Wisdom Sits in Places

Keith Basso (1940-2013) was an American academic who focused his career on anthropological studies of American Indians, particularly the Western Apache community of Cibecue, in east-central Arizona. In 1959, while in his sophomore year of his undergraduate degree program, Basso started working among the Western Apache, initiating a relationship that would lead to many works of research, of which Wisdom Sits in Places is one of the best-known examples.

In addition to being the author of the book, Basso is essentially its protagonist. Although he wrote the book after having spent nearly two decades conducting fieldwork in Cibecue, Basso is still frequently bewildered by the cultural practices he observes. At several points throughout the book, Basso witnesses an exchange between Western Apache and comes away confused. The frankness with which Basso explains his lack of familiarity with aspects of Apache culture allows him to stand in for the reader—both Basso and the reader are learning about Apache cultural practices as he encounters them.

In discussing instances in which he found himself in uncharted territory, anthropologically speaking, Basso is also underscoring another important dimension of his identity: that of ethnographer. Anthropologists, like Basso himself, can often only fully learn about ideas and practices through sustained ethnographic research—a task Basso embraces with obvious delight. Basso notes that while ethnography is often portrayed as serious business, it can also be fun, and even funny. This aspect is first evidenced by Basso’s early work in Cibecue, studying subjects such as an Apache pattern of joking in which they imitate white men, but is also clear in anecdotes Basso relates throughout the book: when Basso laughs with Charles Henry and Morley Cromwell over their shared misfortunate in the course of a weekend, for example, or when being affectionately mocked by Nick Thompson. 

Basso’s subjectivity is relevant to the book not only because he’s a character in it, but also because our understanding of Cibecue is mediated through him. In between episodes of fieldwork in Cibecue, he tells us, he also learned to cowboy, riding and camping with Apache horsemen, and formed close bonds of friendship and admiration with community members, some of whom figure prominently in Wisdom Sits in Places. This positioning underscores how Basso, rather than being an authority on Western Apache culture, is talking about it from an individual perspective, just as those he writes about—in other words, they’re equals. In this way, Basso’s inclusion of himself as a character reminds the reader of another core principle of the text: that when seeking to understand a sense of place, one must remember that people are the ones doing the sensing.