The Four Hills of Life: Northern Arapaho Knowledge and Life Movement (review)

Jeffrey D. Anderson's interpretation of the Arapaho theory of knowledge and its relationships to personhood and to "life movement" (that is, the process of long life filled with good fortune) is based on the work of earlier ethnographers A. L. Kroeber, George Dorsey, and Inez Hilger. Skillfully drawing together information about mythology, ritual, art, and language, he argues that in prereservation times personhood was constructed through a life movement system situated in mythico-ritual space and time. His interpretation is based on homologous relationships among several cultural domains. The four stages of life—childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age—are associated with four ways of "knowing": listening, doing, giving back, and sacred learning. At the foundation of life movement are proper relationships between persons, including humans, "false persons" (ghosts and spirits), beings above (the sun, for example), and animals. Knowledge is channeled through kinship relations and an age-based hierarchy in ritual exchanges that generate blessings for all participants. As Anderson ably discusses, "pity," or the requirement to give assistance to others, is at the core of proper relationships and was initiated at the beginning of time; in Arapaho mythology, knowledge for doing things in a correct way originated in acts of pity by powerful beings above or animal persons that initiated acts of pity among human beings. Anderson's discussion of each of the four stages of life integrates the symbolism of myth, ritual, and art to support his interpretation. Childhood was associated with controlled movement outside the tipi and beyond; youths, with unbounded activity beyond the camp circle (or family, in the case of women); adults, with controlled and coordinated movement beyond the boundaries of the camp or family and back inward; and old people, with immobility and enclosed space within the camp. These four stages also were associated with cardinal directions, seasons, colors, and cosmic epochs. Anderson also concludes that the concept of four stages of life or the four hills of life embodied the idea that life movement corresponds to transversing a series of hills—ascension involves difficulty and is followed by a period of smooth travel, followed by descent (discarding or sacrificing) in order to ascend again. The symbolism of this life movement is expressed in cradle and robe quillwork and other decorative art of women and in ritual activities of all Arapaho. Anderson makes the point that women's and men's life movements were interdependent and commensurable.

Anderson also contrasts this idealized prereservation age-group system, which ethnographers were not able to examine in operation, with Arapaho's lived experience during the time he did fieldwork on Wind River Reservation (1989–94). He argues that a Euro-American system of knowledge has undermined the age-based system of knowledge that formerly generated Arapaho life movement. The Arapaho have appropriated knowledge in the form of literacy to manage legal enrollment and post-1975 tribal government; this change has removed authority from age-structured relations and promoted conflict. The tribe contracted for many programs that brought new income into the community yet could not provide employment and services for all needy Arapahos. Decisions about access to tribal resources through programs and enrollment now are made within the tribal bureaucracy. Anderson's impression is that elderly people still have prestige and influence, the authority of some tribal ritual leaders has expanded, and there remains a link between socially recognized age and leadership; yet life movement is structured more by kinship relations than age-structured tribal institutions.

Anderson raises interesting questions about Arapaho life in the 1990s, but his conclusions would carry more weight if they were better grounded in ethnographic descriptions of interactions and events, based on more detailed analysis of economic relations and marital patterns, and reflected in commentary of contemporary Arapahos. In prereservation times there was an interface between family and age-based...