Fred Myers - Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self:

The Dreaming: Time and Space

Within Pintupi culture land (country) is a projection into space of stories (histories) told (uncovered) and reenacted by those who reside and pass through it; stories of actions which in turn gave the landscape its visible shape; actions creating the place/ law of their occurrence. All that exists (and occurs) is represented as deriving from this single, unchanging, timeless narrative source or law. Historical change is assimilated to the preexisting forms and is incorporated within the unchanging ever present features of the physical landscape, through the notion of discovery or reenactment. Action (personal, mythical) converted into a structure, thus becomes the foundation for further action.

"To grasp these dialectical relations", says Myers, "one must start with individual action, as the Pintupi do." (p.72). Relying upon their reliance on "emotional criteria rather than on rules" (p.18), he too resorts to a "feel" of Pintupi life as a central means of understanding it (p.7). That is, the individual as subject, her/his own terms and forms of interpretation, provide access to the deeper structure which motivates that interpretation and which is reconstructed by it, in a specific historical moment. The system is thus arrived at (and formed) indexically, rather than through generalization or induction; it is continuous with and a product of specific (participatory) activity and insight, as is the shape of the landscape, in Pintupi world/view.

Although the day by day activity, the rout and place of residence, the particulars of behavior, change with time and through new contact, they stem from and are checked by a deeper system of values, reenacted by new forms which thus expand the concept of it. The (ethnographic) story of this system, like the story of the land, is uncovered by the (inter)action that creates its surface manifestations:

[...] they returned to tell me that "we thought that story ended, went into the ground, at Pinari. But we found that it goes underground all the way to Balgo." [...] Historical change can be integrated, but [...] it is assimilated to the preexisting forms: the foundation had always been there, but people had not known it before." (Myers, 53)

The ethnographer's own knowledge of a social structure must recognize the dimension of time in a similar manner:

"[...] Recognizing Pintupi concepts as essential components of a structure of social life that is greater than the local group and reproduced through time does not mean we can ignore the consequences of material activity. My analysis suggests that the logic of practical activity is assimilated within the values that emerge from the internal structure of relations within Pintupi society. (Myers, 21)

Myers' analysis attempts to situate people's cultural constructs within the context of their social reality, thus implying the existence of a dialectic relationship between creativity and constraint, between the individual's autonomous activity and its determination by cultural structures. This dialogue between the system (concept) and the individual (evidence) underlies not only Myers' method of research (concept) but also the content of its specific findings (evidence). That is, the dialectic relationship between creativity and knowledge which determines - according to Myers' view - his account of Pintupi reality (an interpretation vs. a scientific account), determines also their own experience of that reality (as individuals vs. persons), as well as the particular content of their culture (manifested in the double emphasis on autonomy vs. relatedness). This reenactment of the same dialectic principle within the various levels of Myers' account, itself testifies to the slippage of boundaries or the reciprocity between context and action, system and event, narration and story.