Indianism

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This is a prelude to a future teaching course entitled “Conclusion to Anthropology” and an introduction to a research project on the “traditional cultures of American anthropologists, with comparative notes on Russian and West European anthropologists.”

My fieldwork in Europe demonstrated that Indianists actively use classic monographic studies of Native American tribes authored by late 19th century as well as later, “Boasian” anthropologists. There is some ethical tension between Indianists and anthropologists, for the former believe, with many contemporary Native Americans, that anthropologists tend to distort, simplify and objectify the cultures they describe, and to assume an authoritarian position over actual culture-bearers. Indiansits assert the living, practical value of native cultures, although this value may be different from the way Native Americans themselves perceive their cultures. Alternatively, European anthropologists try to deliver Indianists who enter anthropology departments from romantic notions about American Indians.

These initial findings open the gates for questioning the cultural foundations of anthropology and looking at the ebb and flow of romantic and positivist dispositions in American anthropology, from Henry R. Schoolcraft, Lewis H. Morgan and John W. Powell to contemporary feminists and cultural critics. Specifically I am interested in the roots of the present eclipse of the anthropological interest in Native American studies and in kinship studies as well as in the indifference of cultural anthropologists to human origins research and their distaste for the notion of humanity. There is a definitive connection between the post-war ascent of the U.S. to the status of a world power and the concomitant expansion of American anthropology from Indian reservations into the “global” world.