Seeing With The Native Eye Analysis

Seeing with the Native Eye The essay “Seeing with the Native Eye” exemplifies an alternative paradigm. Schriver (2011) explains “in general, alternative paradigms are sets of interrelated and interlocking dimensions through which what and how we know about the world around us is created, communicated, and controlled” (Schriver, 2011). This analysis of the essay “Seeing with the Native Eye” will be applied with the concepts that are laid out in the book Human Behavior and the Social Environment. Concepts that will be highlighted are interpretive, intuitive, subjective, and qualitative. The first concept discussed of an alternative paradigm is interpretive. Interpretive can mean a wide range of things when talking to different people from different walks of life. Native Americans will most definitely have an altered view of the world and its surroundings compared to the Anglo Americans in the same region.

Belenky (1986) writes “describe subjective knowledge as “a perspective from which truth and knowledge are conceived of as personal, private, and subjectively known or intuited” (Belenky et al., 1986). In an environment people have to participate to get the full understand of the culture. For example, Toelken was adopted into a family where he had the full experience of tribal life. Toelken (2001) writes, “This is not intended to be a tale of woe, however; I simply want it understood that I was not a missionary among the Navajo. Nor was I an anthropologist, a teacher, a tourist, or any of the other things that something cause people to come to know another group briefly and superficially” (p. 51). He was a part of the culture, family, and environment. Toelken would not have had these deep ties to the Navajo people if he was just a visitor. As social workers, it is necessary to understand we are visitors when entering into people’s homes, tribes, work, and altogether