Kathleen has carried out fieldwork with Guaraní speaking indigenous peoples in the Gran Chaco region of South America since 1997.  In 2013 she began a new research and teaching collaboration with the Skills Society of Edmonton, which works with adults with developmental disabilities and acquired brain injuries. A key interpretant across her work is the notion of “humbug”, and the ways that different cultural contexts ask people to doubt, deny, or disavow different aspects of human experience.  In the Guaraní context, she focused on shamans, who were particularly charged with the local cultural work of mediating power and vulnerability and who were sometimes exalted and sometimes excoriated as a consequence.  In the Canadian context, she focuses on disability support workers, whose community duties and community status are subject to a similarly ambivalent handling.