indigenous people / minorities

“Aboriginal knowledge is science”

Published on October 7, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, culture traditions, indigenous people / minorities, Northern America

10 aboriginal and four non-aboriginal graduate students from the University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) are working with First Nations elders, community leaders and educators to identify science content elements of aboriginal knowledge and determine the most culturally appropriate and effective ways of teaching and learning science, according to University paper The Ring:

Using case studies, field studies, surveys, informal interviews and ethnography (such as elder circles, songs and traditional stories) the graduate students are investigating topics as wide-ranging as how elders transmit ecological knowledge and wisdom, how science is taught through traditional storytelling, and how to use digital video as a learning tool for retaining and transferring aboriginal knowledge.

“The big, central questions here are what is science, and is aboriginal knowledge science? We’re saying it is science, and that every culture has its own science. Right now, there’s a complete blank—traditional knowledge is not only devalued, for most teachers it doesn’t exist”, Gloria Snively, associate professor of science, environmental and marine education, says.

>> read the whole story

UPDATE. Comment by Kerim Friedman:

How can we keep creationism out of our science classrooms if we simultaneously embrace “aboriginal science”? The answer is we can’t.

(…)

It is true that many things aborigines know through their traditional forms of knowledge have, in fact, been proven to coincide with scientific knowledge as well. But some have not. This alone shows that traditional forms of knowledge can never be coterminous with science.

(…)

The solution to the relative status of traditional knowledge compared to science is not to simply label knowledge as “science.” It is to find ways create space within which it can find legitimate expression in our society and be accorded a status other than “superstition.” It is also to better educate people about scientific knowledge and its limits, so that all citizens can better distinguish between good and bad science.

>> read Kerim’s post and the discussion on Savage Minds

New Research Study about Traditional Folk Knowledge related to Plants in Albania

Local taboos could save the seas

Ethnic hybridity within identity politics: Thesis on Being A Nobel Savage in Brazil

Published on September 29, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, indigenous people / minorities, journal articles / papers, Latin- and Central America, Native American, poverty

Interesting thesis in social anthropology by Knut Olav Krohn Lakså. The thesis has recently been published in the Digital Library at the University of Oslo

Knut Olav Krohn Lakså conducted fieldwork among the Pataxó Indians in Brazil. He wanted to see how indigenous groups use their ethnic identity as a political resource. He found many paradoxes: In order to be acknowledged as an Indian with certain rights, it is necessary to adapt to an enchanted romanticism of themselves as The Other in which they are portrayed as The Noble Savage, he writes:

For instance, at every meeting with IBAMA or FUNAI officials, the Pataxó were always careful to wear feathers, painting or other traditional outfits such as loincloth.

This performance hasn’t much with the Indians’ needs in common, he shows:

The Pataxó’s main problems are that they are poor, unemployed and stigmatized. (…) The Pataxó themselves are mainly concerned with everyday challenges. They want to feed their families. They want their children to grow up. They want a school and they want money. In short, they want to change their social position to achieve material goods — something quite the opposite of what the Western World wants from the Noble Savage.

>> download the whole thesis “Ethnic Hybridity Within Identity Politics. Being Indian and the Struggle for Land and Acknowledgement among the Pataxó in Bahia, Brazil (pdf, 3,4MB )

PS: A good illustration for “acting Nobel Savage” might be this website by Aboriginal Planet

Interesting thesis in social anthropology by Knut Olav Krohn Lakså. The thesis has recently been published in the Digital Library at the University of Oslo

Knut Olav Krohn Lakså conducted fieldwork among the Pataxó Indians in Brazil. He wanted to see…

On Savage Minds: Debate on the Construction of Indigenous Culture by Anthropologists

Published on September 19, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, ethics, history, indigenous people / minorities, Native American, Northern America, Us and Them, Visual Anthropology

Early visual anthropologists produced a form of salvage anthropology that uncoupled “traditional” society from any form of change, Patrick Harries (University of Cape Town), writes in an article on the the history of visual anthropology in South Africa. Although almost 100,000 workers from southern Mozambique were employed, not one photograph of a migrant worker appeared in anthropological monographs.

Kerim Friedman tells a similar story on Savage Minds. It’s about Edward S. Curtis’ huge collections of photographs, now digitalised by the Library of Congress.

Friedman quotes Pedro Ponce’s text on Curtis:

“In order to portray traditional customs and dress, Curtis — using techniques accepted by many anthropologists of his day — removed modern clothes and other signs of contemporary life from his pictures. A portrait of a Piegan lodge, for example, originally showed an alarm clock between two seated men. Curtis cut the clock out of the negative and included the retouched image in The North American Indian.”

In a comment, Nancy Leclerc writes about consequences for Indians today:

“Several anthropologists pointed out that the negative judgements of white settlers toward Aboriginals largely stemmed from their perception that members of the latter group were not living up to the ideals of the past, a past that was largely romanticised.”

>> read more on Savage Minds

Early visual anthropologists produced a form of salvage anthropology that uncoupled "traditional" society from any form of change, Patrick Harries (University of Cape Town), writes in an article on the the history of visual anthropology in South Africa. Although almost…

New issue of Pro Ethnologica: The Russian Speaking Minorities in Estonia and Latvia

Published on September 14, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, indigenous people / minorities, journal articles / papers, Us and Them

Pro Ethnologica is – as far as I know – the only anthropology journal that is published both on paper and is freely available on the web for all of us.

Their new volume is now online. The papers in their new volume were presented at a workshop in August 2005 on the Russian speaking minority in Estland and Latvia and deal among others about “How the Russians Turned into the Image of the “National Enemy” of the Estonians” on “Strategies of Identity Re-construction in Post-Soviet Estonia”, “Experience of Estonian-speaking Students from Fieldwork in Narva” and “Work as the Focus of Socialist Everyday Life”

>> to Pro Ethnologica 19: The Russian Speaking Minorities in Estonia and Latvia

Pro Ethnologica is - as far as I know - the only anthropology journal that is published both on paper and is freely available on the web for all of us.

Their new volume is now online. The papers in their…

American Ethnologist – New book reviews on Indian Resurgence in Brazil, Anthropology of Britain, Race and Transnationalism

Published on September 11, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, books, Europe, indigenous people / minorities, Latin- and Central America, migration, music, Native American, Northern America, Us and Them

The August reviews of the journal American Ethnologist are now online.

Among them we’ll find:

Mapping Yoruba Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communities. By: Kamari Maxine Clarke
Kamari Clarke is an Afro-Canadian who joins several African American anthropologists in examining how Africa and African heritage are understood by contemporary African American communities. Clarke exemplifies the best of 21st-century anthropology as she offers an insider’s sympathy without romanticism, step-back objectivity without arrogance. Clarke presents multisited research among “Yoruba” and Yoruba in South Carolina and Nigeria. >> continue

British Subjects: An Anthropology of Britain. Edited by Nigel Rapport
The articles address a wide range of topics, including the royal family (Anne Rowbottom), the London ballet (Helena Wulff), the postindustrial landscape of a former mining village (Andrew Dawson), British Quakers (Peter Collins), and Rapport’s own literarily inflected work on the worldview from a British village. The collection reflects a view of Britain as largely white, tranquil, and middle class >> continue

Racial Revolutions: Antiracism and Indian Resurgence in Brazil. By Jonathan W. Warren
Jonathan Warren examines the shift in which people who might once have claimed mixed-race status instead reconstruct themselves as “post-traditional” Indians. Simply because Warren explores qualitatively Brazil’s contemporary indigenous resurgence, Racial Revolutions is a must read. >> continue

Latino Crossings: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and Citizenship. By Nicholas De Genova and Anna Y. Ramos-Zayas
This book represents a unique collaboration between two anthropologists who did fieldwork separately in Chicago during the 1990s. >> continue

Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race. By Maureen Mahon
Right to Rock focuses on the Black Rock Coalition (BRC), founded in 1985 as a network of African American musicians “sick and tired of being sick and tired” from the frustration of racial segregation within the music industry. >> continue

>> all August 2005 book reviews

The August reviews of the journal American Ethnologist are now online.

Among them we'll find:

Mapping Yoruba Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communities. By: Kamari Maxine Clarke
Kamari Clarke is an Afro-Canadian who joins several African American anthropologists in…