19.2 Colonization and Anthropology

Colonization and Anthropology

Anthropology as a discipline grew up alongside European colonialism, and that timing wasn't a coincidence. Colonial governments funded research, shaped research questions, and used anthropological findings to manage the peoples they colonized. Understanding this history is essential for grasping why the field looks the way it does today and why Indigenous scholars have pushed so hard to change it.

Impact of Vine Deloria Jr.

Vine Deloria Jr. was a Standing Rock Sioux author, theologian, historian, and activist who became one of the most influential critics of how anthropology treated Native peoples. His 1969 book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto argued that anthropologists treated Native Americans as objects of study rather than as living people with their own voices and priorities. He pointed out that researchers would arrive on reservations, extract information for their careers, and leave without giving anything meaningful back to the communities they studied.

Deloria challenged the assumption that non-Native academics had the authority to speak on behalf of Native peoples. He pushed for Native Americans to take control of their own narratives and conduct their own research.

His impact on the field was substantial:

• He helped establish Native American studies as a recognized academic discipline, encouraging more Native scholars to enter academia and challenge dominant narratives.
• His critiques pushed anthropologists toward greater reflexivity, meaning they started examining their own assumptions, methods, and power dynamics when working with Indigenous communities.
• The ethical standards that now guide research with Indigenous peoples owe a significant debt to the questions Deloria raised.

Effects of "Othering" on Indigenous People

Othering is the process of defining a group as fundamentally different from, and often inferior to, one's own group. It creates a sharp line between "us" and "them," typically based on perceived cultural, racial, or ethnic differences.

In the United States, the dominant Euro-American society subjected Indigenous peoples to sustained othering. Native people were portrayed as "savages," "primitives," or "uncivilized," framed as obstacles standing in the way of progress and Manifest Destiny. These weren't just attitudes; they had concrete, devastating consequences:

• Land dispossession and forced assimilation. Othering provided the moral justification for seizing Indigenous lands and implementing policies like Indian boarding schools, where children were separated from their families and punished for speaking their own languages.
• Stereotyping in popular culture. Hollywood's "cowboys and Indians" tropes reduced complex nations and cultures to one-dimensional caricatures, reinforcing the idea that Indigenous peoples belonged to the past.
• Political and social marginalization. The reservation system, lack of political representation, and exclusion from mainstream institutions all followed from treating Indigenous peoples as fundamentally "other."
• Internalized oppression. Generations of discrimination and cultural erasure led many Indigenous people to internalize negative views of their own identities and traditions.
• Cultural imperialism. Dominant culture was imposed on Indigenous communities, eroding traditional practices, spiritual beliefs, and social structures.

Anthropologists as Colonial Cultural Experts

Anthropologists frequently served as intermediaries between colonial powers and Indigenous peoples. They provided colonial administrators with cultural knowledge, advised on governance strategies, and helped develop policies aimed at assimilation or control.

This knowledge was put to direct use in colonial domination:

• Evolutionary theories ranked societies on a scale from "primitive" to "civilized," giving intellectual cover to the idea that colonizers had a right, even a duty, to "civilize" Indigenous peoples.
• Ethnographic descriptions of Indigenous social structures, land use, and resource practices were used to develop strategies for governance and resource extraction. For example, detailed knowledge of land tenure systems helped colonial authorities implement land allotment policies that broke up communal holdings.

Anthropologists also documented Indigenous languages, traditions, and material culture that were under threat from colonial policies. This preservation work has real value, but it came with a serious problem: documentation was often done without the full consent or meaningful participation of the communities involved. The knowledge was recorded on the researcher's terms, stored in outside institutions, and sometimes used in ways communities never agreed to.

Anthropology's Role in Colonialism vs. Decolonization

The discipline emerged during the height of European colonial expansion, and that context shaped its early development in direct ways:

• Early anthropologists often worked for colonial governments or received funding from colonial institutions (the British Empire and French colonial administration, for example).
• Foundational theories like social Darwinism and cultural evolutionism reflected and reinforced colonial ideologies of racial and cultural hierarchy.

Several specific practices illustrate how anthropology supported colonialism:

• Salvage ethnography aimed to document "vanishing" cultures before they supposedly disappeared under colonial rule. While it preserved valuable records, the underlying assumption was that Indigenous cultures were doomed, which naturalized colonial destruction.
• Applied anthropology put cultural knowledge to work helping colonial governments manage Indigenous populations through strategies like indirect rule and assimilation policies.
• Museum collections displayed Indigenous cultural artifacts as curiosities or trophies, removed from their original context and meaning.

The field has since developed practices aimed at decolonization:

1. Reflexivity: Researchers examine their own positionality, biases, and the power dynamics embedded in their work.
2. Collaboration: Indigenous communities are treated as partners and co-producers of knowledge, not passive subjects.
3. Indigenous methodologies: Research methods grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing are recognized as legitimate and valuable.
4. Repatriation: Cultural artifacts and ancestral remains are returned to their communities of origin. In the U.S., the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA, 1990) formalized this process.
5. Advocacy: Anthropological knowledge is used to support Indigenous rights and self-determination rather than to manage or control Indigenous peoples.

Anthropological Perspectives and Postcolonial Approaches

A few key concepts frame how anthropologists think about colonialism and its aftermath:

• Cultural relativism is the principle of understanding a culture on its own terms, without imposing outside value judgments. It developed partly as a corrective to the evolutionary ranking of cultures that had supported colonialism.
• Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view your own culture as superior and to judge other cultures by its standards. Recognizing ethnocentrism is the first step toward avoiding it in research.
• Postcolonialism is a theoretical approach that critically examines the cultural, political, and economic legacies of colonialism. It asks how colonial power structures persist even after formal colonial rule has ended.
• Subaltern studies focuses on the perspectives and experiences of marginalized groups in postcolonial societies. The term "subaltern" refers to people who are excluded from dominant power structures, and this approach insists on centering their voices rather than those of elites or colonizers.