The Anthropologist and the Native


Book Description

This book is a collection of 20 essays by international scholars collated in honor of Gananath Obeyesekere, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, whose writings have contributed to the fields of South Asian studies and anthropology.




Indians and Anthropologists


Book Description

In 1969 Vine Deloria, Jr., in his controversial book Custer Died for Your Sins, criticized the anthropological community for its impersonal dissection of living Native American cultures. Twenty-five years later, anthropologists have become more sensitive to Native American concerns, and Indian people have become more active in fighting for accurate representations of their cultures. In this collection of essays, Indian and non-Indian scholars examine how the relationship between anthropology and Indians has changed over that quarter-century and show how controversial this issue remains. Practitioners of cultural anthropology, archaeology, education, and history provide multiple lenses through which to view how Deloria's message has been interpreted or misinterpreted. Among the contributions are comments on Deloria's criticisms, thoughts on the reburial issue, and views on the ethnographic study of specific peoples. A final contribution by Deloria himself puts the issue of anthropologist/Indian interaction in the context of the century's end. CONTENTS Introduction: What's Changed, What Hasn't, Thomas Biolsi & Larry J. Zimmerman Part One--Deloria Writes Back Vine Deloria, Jr., in American Historiography, Herbert T. Hoover Growing Up on Deloria: The Impact of His Work on a New Generation of Anthropologists, Elizabeth S. Grobsmith Educating an Anthro: The Influence of Vine Deloria, Jr., Murray L. Wax Part Two--Archaeology and American Indians Why Have Archaeologists Thought That the Real Indians Were Dead and What Can We Do about It?, Randall H. McGuire Anthropology and Responses to the Reburial Issue, Larry J. Zimmerman Part Three-Ethnography and Colonialism Here Come the Anthros, Cecil King Beyond Ethics: Science, Friendship and Privacy, Marilyn Bentz The Anthropological Construction of Indians: Haviland Scudder Mekeel and the Search for the Primitive in Lakota Country, Thomas Biolsi Informant as Critic: Conducting Research on a Dispute between Iroquoianist Scholars and Traditional Iroquois, Gail Landsman The End of Anthropology (at Hopi)?, Peter Whiteley Conclusion: Anthros, Indians and Planetary Reality, Vine Deloria, Jr.




Savage Kin


Book Description

"Illuminating the complex relationships between tribal informants and twentieth-century anthropologists such as Boas, Parker, and Fenton, who came to their communities to collect stories and artifacts"--Provided by publisher.




Learning to be an Anthropologist and Remaining "Native"


Book Description

Included in this collection are Medicine's clear-eyed views of assimilation, bilingual education, and the adaptive strategies by which Native Americans have conserved and preserved their ancestral languages.




Southern Indians and Anthropologists


Book Description

Ranging in setting from a children's summer school program to a museum of history and culture to a fatherhood project, these eleven papers document some of the many ways in which anthropologists and Native Americans are striving to work together at higher levels of accountability, reciprocity, and mutual enrichment. The Native American groups discussed in the volume include the Yuchi of Oklahoma, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in western North Carolina, the Powhatans of Virginia, the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and the Waccamaw Siouan community of coastal North Carolina. The volume's contributors consider such issues as education, community development, funding, and the preservation of languages, sacred texts, oral traditions, and artifacts. At the same time, they offer personal insights into the pressures that can bear on working relationships between anthropologists and Native Americans. Not only must all concerned find a balance between their official and informal, individual and group selves, but Native Americans, especially, often feel caught between history and the present. One contributor, for instance, discusses the problems that arose from the discovery of Native American graves on land owned by the Cherokees--on the site of a planned casino parking lot. The anthropological work discussed here suggests strong potential for continuing research partnerships. It also illustrates the potential benefits of such partnerships, for anthropologists and for Native Americans.




Uncommon Anthropologist


Book Description

A trailblazer in Native American linguistics and anthropology, Gladys Reichard (1893–1955) is one of America’s least-appreciated anthropologists. Her accomplishments were obscured in her lifetime by differences in intellectual approach and envy, as well as academic politics and the gender realities of her age. This biography offers the first full account of Reichard’s life, her milieu, and, most important, her work—establishing, once and for all, her lasting significance in the history of anthropology. In her thirty-two years as the founder and head of Barnard College’s groundbreaking anthropology department, Reichard taught that Native languages, written or unwritten, sacred or profane, offered Euro-Americans the least distorted views onto the inner life of North America’s first peoples. This unique approach put her at odds with anthropologists such as Edward Sapir, leader of the structuralist movement in American linguistics. Similarly, Reichard’s focus on Native psychology as revealed to her by Native artists and storytellers produced a dramatically different style of ethnography from that of Margaret Mead, who relied on western psychological archetypes to “crack” alien cultural codes, often at a distance. Despite intense pressure from her peers to conform to their theories, Reichard held firm to her humanitarian principles and methods; the result, as Nancy Mattina makes clear, was pathbreaking work in the ethnography of ritual and mythology; Wiyot, Coeur d’Alene, and Navajo linguistics; folk art, gender, and language—amplified by an exceptional career of teaching, editing, publishing, and mentoring. Drawing on Reichard’s own writings and correspondence, this book provides an intimate picture of her small-town upbringing, the professional challenges she faced in male-centered institutions, and her quietly revolutionary contributions to anthropology. Gladys Reichard emerges as she lived and worked—a far-sighted, self-reliant humanist sustained in turbulent times by the generous, egalitarian spirit that called her yearly to the far corners of the American West.




Australian Native Title Anthropology


Book Description

The Australian Federal Native Title Act 1993 marked a revolution in the recognition of the rights of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. The legislation established a means whereby Indigenous Australians could make application to the Federal Court for the recognition of their rights to traditional country. The fiction that Australia was terra nullius (or ‘void country’), which had prevailed since European settlement, was overturned. The ensuing legal cases, mediated resolutions and agreements made within the terms of the Native Title Act quickly proved the importance of having sound, scholarly and well-researched anthropology conducted with claimants so that the fundamentals of the claims made could be properly established. In turn, this meant that those opposing the claims would also benefit from anthropological expertise. This is a book about the practical aspects of anthropology that are relevant to the exercise of the discipline within the native title context. The engagement of anthropology with legal process, determined by federal legislation, raises significant practical as well as ethical issues that are explored in this book. It will be of interest to all involved in the native title process, including anthropologists and other researchers, lawyers and judges, as well as those who manage the claim process. It will also be relevant to all who seek to explore the role of anthropology in relation to Indigenous rights, legislation and the state.




Empires, Nations, and Natives


Book Description

Empires, Nations, and Natives is a groundbreaking comparative analysis of the interplay between the practice of anthropology and the politics of empires and nation-states in the colonial and postcolonial worlds. It brings together essays that demonstrate how the production of social-science knowledge about the “other” has been inextricably linked to the crafting of government policies. Subverting established boundaries between national and imperial anthropologies, the contributors explore the role of anthropology in the shifting categorizations of race in southern Africa, the identification of Indians in Brazil, the implementation of development plans in Africa and Latin America, the construction of Mexican and Portuguese nationalism, the genesis of “national character” studies in the United States during World War II, the modernizing efforts of the French colonial administration in Africa, and postcolonial architecture. The contributors—social and cultural anthropologists from the Americas and Europe—report on both historical and contemporary processes. Moving beyond controversies that cast the relationship between scholarship and politics in binary terms of complicity or autonomy, they bring into focus a dynamic process in which states, anthropological knowledge, and population groups themselves are mutually constructed. Such a reflexive endeavor is an essential contribution to a critical anthropological understanding of a changing world. Contributors: Alban Bensa, Marcio Goldman, Adam Kuper, Benoît de L’Estoile, Claudio Lomnitz, David Mills, Federico Neiburg, João Pacheco de Oliveira, Jorge Pantaleón, Omar Ribeiro Thomaz, Lygia Sigaud, Antonio Carlos de Souza Lima, Florence Weber




Native Tours


Book Description

Previous editions of Native Tours provided a much-needed overview and analysis of anthropology's contributions to tourism as an emerging field of study. Such a cultural perspective illuminated key ideas surrounding worldwide host–guest relations and informed discussions of political and economic influences and the impacts, both negative and positive, of tourism as one of the world's largest industries. Applying a characteristically uncluttered, authoritative writing style alongside an exceptional command of the relevant literature, Chambers updates, refines, and extends his earlier work. He retains a focus on the social, cultural, economic, and environmental consequences of tourism, and provides a framework for understanding tourism initiatives in their particular circumstances. Three detailed case studies originating in the American Southwest, the Tirolean Alps, and Belize illustrate the varied costs and benefits of tourism.




Native Ethnography


Book Description