Indigenous Anthropology - Decolonizing Anthropology

Indigenous Anthropology ANTH 2301 Decolonizing Anthropology A movement to "decolonize anthropology" got underway in the 1970s. This movement aims to speak out against anthropological interpretations and products that reinforce colonialism and to highlight the role that anthropology plays in gathering and assuming control of Native knowledge and culture. An area of anthropological practice that has drawn a lot of criticism is the propensity to view Native Americans only as research subjects, with no recognition of their agency or rights—such as the right to keep their ancestral sites safe or to govern their knowledge, legends, and even place names. In response to these concerns, academics started creating research procedures as part of the "decolonizing" movement. People from a variety of backgrounds are being accepted into the profession, and the value of the Indigenous perspective is starting to be acknowledged. The Southwest Oregon Research Project (SWORP) was founded in the 1990s with the goal of gathering and returning knowledge gathered by anthropologists and other researchers to the relevant parties. George Wasson of the Coquille Indian Tribe of Oregon led the start of the SWORP project. Wasson collaborated with the administrations of the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Oregon to duplicate and gather records related to over sixty tribes in western Oregon, then he returned the resulting collection to the university archives. In the end, three flights to Washington, DC were organised by the group to gather over 200,000 pages of federal and anthropological papers from the National Archives and Records Administration and the National Anthropological Archives. After then, the University of Oregon Special materials housed and arranged the materials. Copies of these records were distributed to around seventeen tribes in Oregon and the surrounding area between 1995 and 2001. By redistributing Indigenous knowledge to tribal peoples, this endeavour helped to decolonize historical anthropology. Individuals who have received the SWORP collections are at liberty to utilise the information that their forefathers gathered over a century, from the 1850s to 1950s, and to expand upon this knowledge through other initiatives aimed at reviving tribal culture. In an example of a successful restoration, methods for making the Clackamas Chinook's traditional boats were investigated in an attempt to revive the canoe's manufacture and use in the Northwest. Researchers used anthropologist Philip Drucker's SWORP collection of information, which included descriptions of traditional building techniques and designs. On the Northwest Coast, the art of building traditional canoes has seen a noticeable revival since the 1990s. Thousands of tribal members and hundreds of towns participate in an annual canoe trip organised by tribal nations along the Northwest Coast. Cultural knowledge has been conserved and returned, which has contributed to these advancements. Tribal academics have expressed concern that a large number of ethnographic and anthropological field notes are biassed outcomes of research techniques, reflecting anthropologists' attempts to validate preconceived notions about tribal peoples, making them unreliable sources. The opponents correctly point out that certain anthropologists could have modified their findings to conform to preconceived assumptions. As a result, tribal peoples have been cautious to build legitimate restoration initiatives for language and culture by comparing anthropologists' field notes with elder knowledge rather than depending just on them to rebuild traditional practices. In Native tribes, there is substantial debate about the very presence of field notes. Since Indigenous stories were typically oral traditions, some Indigenous people have taken issue with the process of recording them. The validity of any field notes gathered from peoples who rely on oral history is called into doubt by the same issue. Because they consider ethnographic notes to be biassed materials, some Indigenous scholars hence refuse to utilise any of them. On the other hand, another viewpoint is that a large number of these field notes came from tribal culture experts who voluntarily contributed their knowledge and stories to be gathered. Rather than being obliging participants who were oblivious of the results of their work with anthropologists, many of these cultural experts were elders in their communities who want to preserve their language and culture. From this vantage point, all scholars of today should honour these seniors' labour and contributions since they understood what they were doing and were aware that they may be the only people alive who know specific cultural customs or languages.