Memory, Meaning, and Imaginary Time: The Construction of Knowledge in White and Chipewyan Cultures

Abstract

This article examines, through an analysis of the use of persons as sym- bols, the construction of ethnohistorical knowledge within white Canadian and Chipewyan Indian cultures in contact. An analysis of a brief scuffle between a Chipewyan and a white teacher and its consequences leads to a consideration of the scientific metaphors used in the construction of academic ethnohistorical knowledge. It is argued that consideration of a nondeterministic scientific meta- phor erases some of the limitations created by the projection of academic folk understandings of physical reality onto the uncertainty and indeterminacy of his- torical and social data. These may improve our ability to understand the construc- tion of folk knowledge within both Chipewyan and white Canadian cultures.