Sample Proposal for Capstone I TO: FROM: DATE: SUBJECT:

Nancy Rushforth Jodi Sadler November 24, 2008 Proposal to complete a research paper on the Western Apache use of place-names to affect social behavior.

Statement of Thesis and Project Summary This paper will examine the Western Apache practice of place-naming, as well as discuss the concept of a narrative (interpretive) culture. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Western Apache place-name narratives are a used as a device of social conditioning. An exploration of both the content and context of the narratives will illustrate the extent to which Western Apache place-name narratives both influence and correct social behavior and by doing so, help to maintain cultural identity. In order to complete this project I will be examining ethnographic case histories, and scholarly literature, both primary and secondary sources. Within these documents, I will be focusing on the behavior and communication strategies and by doing so will demonstrate the reasoning, purpose, and method behind the use of Western Apache placename narratives and their effect on behavior. When researching the reasoning behind the tradition I will be interpreting aspects of the Western Apache culture. This interpretation, as well as the demonstration of the ways in which the narratives provide social conditioning, are applications of my Behavioral Science emphasis. My English emphasis will direct the textual analysis of the narratives as well as assist with the interpretation of discourse. Both emphases combine to contribute an explanation of a narrative culture. I will be using qualitative methodology which will include analyzing the ethnographic case studies and phenomenology provided by leading scholars. I've chosen a qualitative approach because it is interdisciplinary; it “crosscuts disciplines, fields, and subject matters” (Denzin 2). My methodology will include a discourse analysis as well as a interpretation of Apache oral histories. This analysis will provide a foundation of behavioral norms in Apache societies, examples of their cultural narratives, and verify the purpose of context within the narratives. This approach will allow me to explore the communication strategies within Western Apache culture and, ultimately, will show how said strategies influence social behavior Review of Literature The interest in my thesis topic originated from the book Wisdom Sits in Places by Keith

Basso. The book is a primary source of anthropologist Keith Basso's compilation of ethnographic work with the Western Apache people in Cibeque. I will be focusing on the chapters titled “Stalking with Stories” and “Speaking with Names,” but also intend to use other sections of the book to provide examples of the cultural norms of the Western Apache. In the chapter titled “Stalking with Stories,” Basso accounts for the power that the land holds for the Western Apache. The most concise explanation of the relationship between land and the people comes from a Cibeque Apache woman named Annie Peaches. Annie states how “[t]he land is always stalking people. The land makes people live right” (38). The land makes Western Apache people live right because it is bound to the stories of their ancestors which are “spatially anchored” to the name of a place (Hoijer qtd. in Basso 47). By invoking the name of the place the speaker invites the hearer to privately recall and attend to the mental picture the of the place and the narrative attached to the place. The hearer is then invited to respond with their own picture of a place (Basso 84). This is the cultural logic that the utterances follow in order to perform social actions through conversation. In Basso's chapter “Speaking with Names,” he differentiates between the everyday use of abbreviated place-names and the special occurrences when the full place-name is spoken. When speaking with place-names, those involved in the conversation are following a social norm that prohibits the communication of disapproval or judgment when someone else has made serious errors in judgment or behavior (91). Speaking with names invokes the voices of the ancestors and allows “the past to inform...the present” (91). It is through these memories that advice and sympathy are given and expressed. One of the Apache conventions in conversation is a requirement of kindness and speaking with names allows for this without criticizing or speaking harshly of others. Another main source of information comes from the cultural and linguistic anthropologist Scott Rushforth. His research includes studies of Athapaskan speaking tribes, and he is currently working with the Mescalero tribe. I am hoping to use him as a primary source. I will be using many of his articles and research for my thesis, regardless. One of Rushforth's articles I'll be using is “The Legitimation of Beliefs in a HunterGatherer Society: Bearlake Athapaskan Knowledge and Authority.” This article explains how narratives provide a source of secondary knowledge that is then used by others to interpret their own experiences (485). Rushforth also provides support for the Apache (as part of the Athapaskan language group) practice of talking around subjects and he explains their reluctance to correct others (487-88). This will be useful in my description of Apache social norms. While much of Rushforth's published works deal with the Bearlake Athapaskan culture, another linguistic anthropologist named Harry Hoijer has previously established the relation of the Apache within the Athapaskan lineage in his paper titled “The position of the Apachean languages in the Athpaskan stock.” I plan on using this, and other sources,

to confirm a cultural relationship between Rushforth's Bearlake tribe and the tribes of the Western Apache. In the article “Framing Discourse,” the author Jocelyn Ahlers shows how uses of language and speech acts help to bring out a discourse between speaker and listener that is informed by a “Native identity” (58). She also shows how this discourse shapes a community. This article will help support both the narrative culture part of my thesis as well as the idea of cultural identity. It's important to note that in the Western Apache use of language, the context of a narrative emerges from a shared worldview from which cultural identity is shaped. The Western Apache worldview is profoundly connected to the land. As Keith Basso explains in “Speaking with Names,” how “all Apache narratives are verbally anchored to points upon the land” (87) and that stories without place are not told (87). It is through this connection to the land that place-name narratives originate. Furthermore, it is through the telling and retelling of these narratives and through the speaking of place-names that oral traditions are given power. For the Western Apache, it is these oral traditions that influence the behavior of the society and also serve to reinforce their shared worldview. The other literature not mentioned here will either serve to support my thesis, or be used to inform and expand my knowledge base. The literature that has been discussed has, thus far, been the most influential in my research. I'm sure as my project progresses that I will come to find many insights and much information in whatever works lend themselves to my research. Preliminary Outline 1. Introduction and presentation of thesis 2. What is a narrative culture? 1. Oral traditions 1. transmission of culture through narratives 2. reinforcement of shared worldview 3. Discussion of Western Apache 1. Worldview 1. importance of land 2. ancestors 3. cultural identity 2. Norms of communication and behavior 1. speaking through the land 2. voices of the ancestors 3. Example narrative 1. explanation and analysis of narrative 2. behavior addressed 4. Conclusion

Works Cited Ahlers, Jocelyn C. “Framing Discourse: Creating Community though Native Language Use.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 16.1 (2006): 58-75. Basso, Keith H. Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994. Denzin, Norman K, Yvonna S. Lincoln. The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. Rushforth, Scott. “The Legitimation of Beliefs in a Hunter-Gatherer Society: Bearlake Athapaskan Knowledge and Authority.” American Ethnologist 19.3 (1992): 483-500.

Bibliography Ahlers, Jocelyn C. “Framing Discourse: Creating Community though Native Language Use.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 16.1 (2006): 58-75. Basso, Keith H. Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994. Bird, Elizabeth S. “It Makes Sense To Us: Cultural Identity in Local Legends of Place.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnology 31.5 (2002): 519-547. Bruner, Edward M. Text, Play, and Story: The Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, 1983. Washington, D.C.: American Ethnological Society, 1984. Cruikshank, Julie. Life Lived Like a Story: life stories of three Yukon native elders. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Carbaugh, Donal, Lisa Rudnick. “Which Place, What Story? Cultural Discourses at the Border of the Blackfeet Reservation and Glacier National Park.” Great Plains Quarterly 26.3 (2006): 167-184. Hoijer, Harry. “The position of the Apachean languages in the Athapaskan stock.” Apachean Culture History and Ethnology. Eds. Keith H. Basso and Morris E. Opler. Anthropological papers of the University of Arizona, 21. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1971. 3-6. MacIntyre, Alisdair. After Virtue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984. Nevins, Eleanor M. “”They Live in Lonesome Dove:” Media and the contemporary Western Apache place-naming practices.” Language in Society 31.2 (2008): 191-215.

Opler, Morris E. “An Outline of Chiricahua Apache Social Organization.” Social Anthropology of North American Indian Tribes. Ed. Fred Eggan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. 173-239. Rushforth, Scott. “Some Directive Illocutionary Acts Among the Bearlake Athapaskans.” Anthropological Linguistics 27.4 (1985): 387-411. ---. “The Legitimation of Beliefs in a Hunter-Gatherer Society: Bearlake Athapaskan Knowledge and Authority.” American Ethnologist 19.3 (1992): 483-500. ---. “Uses of Bearlake and Mescalero (Athapaskan) Classificatory Verbs.” International Journal of American Linguistics 57.2 (1991): 251-266. Samuels, David. “Indeterminacy and History in Britton Goode's Western Apache Placenames: ambiguous identity on the San Carlos Apache reservation.” American Ethnologist 28.2 (2001): 277-302. ---. “The Whole and the Sum of the Parts, or, How Cookie and the Cupcakes Told the Story of Apache History in San Carlos.” Journal of American Folklore 112.445 (1999): 464-474. Thornton, Thomas F. “Anthropological Studies of Native American Place Naming.” American Indian Quarterly 21.2 (1997): 209-228. Tooker, Elisabeth. Naming Systems: 1980 Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, 1980. Washington, DC: American Ethnological Society, 1984.