Abstract: conventional interpretation of Ruth Landes's 1930s writings on Ojibwa culture is that Landes described the society as individualistic, atomistic and conflict-ridden. Contemporary and subsequent ethnographers disputed this interpretation and instead emphasized co-operative and egalitarian social relations. This article argues that conflict in Landes's ethnography be read less as a representation of Ojibwa culture itself than as a product of tensions between three storytelling practices: the Boasian textual tradition; Ojibwa women's storytelling; and the cultural script for American daughters of Russian Jewish immigrants (like Landes). article describes how these storytelling practices mediated the collaboration between anthropologist Ruth Landes and her key informant Maggie Wilson. It further argues that the key to understanding the collaboration is not their gender but rather the marginalization that both women experienced as individuals within their own cultural contexts. Widely differing though these contexts were, it was their shared understanding of outsider status that enabled Ruth Landes and Maggie Wilson to explore the terrain of conflict and contradiction in the lived experience of culture.Resume: L'interpretation conventionnelle des ecrits de Ruth Landes publies dans les annees 30 et portant sur la culture Ojibwee voit cette societe comme individualiste, > et conflictuelle. Des ethnographes contemporains a Landes et d'autres ulterieurs ont critique cette interpretation et ont mis de l'avant les relations sociales egalitaires et cooperatives. Cet article avance que le conflit existant dans l'ethnographie de Landes ne provient guere d'une representation de la culture Ojibwee elle-meme, mais plutot qu'elle est le resultat de tensions existantes entre trois types de pratiques narratives: la tradition textuelle boasienne; les > ojibwees et le texte culturel destine aux filles americaines d'ascendance russe et juive (comme Landes elle-meme). L'article decrit comment ces pratiques narratives ont servi a la collaboration entre l'anthropologue Ruth Landes et son informatrice principale Maggie Wilson. La cle de cette collaboration n'etait pas due a leur sexe mais plutot a la marginalisation des deux femmes dans leur propres contextes culturels. Bien que ces contextes aient ete tres differents c'etait leur comprehension commune du statut de l'etranger qui a permis aux deux femmes Ruth Landes et Maggie Wilson d'explorer le terrain du conflit et de la contradiction dans l'experience culturelle vecue.IntroductionIn the summer of 1932, two women met at Manitou Rapids on the Rainy River between Fort Frances and Kenora in northwestern Ontario, on the international border. One was Maggie Wilson, a grandmother in her 50s, of Scots-Cree descent, who had lived her entire life in an Ojibwa cultural context and had thrice married Ojibwa men. other was Ruth Landes, a 23-year-old student of anthropology who had been born and raised in New York City, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, and who had recently separated from her young medical-student husband. During the summers of 1932 and 1933 and, through correspondence, until 1935 when Landes last visited Mrs. Wilson, the two women collaborated in developing an ethnographic portrait of Ojibwa culture. result was three books authored by Landes: the first, Ojibwa Sociology, published in 1937, incorporated Landes's Ph.D. dissertation in anthropology for Columbia University; the second, Ojibwa Woman, was published the following year in 1938; and the third, Ojibwa Religion and the Midewiwin, was not published until 1968. Landes also published three scholarly articles on the Ojibwa including The Ojibwa of Canada, which was solicited for the volume, Cooperation and Conflict among Primitive Peoples, edited by Margaret Mead and published in 1937 (see also Landes 1937c; 1938b).The conventional reading of the ethnography that resulted from the Wilson-Landes collaboration is that Ojibwa culture is represented as individualistic, conflict-ridden and set in a context of isolation and harsh environmental conditions. …
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Jan 1, 1997
P Fransen 
Open Access