The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy [02] Read Online Free

artifacts.”
    “You state it very diplomatically, but I suspect that wasn’t how you heard it.”
    “I think the official characterization was you ‘demonstrated insensitivity to the strong link in tribal culture between people and the products of their hands and the unique cosmology of such peoples that rejects the western linear concept of time and posits a timeless link with their ancestors’.”
    “You remember that?”
    “Not verbatim. But I think it’s close.”
    “Probably. It sounds like the twaddle in use back then. If they had said I failed to appreciate that Indians like their pots better than we like ours, their position would have sounded not only false, but – worse from their perspective – trivial. Academics fear nothing more than being thought trivial.”
    “Ironic,” I commented, “since triviality is the essence of academe.”
    “No wonder they kicked you out!”
    “So do you think Indians value their artifacts more than people of European descent?”
    “The question has no answer. There are millions of Indians. Any statement about what they value is a mere generalization. Only individuals value things. They say Indians value their dignity. Who doesn’t? I understand their concern may be more acute because the fate they have suffered in the last five hundred years is demoralizing in the extreme. But I also value dignity, and when a university tribunal ordered me to attend sensitivity training offered by a charlatan Indian activist from Colorado, I resigned.”
    His shoulders slumped down slightly. “It was not an act of great courage to do so. The fact was I no longer wanted to work among the new faculty schooled in the radical graduate programs of the sixties.” He took another sip of water. “Empathy is not my strong suit. I was taught that the best thing an anthropologist can do is study cultures and report on them as a scientist. The worst thing you can do is give them sympathy. They don’t want it, and it clouds your objectivity. The new faculty didn’t see Native American culture as something to be studied. They saw it as a cause. Maybe their view had some merit I failed to grasp…”
    His voice trailed off and his head angled down. Then he looked up at me. “At any rate, I tried not to look back when I left. Then this summer a very old friend of mine from the San Roque Pueblo came to see me.”
    “San Roque!”
    “Yes. Many of the rumors about them are either false or exaggerated. I lived among them for a year during a sabbatical. At any rate, my friend, Otaku Ma’sin, was very old – older than me if you can believe that – and he wanted to unburden himself. He told me he had heard about the University returning artifacts to the Indians. He believed the University had a collection of very old Ma pots. They call themselves the Ma people. ‘San Roque’ is obviously the name the Spaniards gave them. The pots have never been returned.”
    “Why did he think telling you would unburden him?”
    “Because there was a tribal elder whose position would have made him the designated recipient on behalf of the Ma, and when the pots were never placed in their kiva where they belonged, Otaku at first believed the elder had kept them for himself.”
    “And he changed his mind?”
    “Yes. He and the elder were alone one evening in a field of corn, and Otaku saw a yellow glow around the elder. This is a sign of purity. So Otaku figured the pots never got to the Pueblo. He was hoping I might right the wrong. He was also hoping his delay in reporting the absence of the pots would not become what the Ma call a scar on his soul.”
    “Did you ever see anyone glowing yellow during the year you lived there?”
    “Of course not. But I don’t question Otaku’s judgment of the elder any more than I question my wife’s judgment of you. The fact that he saw purity in the elder I accept. If it manifested itself as a yellow glow, then put it down to cultural conditioning. Or the reflected