Review of Indians and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria, Jr. and the Critique of Anthropology Edited by Thomas Biolsi and Larry J. Zimmerman

Authors

Donald D. Stull, University of Kansas

Date of this Version

Winter 1999

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter 1999, pp. 63-64.

Comments

Copyright 1999 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Abstract

North American anthropology can be divided into two ages: BD and AD-Before and After Deloria. In 1969 cultural anthropology in the United States was shaken by Vine Deloria's witty diatribe, Custer Died for Your Sins. Twenty years later, cultural anthropologist Tom Biolsi and archaeologist Larry Zimmerman organized a symposium on the subsequent relationship between anthropologists and American Indians. Indians and Anthropologists assembles several of these papers and some new ones in what will certainly be an often-cited collection.

The book's introduction reviews "What's Changed, What Hasn't" since Deloria fired his shot across anthropology's bow in Custer's chapter on "Anthropologists and Other Friends." It closes with Deloria's conclusion on "Anthros, Indians, and Planetary Reality." In between, ten chapters explore Deloria's critique of anthropology, archaeology and American Indians, and "the connections between ethnography and colonial discourses and modes of domination." Six contributors are cultural anthropologists, two archaeologists, one a historian, and one an Indian educatorthree are American Indians.

North American anthropology was born among the Iroquois and the Zuni, and until the 1960s it was hard to find an anthropologist who had not worked among American Indians. This bond explains why the discipline was so shaken by Deloria's attack. In "Growing up on Deloria," Elizabeth Grobsmith speaks for anthropologists who grew to professional maturity in the immediate aftermath of Custer. Eloquently examining Deloria's decidedly mixed legacy for anthropology, Grobsmith alone among the contributors acknowledges the substantial contributions of applied anthropology to Indian people.

Nothing has strained recent Indian-anthropologist relations more than repatriation and reburial. Archaeologists and anthropologists themselves are often bitterly at odds over these matters. Randy McGuire does a masterful job of explaining how archaeologists came to believe that "all the real Indians are dead" and belonged to them. Larry Zimmerman's review of anthropology and the reburial issue shows how we got into this mess and suggests principles for future archaeological investigations.