Transcript PowerPoint to accompany this lecture

Some Concerns about
Studying Indian People
Alan Burns working with
Crow people, 2000
Ruth Benedict and Two
Blackfeet Men, 1939
Indians of North America Anthropology E-320
Larry J. Zimmerman, PhD, RPA
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
‘Okay, Indian expert, tell me what I
had for breakfast?
Sherman Alexie, Spokane/Coeur d'Alene poet & novelist
With academic study, one can know many
things about Indians, even things many Indian
people don't know.
But, without being Indian, one cannot know
what it means to be Indian.
Just why are non-Indians even
interested in Indians?
•Why they should be studied by anyone?
•Issues of privacy are of great concern.
•Of great concern are issues of sacredness.
Studying Indians does not honor them any
more than having Indian sports mascots!
New Age practitioners are a special concern.
‘They are messing with things they don’t
understand and that can be very dangerous!’
Maria Pearson, Inhanktonwan
People deserve your respect when it comes
to your study of them and their culture.
•Figure out where the boundaries of your study should be.
•If people don't wish your intrusion, then don't intrude.
•Respect their wishes.
Donald J. Lehmer: “This is the way we wash our
clothes, wash our clothes…”
Some advice
Most Indian people don’t mind if you
learn some things about their
culture if you do it respectfully and
recognize the limits of your
knowledge.
Know the limits of your knowledge.
This even applies to knowing about
your own culture.
Just because you are a member of a
culture, you shouldn't assume you
can know all there is to know about
that culture.
Just because you are Indian, don't
assume that you can know what it
means to be a member of another
nation.
Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto
Vine Deloria, Jr.
Now Playing: Floyd
Westerman, ‘Custer Died
for your Sins, 4: 04
‘Anthropologists and Other Friends’
INTO EACH LIFE, it is said, some rain must fall. Some people
have bad horoscopes, others take tips on the stock market.
McNamara created the TFX and the Edsel. Churches possess
the real world. But Indians have been cursed above all other
people in history. Indians have anthropologists.
Every summer when school is out a veritable stream of
immigrants heads into Indian country. Indeed the Oregon Trail
was never so heavily populated as are Route 66 and Highway 18
in the summer time. From every rock and cranny in the East
they emerge, as if responding to some primeval fertility rite, and
flock to the reservations.
"They" are the anthropologists. Social anthropologists
historical anthropologists, political anthropologists, economic
anthropologists, all brands of the species, embark on the great
summer adventure. For purposes of this discussion we shall
refer only to the generic name, anthropologists. They are the
most prominent members of the scholarly community that
infests the land of the free, and in the summer time, the homes
of the braves.
The origin of the anthropologist is a mystery hidden in the
historical mists. Indians are certain that all societies of Near East
had anthropologists at one time because all these societies are
now defunct.
Indians are equally certain that Columbus brought anthropologists on his
ships when he came to the New World. How else could he have made so
many wrong deductions about where he was?
While their historical precedent is uncertain, anthropologists can readily
be identified on the reservations. Go into any crowd of people. Pick out a
tall gaunt white man wearing Bermuda shorts, a World War II Army Air
Force flying jacket, an Australian bush hat, tennis shoes, and packing a
large knapsack incorrectly strapped on his back. He will invariably have a
thin sexy wife with stringy hair, an IQ of 191, and a vocabulary in which
even the prepositions have eleven syllables.
He usually has a camera, tape recorder, telescope, hoola hoop, and life
jacket all hanging from his elongated frame. He rarely has a pen, pencil,
chisel, stylus, stick, paint brush, or instrument to record his
observations.
This creature is an anthropologist.
Here Come the Anthros…
“Here comes the anthros, better hide the past
away…Then back they go to write their book
and tell the world that there’s more…And not a
cent of funded money that the anthros get to
spend is ever given to their disappearing
feathered-friends. And the Anthros keep diggin’
in our sacred ceremonial sites. As if there’s
nothing wrong or education gives them the
right.
Here come the anthros, on another holiday”
Floyd Westerman
Floyd Westerman:
‘Here come the Anthros’
Ethical problems in anthropology,
1960s-1970s
•Millgram experiment in psychology
•Project Camelot
•Landes incident
•Deloria’s attack
The Result? Ethical reflection and changes
Before real scholarship, questions and armchair
speculation about the origins of American
Indians abounded
Three trends
1. Latin American emphasis based on chronicles of the
conquistadors, priests
2. Explorer and traveler accounts of the interior of NA and
Latin America with a natural history focus
3. An almost ephemeral trend that began the next
period: efforts to undertake excavation and survey of
archaeological sites as well as the first ethnography
Lewis & Clark
Non-scientific conjecture
Dominance of speculation as a mode of thought was
due to a number of factors:
1. Most important was the lack of reliable data
2. Acceptance of theological modes of explanation limited other
possibilities
3. Non-existence of a tradition of scientific thought
4. A continuing sense of wonder at the exotic nature of the New
World .
El Castillo, Chichen Itza, Catherwood, 1840s
The big questions of the day:
1. Who are the Indians?
2. Where did they come from? Were they children of God?
Answers:
1. Favorite was the Lost Tribes of Israel
2. Survivors of Atlantis; Mu
3. the Viking origins
4. Asian 5. In 1637, a Bering Strait
migration was being seriously
considered, especially after Cook
mapped the strait
(José de Acosta, 1590)
Some good, some bad in early
dealings with the study of Indians
Bishop Diego de Landa worked closely with
the Maya, gave excellent descriptions
Chichen Itza, hieroglyphs and calendrical
system at the same time that he burned
their codexes and other documents
Fray Bartolemé de las Casas worked in
Chiapas, but was a champion of Indians, trying
to seek fair treatment for them. He did solid
ethnography for the times.
Trends appeared that resulted in the
so-called Moundbuilder Myth.
1. Explorers used a natural scientific
approach which is still reflected in the
fact that Indians and archaeology tend to
be in natural history museums instead of
history museums
2. Most were not directly on the scene or as
involved. Armchair explorers used a
literary approach
Why did Euroamericans need a Moundbuilder Myth?
Manifest Destiny
1. The need for an heroic past that would
resemble that of Europe―reasons are
complex
•The colonists were in one sense a "people
without a history"
•Those living in Europe thought that
something must be wrong with the
environment here to cause such
revolutions
•Needed a "white" history to claim the land
― a precursor to Manifest Destiny
2. Second reason is the relative comparison of
the mounds and earthworks to the pyramids of
Mexico. How could the Indian people they saw
have built such thing?
3. Little attention paid to the traditions of the
people themselves ―that would come later
― that showed a long tradition of
moundbuilding
The Moundbuilder Myth Destroyed,
1890
Cyrus Thomas, the first scientific archaeology, and use of
Indian oral traditions proved beyond reasonable doubt that
the ancestors of the Indians built the mounds.
Actually the moundbuilder myth hangs on…
Many Euroamericans still want a “white”
presence in the Americas before the Indians.
The influences of a European scientific tradition
1. Throughout the period there would be a steady
increase in the discovery and description of
antiquities as the US pushed westward
2. Work began to be sponsored by the government,
universities, museums, scientific societies
Thomas Jefferson
3. Archaeology became both a recognized avocation
and a vocation which toward the end of the period
would be taught in universities
4. Alliance between archaeology and anthropology
began as a long-lasting conceptual union.