both
life history analysis and the analysis of oral tradition are used
to consider the dynamics of narration. Particular attention is
paid to how these women use oral tradition both to talk about the
past and to continue to teach younger people appropriate behavior
in the present. The persistence of oral tradition as a system of
communication and information in the north when so much else has
changed suggests that expressive forms like story telling
contribute to strategies for adapting to social, economic and
cultural change.
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Genre | |
Type | |
Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2012-03-15
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0106944
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.