I recently spent 17 days in Chile, contributing to a local research project, on the relationship between the state and indigenous people (Mapuche). My colleague there, Francisca de la Maza, at the Villarica campus of the Pontifical University of Chile, arranged a very full programme of visits to the offices of municipal authorities delivering state programmes for rural and/or indigenous development, and also to small farmers and indigenous communities themselves.
This was a different kind of fieldwork experience for me, in a situation where I had none of the experience, language and background knowledge which I take for granted as the essential tools which make all my research in Indonesia possible. I was dependent on Francisca (and her colleagues) for nearly all of that.
We developed a method in which she would remind the people we visited of what her project was about, then introduce me and invite me to speak to them. I would usually begin by asking them questions, related to what I knew to be the central issues in Francisca’s project. After a while I would begin responding to their answers with comparative information and stories from my (less than perfect) knowledge of New Zealand history, Maori culture and relationships between Maori and the NZ state. This would often lead to a round-table discussion on these comparisons.
Mapuche historical experience has been essentially similar to that of indigenous people in all colonised countries, but their situation now is one of considerable disadvantage compared with Maori. They have very little in the way of formal political rights and few channels for direct communication with the state, let alone input into policy-making in any field. Neither are their specifically Mapuche-focused streams in education, health or any other social services. What they do have is a number of specific programmes targeted mostly at small economic development initiatives. These are designed by the state and delivered by the state in terms and via procedures determined by the state. These programmes and their effectiveness (or otherwise) are the focus of Francisca’s research.
The two main results of our improvised methodology were firstly that my presence itself and especially my questions and the new information I provided, meant a lot to the people involved. An international visitor is unusual in these places, let alone one who takes an interest in them. This “giving something back” function was one of Francisca’s intentions. The second (also intended) benefit was that these same factors provoked new lines of discussion and new and sometimes unanticipated insights.
For me it provided firstly the beginnings of some knowledge of an historical, cultural, linguistic and political environment quite different to those I am familiar with in Anglophone Australasia and in Dutch-colonised and pan-Asian-influenced Indonesia. Secondly it provided me with privileged access to indigenous communities that I do not have even in New Zealand, but also a culture previously completely unknown to me. Thirdly, our method – of continuous tri-cultural (NZ, Chileno, Mapuche) and bi-lingual (English and Spanish, with Mapudungun and Maori words thrown in) translation – while slow and no doubt confused at times, took me back to the basics of the ethnographic encounter and gave me new insight into the mystery and magic of the process of trying to construct understandings across gaps of culture, language and history. Finally, I became aware of the rich tradition and high scholarly standard of Chilean anthropology, yet their virtual invisibility in the world of international anthropology. It reminded me of how Anglophone the international academic world is and how even anthropology, with our commendable history of and commitment to translation across gaps of culture, language etc. does not really have this part of our house quite in order. One of the most serious and interesting attempts to do address this and develop a truly international anthropology, is the World Anthropologies Network (http://www.ram-wan.net/index.html ) in which, not surprisingly, Latin American anthropologists are well represented.
Maybe we’ll find a way of writing some of this together in English.
* This title is a respectful nod in the direction of Paul Rabinow’s now classic Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco
