Indigenous Anthropology (original) (raw)

1997, Dialectical Anthropology

Anthropologists in general believe that there is an unresolved "tension" or contradiction between being indigenous and being anthropologist. Long-term engagement in the anthropological community leaves one with the absolute confidence that this belief (though almost never explicitly stated) informs the general mood prevailing in the discipline and its departments and associations. For, anthropologists in general somewhat feel that being indigenous entails the danger of becoming subjective, biased or, simply, less scientific. With regard to Third World indigenous anthropologists in particular, being indigenous is considered not only a danger that must be avoided, but a flaw that must be “fixed” or an obstacle that must be overcome. As such, the anthropology reader’s evaluation of the “scientificity” and “anthropologicality” of the product of a Third World indigenous anthropologist is inevitably an evaluation in terms of: “did this indigenous anthropologist manage to ‘fix’ the flow and overcome the obstacle of being indigenous?”

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