An Analysis Of Barre Toelken's Seeing With A Native Eye

In Barre Toelken’s essay “Seeing with a Native Eye: How Many Sheep Will It Hold?”, the ways in which one culture perceives another and the criteria used to make judgements are explored. Toelken states “I think I can say something about how differently we see things, envision things, look at things, how dissimilarly different cultures try to process the world of reality” (10-11). In essence, Toelken is alluding to how different cultures will interpret their experiences and rituals according to their own set of beliefs and practices. This complicates situations in which the experiences or rituals are not comparable across cultural lines; someone will always be missing an aspect or a significant purpose if they do not try to “see it as much as possible with the ‘native eye’” (12). In other words, one must immerse themselves in the culture they are analyzing, while not comparing it to their own cultural experiences. One must consider all the cultural implications of that specific culture when wondering why things are done a certain way. Toelken provides

He makes a point of how American’s place an extreme emphasis on “lineal order”, we take pride in “lining things up, getting thing in line… We have it all neatly separated and categorized” (16). This statement is absolutely true, if we look about our society, the city we live in, the design of our houses, the way desks are arranged in a school, everything is in straight, orderly lines. In contrast, in Native American communities “the reverse is true… instead of separating into categories of the sort, family groups sit in circles, meeting are in circles” (17). These are examples of how the Native American culture places great value on coming together and including people in their traditions. In Toelken opinion, these differences in spatial systems also affect our relationships with