Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Fall 2001
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 21, No. 4, Fall 2001, pp. 357.
Abstract
Multicultural perspectives in American anthropology are not new but have been present since its inception. Michaelsen examines the origins of North American anthropology as a scholarly discipline in the early to mid-nineteenth century and the participation in it of American Indian writers and scholars. This interesting circuit through the history of anthropology reviews much current research along the way. Rather than offering a final summary of the points of each chapter in order to make a concluding case for the "limits of multiculturalism," Michaelsen uses his first chapter to lay the theoretical groundwork for his arguments and then presents the remainder of the book as an in-depth discussion of ideas. Michaelsen argues that the limits of modern multiculturalism are exactly the same as traditional anthropology's: it too is ultimately based on the power politics of diminution and exclusion.
Historical scholars are paired or grouped within chapters in order to compare and contrast Native and Western viewpoints effectively. The perspectives of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and his Chippewa wife Jane Johnston Schoolcraft are examined alongside those of Tuscarora historian David Cusick. The writings of William Apess are compared with those of frontier romance writer James Fenimore Cooper in terms of race and the symbolism of skin color. The concept of ethnic identity is discussed through the persons of Lewis Henry Morgan and Ely Samuel Parker and the example of Iroquois culture and its documentation. George Copway, Peter Jones, and Maungwudaus, educated as Ojibway Methodist ministers each of whom wrote independently about traditional Ojibway culture, are used to point out that "auto-ethnographers" disagree with one another just as do "Anglo observer-participants." Relations between history and early anthropology are examined in the writings of Cherokee journalist John Rollin Ridge and in commentaries on cranial studies such as those published by early physical anthropologist Samuel Morton. Ridge's novel The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta is then compared to William Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico in terms of a moral meditation on the place of murder in colonial history. Michaelsen ends his book with considerable respect for the pioneering research methods of Central American archaeologists John Lloyd Stephens and Benjamin Moore Norman.
Overall, the volume makes many interesting and sometimes quite perceptive observations on multicultural viewpoints and politics as well as on the early foundations of anthropology as a profession. One odd aspect, however, is its rather cynical forecast of the end of professional anthropology and of the discipline's own sense of scholarly identity.
Comments
Copyright 2001 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln