I’ve finally been read­ing get­ting put squarely in my place by Custer Died for Your Sins. Also, I started read­ing Native Appro­pri­a­tions last week­end, a sharp and insight­ful read on indige­nous pres­ence in Amer­i­can pop cul­ture. Either one alone is hum­bling. Taken together, it’s razing.

Seri­ously, why don’t all bio pho­tos fea­ture some­one kneel­ing in a blazer?

I’ve been real­iz­ing this week, on the gut-​​level, how lit­tle I know about Indi­ans – their expe­ri­ence or his­tory. Which means I know noth­ing about Amer­i­can his­tory, much less the his­tory of the land I’m from. So I’m begin­ning to con­ceive of this trip to Mass. less as research for a book, more tear­ing down my whole arti­fice of Amer­i­can His­tory, to start again. I feel like a grade-​​schooler again – the age I last learned about Indi­ans, and the age at which I feel all this resource-​​rich and –lit­er­ate edu­ca­tion should begin. Humbled.

Of all the insti­tu­tions Delo­ria crit­i­cizes, aca­d­e­mic anthro­pol­ogy ranks high. Many of his con­cerns revolve around the money poured into research grants (which could instead have funded the tribes directly), and the sys­temic prob­lems this cre­ates. I’ll get into this a more deeply in another post – but, here’s a taste:

One [anthropologist-​​lead] work­shop dis­cussed the the­sis that Indi­ans were in a ter­ri­ble cri­sis. They were, in the words of friendly anthro guides, BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. Peo­ple between two worlds, the stu­dents were told, DRANK. For the anthro­pol­o­gists, it was a valid expla­na­tion of drink­ing on the reser­va­tion. For the young Indi­ans, it was an author­i­ta­tive def­i­n­i­tion of their role as Indi­ans. Real Indi­ans, they began to think, drank, and their task was to become real Indi­ans for only in that way could they recre­ate the glo­ries of the past.
So they DRANK.¹ (empha­sis in original)

This is the sort of “anthro­pol­ogy from within” I’m hun­gry for. If you know of more like it, pile it on in the com­ments. Of course, this was pub­lished in the late 60s, and I have no idea whether anything’s changed, for bet­ter or worse.

Maybe in Deloria’s vision,the anthropologist’s worst enemy.

And for the moment, I’m more inter­ested in his view of anthro­pol­o­gists. Not unlike hip­pies, they can be a map of what not to fol­low. He doesn’t offer alter­na­tive meth­ods for non-​​Indians to learn about our neigh­bors; maybe he fig­ures it’s obvi­ous. (He just calls for most of Indian Coun­try to be allowed to gov­ern itself – with steady fed­eral funds to levy the prob­lems the US con­gress has cre­ated by vio­lat­ing treaties and attempt­ing Ter­mi­na­tion poli­cies.) So, while I appre­ci­ate his indig­na­tion, I’m still in this bind: I want, respect­fully as I can, to under­stand the his­tory of where I’m from, as those events shaped the land where I (invol­un­tar­ily) spent my young life. And there are some tragic, obvi­ous blun­ders you can avoid, just by tak­ing the slight­est lib­erty with his words:

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.
An anthro­pol­o­gist comes out to Indian reser­va­tions to make OBSER­VA­TIONS. Dur­ing the win­ter these obser­va­tions will become books by which future anthro­pol­o­gists will be trained, so that they can come out to reser­va­tions years from now and ver­ify the obser­va­tions they have stud­ied. …
You may be curi­ous as to why the anthro­pol­o­gist never car­ries an writ­ing instru­ment. He never makes a mark because he ALREADY KNOWS what he is going to find. He need not record any­thing except his daily expenses for the audit, for the anthro found his answers in the books he read the win­ter before. No, the anthro­pol­o­gist is only out on the reser­va­tions to VER­IFY what he has sus­pected all along – Indi­ans are a very quaint peo­ple who bear watch­ing.² (empha­sis in original)

Even after his sar­casm, Deloria’s point stings vicious, and I believe as observers, it’s imper­a­tive we respect it: if we go, we go to learn, not under the pre­tense of learn­ing only to con­firm. Regard­less of the respect­ful, care­ful anthro­pol­ogy hap­pen­ing, the books that are are bought, ref­er­enced and can­on­ized are most of those we hear about. Which cheats everyone.

Yes­ter­day I left a mes­sage on the voice­mail of a Wampanoag woman cen­tral to tribal activ­ity (maybe gov­ern­ment?). I spent the week think­ing about what I’d say, and how I’d say it. Here’s hoping.

¹ Delo­ria Jr., Vine. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Man­i­festo. New York: Nor­man. 1988. p. 86.
² Ibid. pp.79 – 80.