.Master of Arts

Life history as an anthropological technique is rarely used due 'to an assumed difficulty with analysis; however, a consideration of life history narratives provides some insight into individual understanding of experience, which often becomes lost in abstract generalized accounts of culture. Anthropologists derive personal meaning and cultural meaning from the same observed behaviour and it is because the distinction between individual and culture is blurred in a life history that analysis becomes a problem. Following Radin's method of inductive analysis, this thesis is an elaboration of one individual's understanding of experience; an explication of inherent meaning, both personal and cultural, as expressed in the narrative of a Cree woman from Ruper