Wisdom Sits In Places Summary

In Wisdom Sits in Places, Keith Basso expresses how the best way to appreciate and learn the ethics and stories of indigenous cultures, in this case the people of Western Apache, would be by understanding their language and realizing that stories allow them to create a connection between the people and the land. It symbolizes that the land plays an equal role with the people in the Western Apache. The linguistic approach in learning the Western Apache language will not do it justice to thoroughly understand the stories and the wisdom it contains. I believe that the logical approach in understanding the language would eliminate the symbolic aspect to the stories and the places. Sometimes researchers tend to apply the same tactics into understanding

I believe that Keith Basso, in Wisdom Sits in Places, is trying to explain this through his experience but more importantly through the stories from the Western Apache and learning it from their perspectives. One of the major ways in learning another culture’s traditions and lifestyle is by learning their language and living in places where they reside. Translation of words and phrases back in English or another common speech of the outsiders would essentially lose the true meaning in the process. This is because in many cases, the exact translation of words or phrases of one language is sometimes not possible. I think that is the biggest issue with comprehending another society, let alone the tradition and culture that has been going on for centuries in the society. Stories in such ancient languages like the Western Apache language have a spiritual connection with their land as well. These stories bring life to these places that may seem nothing but acres of land to

It can be a way for the people to secretly communicate with other people in their community. It can also be a way for people to describe an emotion or incident that only the people of the society can relate to. Basso recall’s William Capman that “the past is at its best when it takes us to places that counsel and instruct, that show us connections to what happened here” (Basso, 4). Past gives land the purpose to be remembered over the years and in some cases, a land becomes a symbolic metaphor of the past. Metaphors and other figures of speeches can be used to describe the past that can give life to these narratives. Hence, “what all this implies is that grasping other people’s metaphors requires ethnography as much as it does linguistics” (Basso,