Linguists Of The Earth Maddie Gust The book, Wisdom Sits In Places, is an anthropological study carried out by Doctor Keith Basso based. on his own field work with the people of the Western Apache over thirty years. The book is consolidated into four opulent essays, each one focusing on a member of the Apache Tribe who share the different significance of places within their culture. Their concepts of wisdom, history, morals, and storytelling, which interlaced within a place. These essays allow us to understand Basso as he expands awareness of the relationships people maintain with places and spaces. Dr. Keith Basso is a major player in the Linguistics and Indigenous Studies fields. His work is compiled from years of fieldwork done while …show more content…
Keith Basso carried out his own personal transformation. At the start, he thought he could answer the question, “What do people make of places?” Basso, like many others, believed that the answer was simple; a place is an idea of territory or a geographical landmark. This ideology of similar beliefs is shared by many people in the western culture. An example of this is anthropologist Laura Bohannan made assumptions of the culture and beliefs in the article “Shakespeare in the Bush.” There are many more examples of these assumptions being made all across the world. As explained by authors such as Lila Abu-Lughod on cultural relativism of women in the Muslim religion and Vine Deloria on Native American Tribes, One needs to keep an open mind when dealing with different cultures. What could be nothing more than a plot of dirt or a piece of clothing in one, could hold significant meaning and importance to another. To understand this concept, one needs to accept that as cultures vary so does significance of objects and places.[1][3] In Basso’s case, wasn’t until he discovered the Western Apache concepts of place that he came to understand the complexity of it all. In Western culture a place simply is. We don’t think of a place in the same fondness as the Apache, usually they rarely cross our mind. This is because we don’t think of our own attachments to places, and tend to take them for granted. As a result, when dropped in an unfamiliar place, majority of people in the western culture could not care less. This could not be more different as, Dr. Basso clarified, from the unique connection the Apache tribe holds with the land as well as their “lived