PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2008 WESTERN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION MEETING,
AMERICAN INDIAN STUDIES SECTION

"Battling Whiteness: Methodological dilemmas throughout my journey as an anthropologists in Indian country."

Noa Apeloig
Hebrew university of Jerusalem
noaapeloig@hotmail.com

Whether he is an integral part of the community he wishes to research or a complete stranger, the anthropologist is always faced with dilemmas pertaining to his 'positioning in the field'. These dilemmas, however, become ever more acute when an anthropologist chooses to research a community to which he is totally foreign to, both culturally and racially. While the dilemmas that emerge from this specific position often lead to difficulties, conflicts and various methodological problems they can simultaneously produce valuable theoretical insights.

Throughout my lecture I will explain how two dimensions of my identity as a foreign anthropologist influenced both my interactions and relations with members of the Native American community at Haskell Indian Nations University and the research insight I was able to retrieve from this field. More specifically, I will discuss how my identity as a 'Jew', on the on hand and as a 'White woman', on the other influenced not only my methodological journey throughout 'Indian country' and my whole experience as a researcher during my work at Haskell but also my ability to identify and understand the main dilemmas and theoretical issues that emerge from this unique arena.

First gateway: initial contact

As I started packing my belongings in preparation for my field work at Haskell Indian Nation's University in the winter of 2003 it was very clear to me what would be the two first items that I would place in the suitcase that I would carry with me far away from my Israeli homeland. They were the spectacular silver candlesticks of my late grandmother that my mother placed in my care six years ago, as I was packing my belongings for another journey in 'Indian country'- to the Navaho reservation.

Although at that time I did not intend to conduct any research and was only interested in learning a little about a different culture that fascinated me since I was a child, I could not escape the feelings of loneliness and fear that consume every anthropologist- whether armature or highly experienced- as he prepares to embark on a journey that would constitute him a stranger in another land situated thousands of miles away from his home.

My mother, who was aware of my apprehensions, handed me my grandmother's silver candlesticks in that winter of 1997 and said: "my child, light 'Shabbat' candles in these candlesticks every Friday night to celebrate our holy day. Never forget where you came from". I carefully wrapped the two silver candlesticks, which were used in my family for generation to commemorate the 'Shabbat'- the Jewish 'hold day', according to my peoples tradition and cautiously placed them in my suitcase. Shortly thereafter, I placed them on the window ledge of the little room courteously assigned for me at the Navaho community college situated in Chinle, Arizona.

The entire period of my stay on the Navaho reservation was very difficult emotionally as it was characterized by deep feeling of loneliness. My hosts, the Navaho, were very polite and respectful towards me but also quite suspicious of the stranger that has suddenly come to live in their midst. They would always greet me when we met or simply nod their heads politely as our path crossed but seemed to systematically and even stubbornly evade from any meaningful conversation with me. My loneliness was hard to bear. Every Friday as night fell I would light my Sabbath candles in my grandmother's candlesticks, say the traditional Jewish prayer to welcome our holy day and be consumed with a deep longing for my homeland. After a month of failed attempts to establish some kind of meaningful interaction with the Navahos I was close to despair. I seriously considered ending my journey in Indian country and returning back to Israel.

One Saturday morning on my way to the 'nearest' grocery store, situated only 45 minutes from my room by foot, I met Nikki- one of the young women that was living in my dorm, just across the hall from me. She greeted me politely and than to my great surprise she hesitantly asked: "for a while now I have been meaning to ask you- the candelas that you light on the ledge of your window, do they have any special meaning for you?". Nikki's question led to the first meaningful conversation I held throughout my stay in Navaho nation.

Nikki, who was surprised to discover that I was a Jew, was simply mesmerized by the short explanation I gave her about our Sabbath candle costumes. "I had a feeling you were different" Nikki whispered softly as though she was talking to herself "but I wasn't really sure", she added. "Different from whom?", I acquired curiously, "from White people" Nikki replied and than quickly proceeded to shower me with countless question about my Jewish heritage.

It seemed like her curiously about this facet of my identity was insatiable. As she asked me more and more questions, my conversation with Nikki deepened. As our conversation progressed, Nikki started comparing and relating her own tribal culture and heritage to my explanations about the Jewish tradition. Gradually, our coincidental conversation transformed into an engaging intercultural dialog in which every partner reveals part of his tradition and in exchange discovers paralleling parts of the tradition of the 'other'.

The fairly brief conversation I conducted with Nikki that Saturday morning on a deserted dirt road was a major turning point for me during my stay at Navaho nation. From that day on Nikki and I conducted longer and more frequent conversations and the relationship between us gradually deepened. As time passed Nikki introduced me to her friends and relatives, always presenting me before them as her 'Jewish friend'. Gradually, I established friendly connections with more and more local Navahos which also showed great interest in my Jewish culture, tradition and heritage. The long conversations that I conducted with my newly acquired acquaintances about my Jewish identity led quite frequently to long discussions about the tradition, culture and world view of the Navaho people themselves. These conversations, which similarly to my early conversations with Nikki were endowed with a intercultural character, allowed me to slowly discover some of the traditions and cultural perceptions of the Navaho and become partially integrated into the fabric of their day to day life.

My conversation with Nikki and the events that preceded it led me to several insights pertaining to the effect of different dimensions of my identity as a stranger on my interactions; relations and my ability integrate my self in the day to day life of the Navahos. I learned that my physical appearance- my light complexion, my blue eyes and my blond hair – which I was so starkly aware of for the first time in my life, constitute me as a 'white woman' – a negative, undervalued identity that accentuates my position as a stranger and prevents me from establishing any kind of meaningful communication or interaction with the local, indigenous population I aspired to understand.

My Jewish identity, on the other hand, was revealed as valuable symbolic capital, that seemed to override the 'white' features of my physical appearance, refine my position as a stranger on the reservation and thereby allow me to conduct an open and meaningful dialog based on cultural exchange with the indigenous population. These insights, which were still quite vague and only partially deciphered at this stage, became the methodological stepping stones of the field work I conducted six years later at Haskell Indian Nations University- a Native American university exclusively serving Native American students.

The candlesticks that I carefully placed in my suitcase as I was preparing for my current journey into Indian country were a symbolic reminder of the valuable insights I gained during my first visit to this unique environment at the Navaho reservation. It was very clear to me at this point that the cultural resources embedded in my grandmother's candlesticks would be one of the keys to the next gateway of my journey into Indian country, this time as professional anthropologist: Entering the 'field'.

Second gateway: Entering the' field'

The process of entering the field at Haskell was as complicated and multifaceted as the one I experienced at Navaho nation as an amateur anthropologist. The methodological insights that I unrevealed during this initial stage of contact with Indian country, however, considerably eased my integration into the student community attending Haskell and hastened the process of creating a trust relationship with them. My identity as a Jew which I consciously utilized as an 'ice breaker' during the initial stages of contact with the students helped me to 'battle my White appearance' and refrain from being labeled a 'White woman'. Time after time, I was amazed to discover the almost miraculous effect of my Jewish identity on my interactions in the field.

Time and again, I was confronted by a distant, cold and sometimes even hostile attitude from students which instantly disappeared as soon as I revealed my identity as a Jew or even mentioned it in passing. The short length of time I have been graciously given for this lecture allows me to offer only one short example in order to demonstrate this emerging pattern: During my field work a number of very traditional students refused quite adamantly to conduct an interview with me as they believed due to very painful prior experiences which I had no intention of re-enacting that one "should not talk with White anthropologist".

My repeated invitation and plea with them throughout the year seemed to have no effect. At one particular instance as I was conversing with one of these students I mentioned preparing a bowl of 'Jewish soup' for the weekend. As it is costmary according to Jewish tradition to have guests for 'Sabbath dinner' I quite naturally invited him to join me for a warm bowl of 'Jewish soup' on the forthcoming Friday night. His eyes immediately lit up, "I will be honored to share in your traditional food" he replied. After consuming a very large portion of Jewish soup filled with hearty 'knidalech' (traditional Jewish matza balls) my student guest graciously thanked me for my hospitality and than added: "your soup sure reminds me of our traditional cooking".

Two weeks after our lovely dinner meeting I conducted the much anticipated interview with my student guest for the 'Sabbath' dinner. As the rumor about my traditional cooking skills circulated around campus I found my self preparing many more bowls of Jewish soup which were followed by numerous interviews with other 'traditional' students who were rapidly becoming not only participants in my study but also and much more importantly my friends. Little did I suspect in these initial stages of my field work that the methodological tool that I discovered years ago at Navaho nation and have utilized during my stay at Haskell in order to enter the lives of the students attending this unique institution would also be the key to the third gateway of my research (and the last one I will discuss here today), in which I unraveled the main dilemmas that emerged from the field.

Third gateway: dentifying the main dilemmas that emerge from the field

Two month into my field work another significant event accrued which finally clarified why my Jewish-ness was so critical to my work in the field and maybe even more importantly allowed me to start and uncover the main dilemmas that emerge from the field which as I would gradually discover are tightly linked to the process by which the community I was studying construct
their racial and ethnic identities. During a heated discussion about racial identity which was held in one of the courses I actively participated in, I unwittingly referred to my self as a "white woman".

After class, Jennifer, one of the students in the course, approached me hesitantly and asked: 'Noa, why do you call yourself White?' she patiently waited for an answer, her eyes filled with confusion. "Well..." I stared deep into her eyes desperately trying to find an appropriate answer to what I conceived of as a rhetorical question. She stared right back at me. She seemed even more puzzled than before.

After a few long and uncomfortable seconds of silence I lifted my sleeve up and pointed at my skin 'look at me! what would you call this?'. 'No, no, that is not what we mean when we say White' Jennifer burst out laughing while pulling my sleeve back down 'let me explain this to you once and for all so you do not embarrass yourself in front of the whole class again. When I say White I mean someone without a culture, you know, no roots, no sense of who they are. They celebrate Christmas every year, buy each other expensive presents in 'Gap' or 'Bed, Bath & Beyond' and that's it! Like everybody else. You are not like that. It's not all about the material stuff to you. You are Jewish. You know your culture, your ceremonies, your language. You bring it up a lot in class. Why? Because it is part of you, part of who you are. Because you value your tradition like we do ours. Because you have one, unlike all those White people who do not even know where their ancestors came from. So please stop calling yourself White, it just ain't right girl. It just ain't right'.

My short conversation with Jennifer exposed me to the deep meaning of 'Whiteness' embedded in the worldview of Haskell students. I learned that Haskell students, like many other Native Americans perceive 'Whiteness' as an empty category. Whites according to this perception are typified as people that are "without" – without "culture", without "tradition", without "roots", without a clear "sense of who they are", without knowledge of their heritage.

They are characterized by deficiency, by the qualities they lack. Haskell students realize, of course, that 'White people' do have a way of life which manifests itself in particular patterns of behavior, includes certain rituals and reflects specific values and norms. They do not, however, define these elements as 'culture' for two main reasons which Jennifer clearly specifies.

'Whiteness' is devoid of culture because it is normative, materialistic and therefore linked to capitalistic modes of production and consumption. Christmas, for example, which Jennifer identifies as a major ritual that 'White people' observe, can not be typified as culture, according to her perception, because its' participants are acting like 'everybody else' and are mainly concerned with 'buying each other expensive presents' in major chain stores. To Jennifer and other students at Haskell this way of 'being' is devoid of cultural content because it lacks distinction from that which is defined as 'normal' and 'ordinary'. In other words, Whiteness is devoid of 'otherness' and is thus perceived as 'nothing', an empty category that can only be defined in light of the uniqueness of the 'other'.

When Jennifer tries to explain to me why I should not 'call myself White' she refers to my 'otherness', to the something that makes me unique – my Jewish identity. Later, she specifies the elements that differentiate me from 'everybody else' and allow me to be less concerned with 'material stuff' -the main signifier of 'White' behavior. These elements are my culture, my ceremonies and my language. What is interesting about these elements is that there is nothing unique about them as analytical categories. All people are part of a certain culture, participate in certain ceremonies either religious or secular and speak a certain language. What makes these elements 'something' to Jennifer is the particularity of their content, their distinctive character, the otherness of their nature – the fact that they belong to 'someone' and not to 'everyone'.

The perception of 'Whiteness' as an empty category is not unique to Native American students at Haskell. Studies have shown that other racial and ethnic minorities and White subjects themselves understand Whiteness as an empty, transparent but simultaneously normative space (Frankenberg, 1993; 1997, Roediger; 1998; Bhabha, 1998; Dyer, 2000; Mcdermott & Samson, 2005; Storrs, 1999; Jackson, 2001; Herndon, 2003; Kaomea, 2001). While all these writings discuss Whiteness first and foremost as a racial category which is linked to certain cultural practices and forms of domination, the perception of Whiteness which I encountered at Haskell is far more complex. Students at Haskell perceive Whiteness as a way of being, which has racial roots but is not necessarily correlated with skin color or other physical features. As a result, when referring to 'Whiteness' as a racial category, Haskell students tend to attach it to a certain state of mind and to particular patterns of behavior and self representation rather than to specific physical characteristics.

The French, for example, whose skin color, physical characteristics and ancestral background certainly fit into what most of us may define as 'white' are not considered by Haskell students as an integral part of this category. This is due to the fact, as one student explains, that in contrast to white people: They really stick to their ways. You know, they won't answer you if you do not speak French. They will not switch to English, even if they know some, even if you do not understand a word they are saying. You want to buy something? Do it in French or don't buy anything! They are stubborn like that. It is their language and they are going to stick to it even if the whole frikin world switches to English.

It's the same thing with food, they are really religious about that too. You have to prepare things in a certain way….no ketchup with your fries, only Mayo. All that crazy stuff. Ya, they are a little weird but they have their way of doing stuff, their own costumes, you know, not like these White people who do not give a shit about anything but their fancy cars!". Hence, the French are not perceived as White because their state of mind, patterns of behavior and the manner in which they represent themselves to others clearly indicates that their way of life is not devoid of cultural substance or totally invested in the capitalist world of consumerism.

What determines the 'Whiteness' of a body is therefore not the way it looks but the manner in which it carries itself and reflects one's inner substance, whether it be void or full of cultural matter. In other words, Whiteness is perceived in my particular field as a way of being rather than strictly as a racial category which is necessarily linked to certain physical attributes.

This perception of 'Whiteness' is the cause of Jennifer's confusion. According to her perspective, the fact that "I know my culture, my ceremonies and my language" and "I bring it up a lot in class" can not be settled with my perception of myself as 'White'. While to me it was perfectly logical to be both "Jewish" and "White", Jennifer could not understand how I could exhibit a high level of connectedness to my Jewish heritage and simultaneously categorize myself as someone "without a culture".

In other words, while my whole social performance reflected a way of being which was far removed from the one attributed by Haskell students to 'Whites', I constantly categorized myself as one. Consequently, my remarks about my identity were perceived by Jennifer as totally contradictory, extremely puzzling and therefore very "embarrassing". When I tried to clarify my comments in class by referring to my physical features Jennifer fiercely resisted by pulling down my sleeve, seemingly trying to erase my purely racial assumptions about 'Whiteness'. Immediately thereafter, she goes on to explain the meaning of this category in behavioral terms.

As she sketches the difference between me and 'Whites' she refers to the way one 'acts' and represents himself to others and not to one's physical features or skin color. She explains that in comparison to 'Whites' which exhibit normative behavioral patterns and are oblivious to "who they (really) are", I "know" my heritage, "value" it as a resource and present it to others as an integral "part of who I am". These behavioral traits are clear indicators that I "have" cultural substance and thus must not consider myself or be considered by others as 'White'.

Jennifer's confusion and embarrassment, however, can be attributed to another factor that pertains to the connection between the concept of Whiteness and her own identity as an Indian. As Jennifer herself points out, my behavioral patterns as a person of "cultural substance" are much closer to that of Native Americans than to the one attached to 'White people' by this group. Since these two ways of being are constructed as totally opposed to each other, my self-identification as 'White' while exhibiting behavioral patterns that characterize 'people of culture' threatens to blur Jennifer's clear patterns of typification and she thus refers to the whole situation as 'Just not right'.

My short conversation with Jennifer was thereby as another turning point in my field work as it revealed valuable insights both on a methodological and a theoretical level. On a methodological level I learned that my Jewish identity constitutes me as a 'culture-full person' – a way of being that is constructed as the complete opposite to the one attributed by Haskell students to 'White people'. As such, it does not only blur my White appearance, as I assumed in the initial stages of my journey throughout Indian country, but completely erases it and therefore acts as a powerful resource in my battle against (my own) whiteness.

On a theoretical level I learned that Whiteness as a category that pertains to a certain way of being rather than to particular physical attributes is the main category against which students at Haskell construct their identity as Indians. Since, as Ronald Barth contends, it is "the ethnic boundary that defines the group not the cultural stuff that it encloses", the exposure of the main reference group against which the community I was studying sketch their symbolic boundaries allowed me to better understand their perceptions about their collective identity.

These theoretical insights, in turn, crystallized the fact that although my Jewish-ness did not blur my position in the field as a stranger, it did enable me to separate myself from the main reference group against which Haskell students in particular and Native Americans in general construct their collective identity. Furthermore and even more importantly, my Jewish-ness helped me constitute myself as a subject who is endowed with similar (but not identical) resources to those held by members of the community I was researching.

My Jewish identity allowed me, in other words, to situate myself in a unique position of a 'culture-full' stranger' in the field- a liminal position which is located on the boundary between 'us' and 'them' that constituted me as a person that is not really "one of us" but is nonetheless also far from being one of the 'others'.

Hence, my conversation with Jennifer helped me to better understand both my position as a researcher in the field and the manner in which Haskell students construct their identity. These valuable insights, in turn, assisted me in strengthening and tightening my relations in the field and allowed me to become ever more aware of the major issues that preoccupy the student community during their day to day lives. As I exposed the deep meaning of whiteness and understood the complicated relation between this concept and Native American collective identity I was able to better understand the dilemmas and challenges that Haskell students are faced with during their educational journey.

Since Whiteness is not perceived by Haskell students as a racial category but as a way of being, which is constructed as the complete opposite of the one attributed to the 'real Indian', it is considered a polluting substance, that threatens the purity of the authentic Indian identity. The fear of being contaminated by the 'white substance' and the constant need to battle it in order to maintain the purity of ones Indian-ness, becomes ever more acute as a result of my subject's decision to become university students and thereby take on a status which is closely identified with the way of being of the 'other'.

The inherent conflict between Haskell student's need to 'battle the White substance' in order to maintain the integrity of their ethnic identity and their desire to attend an institution of higher learning in which they must acquire forms of knowledge, behavior patterns and modes of thought identified with the 'other', emerged as the major dilemma emanating from the field. The different effects of this dilemma on the character of Haskell as an institution of higher learning, on the methods of instruction and learning that are prevalent in it and on the process by which Haskell students construct their identity as 'Native American intellectuals', constitute the framework of my ethnography.

My ability to recognize this dilemma and be aware of her diverse impact on the institutional character of Haskell and the phenomenological experience of the students attending it was tightly connected to the early insights I gained about the concept of whiteness that unrevealed as I thought to better understand my position as a stranger in the field.

In conclusion, one can therefore argue that my own personal attempts to battle the whiteness of my skin by discovering the importance of my Jewish identity to my position as a researcher did not only allow me to develop meaningful relations with students in my field but also enabled me to better understand their own struggle with the exact same substance during their time at Haskell.