Come‐backs/Reincarnation as Integration; Adoption‐out as Disassociation: Examples from First Nations Northwest British Columbia

• Published in: Anthropology of Consciousness
• Main Authors: Mills, Antonia, Champion, Linda
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 1996
• Subjects: Anthropology; First Nations
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ac.1996.7.3.30; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1525%2Fac.1996.7.3.30; https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/ac.1996.7.3.30

To those raised outside of Gitxsan and Witsuwit'en culture, the concept of a child, (or adult) claiming to be, or being attributed as, an ancestor returned as well as the person of this life, sounds like a split personality. In this paper, we examine a single example of this category from among the more than two hundred cases on record for the Gitxsan and Witsuwit'en of northwest British Columbia. The example serves to demonstrate that the Gitxsan and Witsuwit'en do not construe the situation of someone "come back" as a divided self, but as an embedded self, a person with deep roots and double grounding in the territory and the kin group, doubly integrated into the nexus of social life. This contrasts with the poignant cases of people who were fostered or adopted out, sexually abused, and made to feel confused about their heritage. The autobiographical account of the second author is an example of a woman in this category. It demonstrates the response of shutting down emotion, and absenting oneself from the abusive situations by "leaving the body." Our analysis suggests that cultural definition of what is normal varies from Western to Gitxsan and Witsuwit'en culture. It suggests further that the definition of the experience as useful helps recovery of such individuals when they are reunited with their natal culture.