Category: Article

Climate Emergency and Spiritual Ecology

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“On this side, where our world stands now, we each live our separate lives, isolated within our individual, anxious self. On the other side, we feel the patterns of interrelationship that support and nourish us, and can commune together as a single living community; we feel the mystery and magic of a world full of sacred meaning and purpose. It is only when we stand on this other shore that we can hope to heal our world, to help it to become free of this nightmare of materialism that is destroying its fragile and magical beauty. Only then can we return to our ancient heritage as guardians of the Earth” (Vaughn-Lee 2013: iii).

Sorry for the long hiatus, my passion for anthropology dwindled a bit during these long COVID months. I think we’ve all lost parts of ourselves during this time, no? I am now in the period of remembering who I am and re-imagining my future.

Of course, COVID isn’t far from the mind when thinking about the future, nor is climate change – now officially recognized as a climate emergency. I have just begun the essay anthology Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth, written in 2013 but more poignant now than ever. I read it with a sadness and a fear in my heart; what will our future look like? How will generations to come view the earth, both literally, with their eyes, and figuratively, with their hearts? 

Where do you stand with your relationship to the earth? What steps are you taking to mend the fissures between you and nature? This past year–despite COVID–has been great for me in regaining a relationship with my childhood landscapes. I moved back in with my parents and have been exploring the woods, field, and lake on their land. I have learned the names of many plants, found which ones are edible, and I have found another passion that has taken up much of my time this past year: natural dye. In many ways, I feel like coming back to Minnesota and being forced to stay in place was good for me.

My thirst for travel and experience didn’t go away, however, and I recently traveled to the island of Tahiti to meet with some friends from my fieldwork days. I spent a month and a half there not as an anthropologist but merely another tourist (albeit a tourist that stayed with a local family and not in hotels). I brought some yarn and t-shirts along with me and asked Tatie Tahia, the matriarch of the household, which plants could be used for dye. It was refreshing to connect once again to another culture’s traditions and remember how much I love hearing stories about the past and how we can bring these stories into the future. Listening to and working with the past will be vital in the process of imagining a sustainable nature-oriented future.

References:

Vaughn-Lee, Llewellyn. 2013. Introduction. In Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth (pp. i-iv). Point Reyes, CA: The Golden Sufi Center.

Kimchi and Using Non-Academic Sources

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“Anytime I go over to Hanme’s [grandmother’s] house for a visit, our conversations almost always circle back to the same place: how to make kimchi. My aunt will come by and add her own two cents. Hanme’s Zainichi [foreign Korean living in Japan] friend will zip over on her scooter to add some notes to the kimchi think-tank. Of course, we all already know how to make kimchi: this is something else. It’s like an agreement, or maybe a special handshake, in a secret Zainichi club. We are agreeing that I know, that you know, that we all know how to make good kimchi. It’s a modern-day version of passing on knowledge through oral teachings–this time with a little local gossip on the side. Naming the best ingredients to use, the right amount of shrimp paste, which shop sells the best chile powder–they are all belted out like words of affirmation that reminds us of who we are and where we come from” (Laflamme 2021: 87).

Monica Laflamme writes in Taproot magazine about her personal journey rediscovering her connection to ancestors and culture through Japanese and Korean traditional foods. While this source is undoubtedly non-academic, I couldn’t help but starring the above quote and saving it in my Annotated Bibliography of Salient Texts (or ABST — read about this here). The astute observation of this secret conversational code is exactly what cultures are made up of, and if this had been written in an academic journal or book it would have been eaten up by theoretical discussions of speech patterns, conversation, and culture. Here, it is laid bare and written about as a self-reflection and how it embeds one within a community. The great thing about reading magazines or other popular and non-academic sources it that you can find primary cultural material that doesn’t hide behind jargon and rhetoric. I am all about including writings such as Laflamme’s as sources in my own writing, whether it’s academic or not.

The only thing I would have to say, or add, to Laflamme’s observation is that this probably isn’t only a modern day version of passing on knowledge, but one that also extends into the past. Conversations like these have likely been taking place for centuries, it is just some of the details that have changed.

References:

Laflamme, M. Jan, 2021. “Finding My Place through Traditional Foodways.” Taproot Magazine 43, pp. 84-87. Portland, ME: Taproot Media, LLC.

Climate Change Policies and Wealth Redistribution

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“Which is precisely why, when climate change deniers claim that global warming is a plot to redistribute wealth, it’s not (only) because they are paranoid. It’s also because they are paying attention” (Klein 2014: 93).

In the chapter “Hot Money” of her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Klein lays out the necessity of changing the way we measure a country’s success (currently, GDP) and reducing consumption (a component used to measure GDP) in the wealthiest of countries in order to reduce emissions. “Consuming less, however, means changing how much energy we actually use: how often we drive, how often we fly, whether our food has to be flown to get to us, whether the goods we buy are built to last or to be replaced in two years, how large our homes are” (Klein 2014: 90). But she points out that this shouldn’t be the sole responsibility of the consumer (“urbanites who like going to farmers’ markets on Saturday afternoons and wearing up-cycled clothing” (Klein 2014: 91)), but that there need to be policies in place that support fair low-carbon alternatives to our current high-carbon activities. And this doesn’t mean drive an electric car, this means take the bus or bike instead.

She points out that this is the top most well-off 20% of our society who need to be making these changes, as they are the ones who emit the most carbon. “We would need to return to a lifestyle similar to the one we had in the 1970’s,” she writes, showing that it is not a complete backwards jump into the Stone Age as some climate change deniers argue.

The concept of wealth redistribution has been trending recently (at least in my mind and world!). For a comprehensive look at wealth and income inequality in the U.S., take a look at the Pew Research Centers’s data. If you don’t have time to look, some of the headers for this page are: “The wealth divide among upper-income families and middle- and lower-income families is sharp and rising,” “The richest are getting richer faster,” and “Income inequality in the U.S has increased since 1980 and is greater than in peer countries.”

Much of Klein’s book outlines reasons why today’s economic system is harming the natural world and causing climate change (hence the name Capitalism vs. the Climate). Even though the book is 7 years old at this point, many of the arguments are still relevant and I highly suggest reading it if you have any interest in the existential threat that is climate change (or even if you don’t, it’s a good book to read no matter your interests).

References:

Horowitz, J.M., Igielnik, R., and Kochhar, R. 9 Jan., 2020. “Trends in income and wealth inequality.” Pew Research Center.
Klein, Naomi. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Microplastic Textile Pollution

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“Throw a polyester sweater in the washing machine and it’ll come out nice and clean, but also not quite its whole self. As it rinses, millions of synthetic fibers will shake loose and wash out with the waste water, which then flows to a treatment plant. Each year, a single facility might pump 21 billion of these microfibers out to sea, where they swirl in currents, settle in sediments, and end up as fish food, with untold ecological consequences” (Simon 2021).

Our relationship with clothing has gone awry. Why would we clothe ourselves in plastics when we could have cotton, wool, hemp, linen, or other natural fibers? According to Rebecca Burgess and Courtney White, two fashion activists, polyester is found in 60% of today’s clothing, alongside other synthetics like rayon and nylon (Burgess & White 2019). Our clothes are even dyed with oil-based materials such as azo dyes which are known to be carcinogenic. Wastewater runoff from dye factories pollutes watersheds. There is a slew of problems linked to textile manufacturing, only one of which is the amount of microplastics that end up in the ocean after washing machine cycles.

“Now, what to do about this omnipresent pollutant? It’s not likely that humanity will instantly phase out clothing made of synthetic material. But we as consumers can demand that brands abandon fast fashion—cheaply made synthetic clothing that easily shreds into microfibers. Governments can also legislate that washing machine manufacturers add fiber-trapping filters to their products” (Simon 2021). Burgess suggests moving away from synthetic clothes to those that adhere to the soil-to-soil model, a.k.a, all natural materias that can be composted after use. Even clothes that are branded as green because they are made from recycled synthetics pose a problem. In a For the Wild conversation between Ayana Young and Rebecca Burgess, Young brings up this issue: “I’d like to get back to the greenwashing of fashion, and over the past couple of decades the ecological impacts of industrialization and globalization have become glaringly clear. Certainly in the past decade the fashion industry has been confronted by its own impacts, yet we’ve not seen any scaling down, only new implementations of so-called ‘techno-fixes’ and ‘green solutions’ in order to maintain profit. And I’m thinking about the burgeoning sector of so-called ‘green fashion’ through the refashioning of our plastic waste into wearable fabrics. And while there’s certainly some form of ingenuity and trying to address our waste problem, these quick fixes also perpetuate the ubiquity of plastic” (Young 2020). Burgess responds by saying that there is no need for new materials within the textile industry, and in fact, natural materials such as wool and cotton are going underused because of the proliferation of synthetics.

Burgess says that one step is halving our consumption and doubling our use time of clothing. If you’re buying synthetics (it’s hard not to, especially for certain items like jackets or shoes), go for quality over quantity. Another step: wash your clothes less. Ultimately, the goal is to move away from synthetics and back to locally produced natural materials, a change that necessitates massive infrastructure changes, but that also starts with consumer demand.

References:

Burgess, Rebecca & White, Courtney. 2019. Fibershed: Growing a Movement of Farmers, Fashion Activists, and Makers for a New Textile Economy. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing.
Simon, M. (2021, Jan. 12). The Arctic Ocean Is Teaming With Microfibers From Clothes. Wired. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/the-arctic-ocean-is-teeming-with-microfibers-from-clothes/?utm_source=onsite-share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=wired.
Young, A. (Director). (2020, Sep. 16). Rebecca Burgess on Soil to Soil Fiber Systems. [Audio Podcast]. Retrieved from https://forthewild.world/listen/rebecca-burgess-on-soil-to-soil-fiber-systems-200.

Geertz’s got me thinking about 2021…

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“Rather like religion, nationalism has a bad name in the modern world, and, rather like religion, it more or less deserves it. Between them (and sometimes in combination) religious bigotry and nationalist hatred have probably brought more havoc upon humanity than any two forces in history, and doubtless will bring a great deal more. Yet also rather like religion, nationalism has been a driving force in some of the most creative changes in history, and doubtless will be so again in many yet to come. It would seem, then, well to spend less time decrying it–which is a little like cursing the winds–and more in trying to figure out why it takes the forms it does and how it might be prevented from tearing apart even as it creates the societies in which it arises, and beyond that the whole fabric of modern civilization” (Geertz 1973b: 253-4).

It’s always interesting to read something written in and about another time that seems to so astutely address a process happening now. So it went when I started reading Geertz’s essays on ideology and nationalism. In references to ideology and essentialism (see below of definitions) I couldn’t help but be reminded of Trumpism and those that stormed the capitol this past week. Geertz may have been writing about newly independent nations such as Indonesia and Morocco back in the mid 1900’s, but his writings apply to the extremist ideologies of white supremacists that we have seen grow in the past years. Below are some quotes, I’ll let you make your own connections however you see fit. But first, two (basic) definitions:

Essentialism: political and ideological standpoint that values tradition and the past.

Epochalism: political and ideological standpoint that values modernity and global interconnections.

“Science names the structure of situations in such a way that the attitude contained toward them is one of disinterestedness. Its style is restrained, spare, resolutely analytic: by shunning the semantic devices that most effectively formulate moral sentiment, it seeks to maximize intellectual clarity. But ideology names the structure of situations in such a way that the attitude contained toward them is one of commitment. Its style is ornate, vivid, deliberately suggestive: by objectifying moral sentiment through the same devices that science shuns, it seeks to motivate action. Both are concerned with the definition of a problematic situation and are responses to a felt lack of needed information” (Geertz 1973a: 230-31).

“Things do not merely seem jumbled–they are jumbled, and it will take more than theory to unjumble them. It will take administrative skill, technical knowledge, personal courage and resolution, endless patience and tolerance, enormous self-sacrifice, a virtually incorruptible public conscience, and a very great deal of sheer (and unlikely) good luck in the most material sense of the word. Ideological formulation, no matter how elegant, can substitute for none of these elements; and, in fact, in their absence, it degenerates, as it has in Indonesia, into a smokescreen for failure, a diversion to stave off despair, a mask to conceal reality rather than a portrait to reveal it” (Geertz 1973a: 228-9).

“As in medicine the severity of surface symptoms and the severity of underlying pathology are not always in close correlation, so in sociology the drama of public events and the magnitude of structural change are not always in precise accord. Some of the greatest revolutions occur in the dark” (Geertz 1973b: 238).

“To see one’s country as the product of ‘the processes by which it developed to its given state,’ or, alternatively, to see it as the ground of ‘the future course of events,’ is, in short, to see it rather differently. But, more than that, it is to look in rather different places to see it: to parents, to traditional authority figures, to custom and legend; or to secular intellectuals, to the oncoming generation, to ‘current events,’ and the mass media. Fundamentally, the tension between essentialist and epochalist strains in new state nationalism is not a tension between intellectual passions but between social institutions charged with discordant cultural meanings” (Geertz 1973b: 252).

References:

Geertz, C. 1973a [1964]. Ideology As a Cultural System. In The Interpretation of Cultures (pp. 193-233). New York, NY: Basic Books.
Geertz, C. 1973b [1964]. After the Revolution: The Fate of Nationalism in the New States. In The Interpretation of Cultures (pp. 235-254). New York, NY: Basic Books.

Conservation in the Himalayas, an ABST example

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I keep a running annotated list of books and articles that I read, which I call my Annotated Bibliography of Salient Texts, or ABST. Sometimes, in the margins of my books, I’ll scribble these four letters to remind myself to add this quote to the annotation for this book. I have over 150 ABST entries to date, and am always adding more. I wanted to give you an example of what an entry looks like, so I’ll share what I wrote about the article “Keep Out… Come Again,” in Earth Island Journal‘s Winter 2021 publication.

Why do I keep this ABST? Although I am no longer in school, I like to have quick access to books that I’ve read and their most profound moments. I’m not sure if I’ll ever use this information, but what can I say, I’m highly attached to my books and the knowledge they bring me. I like to know that this information is easily accessible just in case I need it someday. Futhermore, writing an ABST entry is a way for me to interact with the text on another level. I get to practice my writing and my critical thinking; it is a personal methodology I use in order to deepen my understanding of what I read. Many of my posts on this blog are just edited versions of my ABST entries.

So here it is, my ABST entry for “Keep Out… Come Again.” Note that this entry is a medium length entry. Entries for books can be 3-10 pages of notes and quotes from the text. Just a few notation notes: normally on this blog I like to center quotes from the text, so I put them in bold, however in my ABST I underline all quotes and put in bold the most salient findings of the text. I also put personal thoughts in brackets [like this].

Amron, Yardain. 2021. Keep Out… Come Again: The Underbelly of American-Styled Conservation in the Indian Himalayas. Earth Island Journal 35 (4), pp. 49-53.

Discussion of Western top-down conservation practices brought to the Himalayas and how they affect local communities. The park focused on is the Great Himalayan National Park or GHNP in the Tirthan Valley. “In the two decades since it was formed, the park has displaced over 300 people from their land, disrupted the traditional livelihoods of several thousand more, and forced yet more into dependence on a risky (eco)tourism industry run in large part by outside ‘experts.’ In many ways, the GNHP is a poster child of how the American national park model — conceived at Yellowstone and exported to the Global South by a transnational nexus of state and nonstate actors, continues to ignore the sociopolitical and cultural realities of a place” (50). The mountainous areas in and around the park were traditionally used for grazing sheep and goats, as well as medicinal herb collection. American funded research claims that the presence of herders in the area harms the biodiversity, but local research from the Centre for Pastoralism claims the opposite, and say that these grazing practices were necessary for the maintenance of herb biodiversity in the area. 

Has eco-tourism actually helped the region? “Eco-development, of course, is the current cool idea for making exclusionary conservation acceptable” (51-2). The park was named a UNESCO world heritage site despite protests from locals.  An international nonprofit called Friends of the GNHP wrote the application for UNESCO. Organizations and the government claimed the new status would raise revenue for locals in the eco-tourism industry, “but on the whole, locals are losing opportunities to outside entrepreneurs who come with deeper pockets, digital marketing savvy, and already established networks of potential clientele” (52). [Check out book: Kullu: The Valley of the Gods]. Families are stuck with one of the only livelihood options being to serve tourists in the accommodation business, as their former livelihoods have become inaccessible. “Many youths are so ashamed to work as servants on their own land that they’re fleeing the valley altogether” (52). 

Governments and western organizations/ideals are also making these livelihood options difficult for locals. Amron calls a romanticized outsider vision of the area, “a consultant’s fantasy” (53), because “rather than provide support to help locals become owners in the tourism industry, the government and World Bank offered them tour guide, portering and cooking training” (53). This funding doesn’t help with development, but pressures locals to become servants to first world, western, white, visitors. [Reminds me of quote from Naomi Klein in The Battle for Paradise: “At the core of this battle is a very simple question: Who is Puerto Rico for? Is it for Puerto Ricans, or is it for outsiders?”]

(other )References:
Klein, Naomi. 2018. The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists. Haymarket Books.
Shabab, Dilram. 2019. Kullu: Valley of the Gods. Hay House India.

Living and Enmeshed Societies

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“The processes that I have explored in this article, with Iraqw culture and society as my vantage point, may, I suggest, indicate that a certain not uncommon way of representing so-called ‘traditional’ or ‘tribal’ societies ought to be adjusted. These societies are not, and have never been, simply the passive victims of external modern forces ‘having an impact’ on them in more or less predictable ways. We are talking about living societies that consist of living and creative human beings, and which, like all societies, have mechanisms and procedures for coping with change in a manner which ensures cultural continuity” (Rekdal 1996: 382).

Thoughts on globalization, tradition, and modernity in Rekdal’s article on the Iraqw’s cultural ties to “Money, Milk, and Sorghum Beer.” How many times do we anthropologists have to remind ourselves that cultures are malleable? How many times do we anthropologists have to remind ourselves that everybody has agency? That being said, in cases where we anthropologists go out of their way to say that people are the makers of their own culture, we must also not forget the power dynamics at play that actually do move people against their will, or bind them to situations they cannot escape. These powers could be colonial, imperialist, oppressive forces, or even just acts of nature such as unforeseen natural disasters. Through small acts of resistance against these powers-that-be, culture is shaped, but that means that without these forces the culture afflicted would undoubtedly have found itself on a different path. We are all enmeshed in complex webs of interaction and while some communities may have coping strategies for change that “ensures cultural continuity,” these cultures are never isolated, and therefore they are not completely in charge of how their culture takes form. My conclusion for almost everything: humans are damn complicated.

References:
Rekdal, O.B. 1996. Money, Milk, and Sorghum Beer: Change and Continuity Among the Iraqw of Tanzania. Africa 66 (3), 367-385.

The Prostitution of Hawai’i and Regenerative Tourism

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“Just five hours away by plane from California, Hawai’i is a thousand light years away in fantasy. Mostly a state of mind, Hawai’i is the image of escape from the rawness and violence of daily American life” (Trask 1999: 136)

Haunani-Kay Trask’s essay, “‘Lovely Hula Hands:’ Corporate Tourism and the Prostitution of Hawaiian Culture” gives me, as a traveler, a lot to think about. Hawai’i and Hawaiian culture, Trask writes, has become a prostitute ruled by it’s pimp, the United States.

“Prostitution in this context refers to the entire institution that defines a woman (and by extension the female) as an object of degraded and victimized sexual value for use and exchange through the medium of money. The prostitute is a woman who sells her sexual capacities and is seen, thereby, to possess and reproduce them at will, that is, by her very ‘nature.’ The prostitute and the institution that creates and maintains her are, of course, of patriarchal origin. The pimp is the conduit of exchange, managing the commodity that is the prostitute while acting as the guard at the entry and exit gates, making sure the prostitute behaves as a prostitute by fulfilling her sexual-economic functions. The victims participate in their victimization with enormous ranges of feeling, from resistance to complicity, but the force and continuity of the institution are shaped by men” (Trask 1999: 140).

I too have been a tourist in Hawai’i. I like to think of my traveling a type tourism informed by cultural exchange. I lived with a couple during my time on the island, a Hawaiian woman and Filipino woman, working on their farm as part of a work exchange. However, despite my own concepts of responsible tourism and trying to mitigate any unintentional harm, the power dynamics of haole and Native Hawaiian persist. The fact is, that tourism is inundating Hawai’i, and while I was not staying at an expensive resort, I too had fallen into the mindset of Hawai’i as paradise, place to relax, gentle crashing waves and happy music.

The question I ask now is will tourism in Hawai’i ever be morally acceptable, and what steps need to be taken to get to that point? A new tourism concept has surfaced recently, called regenerative tourism. Going one step further than sustainable tourism – which basically just aims to not cause harm to the host country and people – regenerative tourism aims to give back to the countries and communities that foreigners visit. Read about regenerative tourism in this New York Times Article by Elaine Glusac, or visit Regenerative Travel’s website. Tourist companies that practice regenerative tourism pledge to be integral parts of local communities, and tourists are able to use the power of money to help bolster communities while getting authentic tourist experiences.

Of course, there is more to be done than simply fixing the method of tourism. Trask calls for sovereignty and the right to self-determination for Native Hawaiians. Until Western culture, ideals, and money stop appropriating Hawaiian land, culture, language, and values for use in Western fantasies, tourism in these islands has a shadow of immorality, no matter how you do it. Trask writes, “The point, of course, is that everything in Hawai’i can be yours, that is, you the tourists’, the non-Natives’, the visitors’. The place, the people, the culture, even our identity as a ‘Native’ people is for sale” (Trask 1999: 144). The message Trask sends out in her essay is that the US, Japan, and all other non-Native settlers must give back what they have taken, prostituted, and distorted before tourism can continue in an ethical manner.

“If you are thinking of visiting my homeland, please do not. We do not want or need any more tourists, and we certainly do not like them. If you want to help our cause, pass this message on to your friends” (Trask 1999: 146).

References:
Glusac, E. 2020, Aug 27. “Move Over, Sustainable Travel. Regenerative Travel Has Arrived.” New York Times. https://nyti.ms/2D2nuSG
Trask, H. 1993 [1999]. “Lovely Hula Hands:” Corporate Tourism and the Prostitution of Hawaiian Culture. In From a Native Daughter: Colonialsim and Sovereignty in Hawai’i pp. 136-147. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.

Fisherwomen of the Comoros

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“Fishing is an important social activity which facilitates the sharing of knowledge and experiences, and reinforces women’s collective bond and connection to the sea. Fishing is part of their cultural identity and their role within communities…. To take away their fishery altogether would be a great loss of knowledge, history, culture, and future potential. Thus a balance must be sought between ensuring cultural and livelihood rights, and improving marine conservation” (Hauzer & Murray 2013: 34).

If you were to take every anthropological account related to fishing, the majority would focus on men. It may be true that in many cultures, men have dominated the world of fishing both historically and in modern times. But this is not true worldwide and in cases like the Haenyo or Ama pearl divers in Korea and Japan, respectively, as well as these women-run fishing collectives in the Comoros, women lead and manage important biological and cultural fisheries. For a close look at the importance of women’s participation in fisheries for food security, the article quoted above, Hauzer and Murray’s (2013) “The Fisherwoman of Ngazidja Island: Fisheries Livelihoods, impacts and implications,” is a good read.

References:
Hauzer, M. and Murray, G. 2013. The Fisherwomen of Ngazidja Island, Comoros: Fisheries Livelihoods, impacts and implications for management. Fisheries Research 140, 28-35

Unsettling Anthropology

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“Where might we find Mino-bimaadiziwin, the Good Life, in the midst of chicken nuggets, fries, a text message, and a large pop that just slid around on the tray and spilled sticky liquid on the floor? In our existence of contemporary choices, convenience, and complications, it is not always easy to maintain and continue Anishinaabe knowledge and traditions” (Grover 2017: 72).

What do you think when you read this quote? Depending on what point of view you’re coming from, you might contemplate it differently. Oftentimes, anthropologists and journalists from western countries are too quick to market this as a sign of a disappearing culture. They are reaching for what I call a sort of appropriated nostalgia for a time that wasn’t even their own but that they believe Native cultures should still occupy. Modern day amenities in this way are seen to contradict tradition, as if the two cannot exist in the same time frame.

There is a huge problem with this mindset. Not only does it freeze cultures in an imaginary and romanticized past, but it also assists in the agenda of disappearing Native cultures from the contemporary world. Tuck and Yang (2012) state this as such, “Everything within a settler colonial society strains to destroy or assimilate the Native in order to disappear them from the land – this is how a society can have multiple simultaneous and conflicting messages about Indigenous peoples, such as all Indians are dead, located in faraway reservations, that contemporary Indigenous people are less indigenous than prior generations, and that all Americans are a ‘little bit Indian’” (pg. 9).

This, of course, is not where Grover, an Ojibwe woman from Minnesota, was going with this paragraph in her book Onigamiising. Her book is full of short essays on contemporary, every day lives of Anishinaabeg. She explains,

“I believe that we live in Mino-bimaadiziwin in ways similar to those of our ancestors: in everyday lives that are given to us by the Creator. The beginning of each day is an unopened gift, and as the day goes by, we acknowledge that by doing our best to live the values that have been passed down to use for generations: gratitude, modesty, generosity, and a consideration for others and the world around us. Living a good life is our gift back to the Creator; our daily contributions, big and small (this would include mopping up spilled pop), continue the tradition of Mino-bimaadziwin” (pgs. 72-73).

For western anthropologists (and journalists as well): how can we stop defining others and instead let them define themselves? How can we ‘unsettle’ anthropology and can it ever be used as a tool to assist projects of decolonization? (Unfamiliar with settler colonialism and/or decolonization? Check out these Tuck & Yang’s article, listed in references or read this article by Kyle Powys Whyte). I do believe anthropology has come a long way since the times of Malinowski or Mead but it must continue to change so that it doesn’t continue to perpetuate oppressive colonial agendas. I find myself often asking, is anthropology salvageable? Is this really the path I want to continue to take? What will a future equitable and ethical anthropology look like?

PS. I’m sure there are many anthropologists that are working towards a better, more moral anthropology. I hope to read more of their work in the future and continue posting about this topic! As a white anthropologist, I must continuously recognize my place in the dynamics of power within this academic field and within the societies/cultures I inhabit, and do my best to work against oppressive institutions that I undoubtedly benefit from.

References:
Grover, L.L. 2017. Onigamiising: Season of an Ojibwe Year. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Tuck, E. & Yang, K.W. 2012. Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1(1), pp. 1-40.
Whyte, K.P. 2018, April 3. White Allies, Let’s Be Honest About Decolonization. Yes Magazine. https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/decolonize/2018/04/03/white-allies-lets-be-honest-about-decolonization/