Pipe Ceremony or the Ethnography of Extraordinary Experience within Notcimik (Atikamekw Nehirowisiw Forestland, Quebec, Canada)
This article discusses the contribution of Jean-Guy Goulet’s work to the author’s reflections and his approaches to the ethnographic field. In particular, it highlights the relevance of the researcher’s dreamlike experiences and the teachings transmitted by Notcimik, the forest universe of the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok, in ethnographic materials. Here, the reflection is articulated around an ethnography of a personal experience lived in profitable social relationships that enabled living better and understanding certain principles, practices and knowledge of the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok. The ethnographic experience described in this article is in line with what Goulet (2007) describes as “extraordinary anthropology”, that is, the researcher’s involvement in radically different ways of understanding and inhabiting reality.