Comments from the American Anthropology Association Meetings, 2010
Nov 20th, 2010 by cmenzies
It was one of those moments that you wonder why bother, what’s the point of intervening, yet you do it anyway. Here I was enjoying myself skipping from session to session -marine protected areas in one session, women and democracy at a poster session, forestry, public anthropology and then -why not- a session on the circulation of indigenous though it’s others. It looked engaging. I knew some of the people. Why not go and have a listen to a set of papers that ranged from research in Labrador to research in Australia through Hawaiian soldiers and Navajo country singers.
I realized that my patience was being tested when my long time friend and fellow graduate of CUNY’s Grad Centre started talking about the parochialism of the sort of research that I engage in. That is, anthropological study of Indigenous issues is locked in a vantage point that reproduces elite knowledge within Indigenous communities and which does not examine the realities of violence, class, and social disruption. Fair enough, I’d be the first to agree that most of the research with and on behalf of First Nations is of limited appeal in the rarified worlds academic knowledge production and rarely rates the press given to sexy (literally and figuratively) subjects that inspire the many overheard corridor conversations.
Yet there was something about Kirk’s take that didn’t sit well with me. I can’t really put a finger on it, even now as I roll the words and ideas around in my mind, reflecting on them, reconsidering them. I agree with much of with Kirk said, yet, yet, somehow, somewhere there’s something amiss in the idea he presented. Perhaps it’s because I’m part of the Indigenous elite that he so strenuously critiques. I would like to think not; but I’ll at least consider it.
A few papers later came a paper on Labrador with the engaging title: “Hardly anybody never goes off anymore: time and belonging in a Labrador Inuit community.” The paper picked up from the title quote – “hardly anybody never goes off any more”- and chased down the idea that of the 300 people interviewed barely a half dozen or so actually engaged in hunting or ‘going off’ beyond the boundary of Nairn, Labrador. Fact was, those who were presented internally as knowledgeable either couldn’t or wouldn’t “go off.” Those who made it off were apparently part of the disinterested elites who were able to control or monopolize sufficient resources to buy fuel and supplies. Though the network plots presented (but not truly described) seemed to suggest a fairly wide distribution of food even if harvested by a handful of people, the focus was upon the dysfunction and abdication of responsibility by the elite. This is when I really started to connect the dots between my friend Kirk’s introduction and the apparent underlying theme.
The ‘we don’t go off’ paper picked up on the critique of the parochialism of Indigenous studies. This was achieved with a thorough going critique of the immorality of the political leadership (erstwhile called elites by the panelists). Not to miss a stone unturned traditional ecological knowledge literature was also soundly criticized. The fault – it doesn’t reflect the reality of practice. The critique – it is romantic nonsense. Yes there is a lot written by natural resource management types that takes a rather naive and simplistic perspective on TEK. But, I’m not certain that I’d be so quick to dismiss the reality of engaged and longstanding relationships with ecological and related social knowledge and then suggest that traditional knowledge is bunk.
Rather than sit silent and then leave I stood up and spoke. Usually, the extent of conference commentary is the ‘thank you for your paper, you did a great job, can you tell more about this or that.’ Sometimes there is a sharing of a similar case. People might even call some minor parts of a paper into question. Rarely does one stand up and, as I did this time, and lay out a full-blown critique of the panel and papers within it.
I began by saying straight out that my comment was a criticism.
“I’m not able to comment directly on the Labrador case but I can say from a decade of research and a lifetime of experience that there is something wrong with the picture being painted here today.”
Three points figure in my comments:
(1) The pattern of resource harvesting was presented as unusual. In fact is a fairly common and longstanding one of the development of community ‘experts’ in harvesting –the practitioners- on one side and the knowledge holders –best thought of as local intellectuals- on the other. Thus the model in the paper was fairly ahistorical –a snapshot in time- rather than one that placed the data into the sweep of history. Had the full sweep of time been considered it would have gone a long way toward explaining and then through explanation toward solution (if that was what was needed) of the problem presented.
(2) The critique of traditional ecological knowledge seemed to fetishize the idea of ‘tradition’ in the moniker. I suggested that we should not allow ourselves to be confused by the label of ‘traditional’ in the tag TEK. Traditional Ecological Knowledge is a process of knowledge making that is dynamic. It is a process through which people actively shift and change. Irrespective of the internal discourses on cultural loss (a discourse that is in reality produced by the external process of colonials ideology represented in histories of salvage ethnography) the researcher would be well served by consider the nature of knowledge required to navigate the social world (which includes whether or not ‘one goes off’).
(3) In response to the idea that Indigenous Studies is parochial and thus those of us engaged in it are in some way self serving and blinded by the Elites I offered this –the forces shaping what kind of research to do are controlled by the colonizing states. That is, in the creation of legal frameworks for rights and title Indigenous communities in Canada and Australia are completed to engage researchers and to commission particular types of studies to prove that they are in fact real social beings with history, law, culture, and personhood. It is only from a narcissistic sense of one’s own academic importance that one can actually overlook this social reality.
No one -I think- is denying the existence of real problems in Indigenous communities. But what defines the situation is not really crises and mayhem. There are good things, positive things, things to pride and pleasure in. Of course the world is not all rosy. What I am questioning is whether the focus on Elites as the source of the real problems in Indigenous communities makes any real sense. I think that my anger arises at this point . It is so easy to cast blame and to find fault. But unless you are dealing with this on a day-to-day basis trying to work out real answers that work now I questions your criticisms that seem more suitable to the rarefied audiences of lecterns and classrooms.
What, I wonder, is the difference between conservative commentators who blame all the problems on corrupt leaders and self-serving Elites and academic radicals who identify corrupt and disinterested Elites as the source of the problem. If only things were so simple as giving free gas to impoverished hunters so that they could ‘go off again.’
3 Responses to “Comments from the American Anthropology Association Meetings, 2010”
Thank you for this thoughtful discussion and for commenting in that panel along these lines.
As you say, Charles, it is one of those moments when one says “why bother,” but like you, I respond anyway. Your portrayal is a misstatement of what I said at the conference, and of my work over the last 15 years [ed: Kirk’s Labrador Blog can be found here. Also a cbc interview on his work.]
I am entirely unconcerned with a critique of elites in indigenous communities. They have their projects, make their decisions, and do the best they can, just like everyone else. The vast majority I have met are good, solid, concerned people who want very much to hear how political decisions are working out on the ground, and are very concerned with the state of the communities they live in, especially when plans for community development don’t work out they way they hope…which most don’t.
My concern is and has been with anthropologists…the only ones I feel entitled to talk to and criticize…hence the venue (hello?). My comments in the session follow most closely an article published in Anthropologica a couple years ago…interested readers can look there for the full argument. The gist of them is this…that alternative paths to community futures in indigenous communities–those that stand outside an open embrace of neo-liberal sorts of privatization and development–continue to be ignored by anthropologists working there, with very few exceptions, as do the consequences of the paths that are being chosen.
Rather, most anthropologists tow the neo-liberal line of private property and resource development, blame all the problems on dislocation from an ancient past, and in the mean time write the sorts of contemporary community representations that facilitate development strategies. The majority of TEK literature would easily fit within this characterization. It has ignored the context underwhich it is produced by remaining silent on the ways it will be used in contemporary political processes. This is, frankly put, naive and disingenous.
This is not to discount the past (recent or ancient), it is simply to wonder why so many anthropologists living in the US, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere are so resistant to writing about the present. The exception would seem to be Latin America, where viable alternative movements (apart from neo-liberal development and cooperation with a development state) exist. There, anthopology is all about the present. Here, where the possibility of organized, large scale movements toward an alternative future outside of neo-liberal sorts of development remain small scale, anthropological attention skips immediately to some distant horizon. This, I think, comes from a reluctance on the part of anthropologists to confront the neo-liberal project or its advocates (within or outside the communities in which they work)…which is a shame, especially when so many alternative voices in communities are being lost to the very processes at stake…moving away or being run out because they don’t fit the new mold.
This has nothing to do with a critique of elites or any particular emergent strategy as they come from Labrador or any other community. This is not about people or decisions. It is about structures. As decisions, I have always been clear: for the vast majority of community members, the current strategies of development are entirely understandable, as I have long pointed out. Ordinary people often have little choice but to participate in a state orchestrated plan, for reasons that have everything to do with the colonial history and current neo-colonial structures (again, structures that I have spent my career describing under the label “state-sponsored indigenism”). People do what they have to do to accommodate power, avoid it, hold it to its own laws, and so on.
But it is frankly irresponsible for anthropologists, like yourself, who unabashedly take on the spokesmen role for whole communities in that venue, to pretend that your representations do not have consequences for people in the communities you claim to represent. The representations you make ARE strategies, with consequences. Choosing the right ones is hard, but ignoring the consequences is far worse. I would not use the term romantic for so many such contemporary representations. Romanticism was an important arts/politics moment in the early critique of capitalism. Rather I would call much of the current representative trend “fantasy,” for its ability to ignore the political and legal context in which it is produced in the interest of feel good moments and characterizations. Apart from Nadasdy, few anthropologists in the TEK genre have been willing to own up to questions of the politics of producing TEK.
These are problems in anthropology, as the ignoring of alternative futures and those living them has consequences for their possibility. The streets of Alberta, Sydney, New York, Montreal, or, closer to your home, Vancouver are full of people from indigenous communities who didn’t fit into the currently envisioned indigenous future, yet entirely absent from ethnography. Once can read just about any portrayal of contemporary First Nation communities in Canada and not learn how roughly half the members of that Nation find themselves living far from home, some for better, some for worse.
I would like to have given a full historical background or even a review of the TEK literature to show where these issues apply, and where they do not….but in a 15 minute paper, are you kidding? So yes, there was much missing from my account there. For me the bigger question is what is missing in anthropology.
Sorry Charles. The meetings are full of grandstanding, but written follow-up requires some responsibility to what was actually said.
Thanks Kirk – I appreciate you willingness to engage, to reply, and the consideration and respect that you demonstrate in continuing this open dialogue. It speaks to our longstanding relationship from our initial meeting as students at CUNY to today.
Yet, I realize that you don’t really know the work that I do nor understand what I have been saying. I have no expectation that anyone else really should understand in that way unless you do come from the social world that I am from and remain a part of.
You point out that there are consequences to the things that I write and the things that I say and suggest, perhaps, that anthropologists such myself don’t accept nor do we understand the consequences of our actions. You say that to deny or ignore such consequences is irresponsible.
I work directly with my origin community as a researcher and as an adviser in matters related to cultural heritage and research. If this is irresponsibility on my part I will own that irresponsibility. Mine is an irresponsibility born of the north coast; its an irresponsibility that knows the intractability of the problems that one faces coming from where I did while also knowing that there are multiple alternative paths (both individually and collectively); it’s also an irresponsibility that is based in the ethic of care and the commitment to real positive social change through putting one’s ‘money where one’s mouth is.’
If I misstate or misunderstand what you have said or written then I take full responsibility for that.
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It is always difficult to balance between our academic work and the implications or consequences of the same. Nonetheless, some of us are in fact doing both -producing academic work AND having direct involvement in communities where our advice and work has real consequences for the everyday life of our friends and family.
In addition to my own work I have, on occasion taken students with me to do community-directed research projects. Yet each time I do so I am left with a sense of unease and concern -not because of any deficit or defect among the students. Rather, because of the process and the ways in which anthropological research becomes in that context too much like cultural tourism and the voyeuristic aspects of the discipline really shines through. Nonetheless, many people (an awkward quantity to express) publicly and privately state their appreciation for the work the students do and constantly ask each time I return home if more students will be coming and when.
That’s not all that I do. I am indeed one of those anthropologists who (paradoxically it seems to me) must be towing the neo-liberal line. I do research that focuses on the history and development of the industrial resource economy and the role that aboriginal people have played as labour in that same industry -from my 1994 article “Stories from Home” AE 1994 through to my co-authored piece in Labour/Le Travail in 2008 on the Indigenous Foundation of The Natural Resource Economy in BC. I have also written about the -apparently- neo-liberally influenced practices of traditional ecological knowledge where I have considered such things as the ways in which indigenous peoples dynamically incorporated market mechanisms with traditional knowledge to harvest Pine Mushrooms (in my own edited book published with Nebraska in 2006) to a consideration of the ways in which traditional ownership coincided and overlapped with industrial ownership in the context of the harvest of salmon to a more recent (and perhaps most archetypically TEK’y) piece in Human Organization (2010) on Abalone harvesting in BC.
My recent film, Bax Laansk, also must be criticized for towing the neo-liberal line as it charts the contradictions and ambivalence between local food harvest, the rise and collapse of the industrial economy locally and the call from community members to do more then just talk at their youth. And then, through the lens of one of my students we can see those same youth as they struggle in the urban centre with dislocation, despair and abuse in her hard hitting film For Our Street Family (distributed through DER).
There is a difference of perspective that arises in accordance with our subject locations. I hear the concerns and worries of my family (both of my immediate and my extended) about our community’s health and well being. I am asked many times to offer opinions and to do things to assist.
Yes, of course there is a bias (take a look at a comment on this blog about the type of anthropological work that is being done in BC). Kirk, you and I share more in common in our outlook then not. The solutions for the current malaise will not be solved by correctly pointing to the impact of history even as the conditions in and off reserve are the legacy of colonialism. As Fanon reminds us so many years ago colonialism is not simply an attempt to take economic and political power -it’s an attempt to disfigure and demean a people such that one loses all sense of self respect and dignity.
In the absence of any real revolutionary change in society people who are actively involved and concerned about the situation have to face up to reality (something that I think we are both saying) and get on with making a difference (and likely this is where we disagree). I have seen many things in my life that bring unhappiness and despair. One can succumb to a nihilist critical intellectualism, a crass opportunism, a sense of despair, or even the supportive critic. I choose to do somethign different -that is, to try to work with people that I know and have known for many, many years, to try and make our world just a tiny bit better place to be.
As one of my friends and colleagues here at UBC says: “We just want our kids to get the same lousy education that everyone else is getting.”