"To Give up on Words": Silence in Western Apache Culture

by Keith H. Basso

The following article I found in my Anthropology book. I just thought I would put in on my site for your information. I will give Mr. Keith H. Basso the credit of writing this article to inform us who are interested in Apache culture or any other Indian culture.

Can you imagine working on a four-person crew for several days without being introduced to o r speaking with one of the other members, whom you did not know? For the Apache, this is a normal occurence; the do not feel obligated to introduce strangers to one another. Instead, the Apache believe that when the time is right, the strangers will being speaking to one another.

Would you find it uncomfortable to go on a date and sit in silence for an hour because you had only recently met your companion? What would you think if after returning home from several months' absence your parents and relatives didn't speak to you for several days? Although these situations seem unusual to us, they are considered appropriate among the Apache. Although it seems natural to us that when people first meet introductions are in order and that when friends and relatives reunite greetings and catching up will immediately follow, this is not the case for all cultures.

Those familiar with the television show "Northern Exposure" may consider how the reticence of Native American character Marilyn Whirlwind contrasts with the behavior of the other characters. This example demonstrates how cummunicating across cultural boundaries can be fraught with uncertainty and misunderstanding. In this sselection Keith Basso shows how, among the Apache, certain situations call for silence rather than communication and how silence makes sense within its cultural context.

It is not the case that a man who is silent says nothing.

--Anonymous

Anyone who has read about American Indians has probably encountered statements which impute to them a strong predilection for keeping silent or, as one writer has put it, "a fierce reluctance to speak except when absolutely necessary." In the popular literature, where this characterization is particulary widespread, it is commonly potrayed as the outgrowth of such dubious causes as "instinctive dignity," "an impoverished language," or perhaps worst of all, the Indians' "lack of personal warmth."

Although statements of this sort of plainly erroneous and dangerously misleading, it is noteworthy that professional anthropologists have made a few attempts to correct them. Traditionally, ethnographers and linguists have paid little attention to cultural interpretations given to silence or, equally important, to the types of social contexts in which it regularly occurs.

This study investigates certain aspects of silence in the culture of the Western Apache of east-central Arizona. After considering some of the theoretical issues involved, I will briefly describe a number of situations--recurrent in the Western Apache society--in which one or more of the participants typically refrain from speech for lengthy periods of time. This is accompained by a discussion of how such acts of silence are interpreted and why they are encouraged and deemed appropriate. I conclude by advancing an hypothesis that accounts for the reasons that the Western Apache refrain from speaking when they do, and I suggest that, wtih proper testing, this hypothesis may be showing to have relevance to silence behavior in other cultures.

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