Ethnography and Colonialism
by Erin Jessee
Image taken from “By Aeroplane to Pygmyland: Revisiting the 1926 Dutch and American Expedition to New Guinea“
As has already been touched upon in class, ethnography has a dark past when it comes to its complicity in promoting colonialism and colonialist agendas around the world. For Tuesday’s class, we’ll be delving more deeply into two case studies. The first, authored by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, considers Ishi’s fate in the hands of anthropologists as an example of how ethnography, colonialism and genocide have intertwined in the past. The second, by Gretchen Schafft, speaks to anthropologists’ complicity in the maintenance and promotion of German national socialism, leading to a range of mass human rights violations and genocide in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Some questions for consideration: In the past, what structures and institutions have made it possible for ethnographers to become complicit in colonialist agendas, both at home and abroad? And going forward, how can ethnographers avoid similar traps in the future? What tools do we have at our disposal to ensure we don’t unwittingly promote values that lead to the oppression or stigmatization of Other communities?
The Ethnography of Political Violence 
Normalization of oppression and inequality embedded in colonial and ethnocentric understandings of Otherness played largely into anthropology’s horrific past. Kroeber’s experience with Ishi seems to be tainted entirely by colonialism, and although his grief about Ishi’s fate resonates with contemporary anthropologists and leads many to say “he was a man of his time, imperfect but growing and taking the discipline through the first tentative steps of it’s new direction.” And while, yes, this may be true, I believe it is essential that as students of anthropology living in the shadow of our past (and present) errors, we cannot forget that grief and shame. Ethnographers should embody that shame, make it their own. Just as we read the works of the great anthropologists of decades past, reconstructing their words and theories into contemporary tools to solve contemporary problems, we should also reconstruct that shame, of being human and unable to see the larger picture. This shame should force us to consider our own actions, in every moment, inside and outside of academia. What are the possible consequences of this (in)action? In a sense, as individuals aware of the atrocious harm that scholarly work can produce, every one of our actions should pass through an internal ethics review of sorts. What are the risks and/or benefits? Is this worth it in the long run, for the most marginalized and easily forgotten individuals involved?
“Perhaps we all need to apologize and forgive each other as we once again go about reinventing anthropology as a tool and practice of human freedom”
The above quote completes Scheper-Hughes’ article on the dissonance that surrounded that final stages of Ishi’s life and death. The optimism that radiates from this quote pulls me in, although I do wonder if there is enough forgiveness in the world to mend the wounds that not only run ever so deep, but also get jabbed at, caked in salt and spat upon on a daily basis by the socio-political normative structuring of societies around the world.
Schafft’s article on scientific racism under Nazism deals with the essentialism of difference, the polemic division of us-and-them that categories so much of human thought and production: the media, the movies, the scholarly articles. Some might argue that anthropologist’s are now highly attuned to avoid this Othering, but I think it is important that too much of anything is never positive. In this case study the Other is seen as different, and difference is understood as dangerous. My gut reaction is to say that difference should be celebrated, that any study of Jewishness should honor, even glorify, Jewish culture. But this isn’t right ever. Cultural relativism means that every thought/action/whatever can be understood within the specificity of it’s culture. Implicit in that is that Nazism isn’t necessarily bad, just culturally specific, thus we cannot understand it. Where does this leave us? I think that today anthropologists (can be) so afraid of repeating the damaging constructions of the Other from the past (ie: indigenous as savage, Africans as biologically inferior, Amazonian peoples as barbaric cannibals, Jews as greedy and dangerous), that cultural difference and structural violence have become utterly conflated. No- Nazi anthropology is not an example of cultural difference, it is an example of genocide hidden behind a veil of academic research. High rates of suicide, depression and alcoholism amongst Canadian indigenous populations are not because “that’s just how they are,” but the result of widespread genocide, residential schools, socio-economic oppression and the harsh aftertaste of a colonialism that is by no means over.
Schafft wonders if the Nazi anthropologists considered the wider reaches of their work to be good. Perhaps they did do internal risk/benefit scales and they ended up truly believing that the entire horrific enterprise was “for the greater good.” This is where I think collaborative work becomes essential. I would like to believe that I am rational and self-reflexive enough to know when my own career goals, personal comfort and biased notions of my role in any given society would create harm to those I am working with. I think we all like to think that our own internal alarms will go off when our actions might result in someone else’s suffering. But humans are illogical, irrational, and at times incredibly shortsighted. The heart and the head (sorry for the Cartesian dualism) do not always agree, nor even communicate. Anthropologist need to collaborate, ensure that their internal risk/benefit scale is aligned with the risk/benefits scales of their informants. Ethics boards also come into play now, to sit down the Kroeber’s of the world and ask, have you really thought about this? Have you asked Ishi what his wishes are, and if you promise to keep them, will you be in the position to do so? Of course, ethics boards are flawed, bending to the winds of capitalism. But I think that if collaborative measures, ethical approval (of not only the board but of your family, your peers, and most importantly, your informants), and a deep awareness of this discipline’s historical shame, tentative steps can be made to create an anthropology that empathetically cares, but also firmly stands against acts of violence and oppression when necessary.
Any field’s past is influenced by the conditions of the contemporary agendas in which they operate. We do not ignore that the church did, and in some parts of the world, still dictates the parameters and limitations of natural sciences and physics. No one denies that we once thought the Earth was the center of the universe, that it was flat and that it was only 6000 years old. Nor denies that these theories were fervently protected and those who spoke against were persecuted. Fields of research, ethnography and anthropology, are not linear progressions of knowledge which can forget or deny their foundations. Fields are culminations of knowledge and to move forward, away from trappings of the past, it is important to understand former shortcomings and issues.
A key example of this would be what Schafft discusses in the chapter on German anthropologists during the Nazi era. Scientific and ethnographic racism contributed to the discrimination and persecution of Romi, black, Jewish and disabled people. While it may be a terrible blight on the history of anthropology we cannot deny the susceptibility academia has to dominant ideologies. Deeply embedded biases dictate what academia produces to a great extent. Determining who leads the major academic institutes, where funding is provided and what is accepted. All of these conditions happened during the Nazi regime and resulted in a situation where anthropologists were conducting research they believed would benefit the Riche and thereby the society.
This condition was similar to the colonialist circumstances under which much of the early anthropology also took place. Nancy Scheper-Hughes discusses Kroeber’s ethnographic work within colonialist conditions. There were similar racist and discriminatory policies in place which denied the genocidal way that the American government treated the native population. Kroeber’s interactions with Ishi provide a limited example of the position that anthropologists have within the communities and cultures we study, and outside the dominant power constraints. We work closely with communities that are different than our own and we have the opportunity to shed constructed biases to experience these other cultures. In my opinion we cannot properly understand or discuss cultures outside our own from within the dominant biases.
I think that it is important to recognize shortcomings or issues that the field faced in it’s nascence. It does not discredit contemporary research, in fact recognizing issues the field faced is important to learn and build from.
Two sides of the colonialist coin may have been such disimilar institutions such as the church and academics/science. Schafft describes Nazi Anthropologists and the use of science to create narratives such as German superiority or Jewish inferiority.
Long before this, however, academics was coupled with colonialist expansion. There is the history of Environmental Determinism, which lead to scientific and academic research that ‘proved’ some races were inferior to others, often using geography and climatology to account for these differences. The effect of this still lingers this day, with many academics refusing to acknowledge ANY cultural traits can be derived whatsoever from climates. To me, this is a pengelum that was swung way too far in one direction, asserting one groups superiority over another, and giving agency to colonialism, to the polar opposite, refusing to acknowledge climate has in any way shape or form effected world cultures.
So, the church, and universities I beleive made it quite possible for ethnographers to become complicit in colonialist agendas, gathering research and data from around the world in colonialism’s very beginnings, to help justify colonisation, whether for strategic geo-political positions, natural resources or ‘fiduciary’ responsibility. All of these aspects of colonialism, all this ‘data’ about the world was in fact collected by men of science and academics. Academics and ethnography were really used in Latin America ever since colonialists found the ‘new world’, and were used to send back information to colonial powers to make deicisons on expansion and conquests.
I beleive Ethnographers are better equipped these days to avoid these traps. They are not doing research for a king, or an ordained religious organisation. I think they can avoid these traps by awareness of funding, where it is coming from, and choice. There is more choice now in where ethnography can take place and for whom it can be made available. Perhaps the fact that ethnographies can, and sometimes are, made available to everyone, especially the informants, is very important. This helps avoid the trap of the ethnographer being the ‘middle man’ between two differing worlds. Input is provided by the very people being studied, and hopefully feedback is given and heeded after the informants read, or are read, what has been said about them in the research.
It is a difficult situation however, as, ethnography is coming out of the same 100-300 year old institutions, universities, that were complicit in colonisations. Most other institutions, governments, the church, are less involved and have changed. However, univerisities have changed, in theory, I suppose. But they are still the only party remaining in the equation that is still heavily involved in ethnographies.
While I found Scheper-Hughes piece to be worth the read, I again noticed the repetitiveness of her writing about Ishi (is this something a lot of anthropologists/academics/writers do?).
The fact that apparently no one spoke out against the First Nation’s annihilation in California (in this case) is nothing short of troubling. Kroeber himself even labeled it as irrelevant, calling it a “little history” (62). But when looking at the prominence of salvage anthropology, the premise of see, hear, and report no evil in ethnography and the romanticization and prioritization of “authentic” aboriginal civilizations, the stage is all but set for complicity in colonial endeavors and agendas. Kroeber and his peers may have been more forward thinking in their opinions about ethnicity at the time, perhaps recognizing Ishi as a friend, above essentializing categories, but he and others were still operating within the structures of the time. They were not critical enough of this, nor self-reflexive enough to spot the initial blind spot. However, this is all easy to say in hindsight. An awareness of politics, your position as a researcher (privilege included), along with appropriate listening strategies (as Beth Stewart pointed out) may be a starting point for going forward. It is also necessary for anthropology to not only be cognizant of this past and the ease with which it can be replicated in an evolved form (human terrain systems), but to publicly – outside of the discipline – acknowledge this. Apologies when needed should be made for past mistakes without being overcome by paralysis in the face of moving forward.
As for Schafft – I am so glad this reading was made available. I was aware of anthropologist’s role in the Holocaust but nowhere near the extent. Naively I assumed their skills were tragically misappropriated rather than consciously turned towards violence and creating a bogus hierarchy of human beings (among other things). Like the ignored violence in North America, it is near impossible to guess at all the motivations of anthropologist’s in their participation or complicity. In Nazi Europe, as Schafft points out, many were simply looking towards career advancement, others genuinely believed in the rhetoric they were spewing and still others may have been looking out for their own lives in a state that didn’t care for dissent. Schafft also mentions the desire to play a role in government affairs (something still a big part of anthropology) as well as the normalization of their tasks, amid approval from not only the state but also international bodies (as is evident in U.S funding). All these aspects worked to provide the structure anthropologists became accustomed to, were forced to acknowledge, or actually believed in. In Nazi Europe, it seems, anthropologists were not only complicit but key actors in what became the Final Solution.
Besides what was already noted, it is difficult to say what can be done to cut off any more of these situations – as they will undoubtedly occur. I would venture to repeat, however, the unending benefit of being critical and adopting better listening strategies both when working with research participants and when dealing with politics and the state. If the past of anthropology is made clear, then the first move towards a critical awareness can be made – an important aspect of dealing with complicity and working against oppression.
I often wonder why people become so complicit in affairs that are detrimental to environments and people, especially when they verge on the abhorrent and ‘evil’. A part of me thinks that in regards to the Nazi era that the anthropologists involved perhaps saw this as a way to conduct research without any bounds or limits on the things they could do to their human subjects. As awful as it would be to think this way, in this day and age of ethical codes and the like, taking into account all of the things that could go wrong and/or harm one’s subjects in some way can severely limit the type of research one is able to carry out. The anthropologists during the Second World War were free to do a lot of things they would not be allowed to do during any other ‘sane’ time.
I also do not doubt that many may have been forced into their activities in some way or another, perhaps by threat to their lives or their families, as it is evident, as Schaffer points out, that the hiding of the methods in their notes is a sign of guilt in some form. Or at the very least they knew/felt that what they were doing was wrong on some level.
Ideologies are also very powerful and give people the sense that they have the ‘right’ to do or look at something in a certain way that is conducive to their beliefs and goals. Going back to how certain groups of people were perceived as ‘savages’ and ‘uncivilized’ because they lacked Christianity, or engaged in homosexual acts frequently and so on, was a way of the researchers and colonialists to preserve the idea that they are the civilized, educated, and pious group that is in the right. Looking at these other groups of people in a relativist manner would imply that no one culture, society or ‘race’ of people is better or worse than any other, and why would white colonialists, or Nazi Germany, want to promote that kind of thinking when they need to believe that they are at the top of the latter? They wouldn’t.
I connect with the questions asked by Schafft’s students. Since I started years ago at school to learn about the Nazis, I ask myself every time: Why did people do that? “Why did no one stop them?” (p. 118) And I always take the argument I can find in that peace of history taught what could justify that. Until now, I thought about the advertisement of the regime, the “camps” for school children that consisted in massive brainwashing. The conception of “normality” was different, and it might have been easy to turn to that reality, especially not to have been aware of the reality as a whole. As I learned in the readings, Hannah Ardent called it “the banality of evil”(p. 130).
There were appealing recompenses for scientists, so who does not want to reach the top? Be know and flattered for “good behaviour” and “good founding”? Schafft underlines the attraction of career success for anthropologists and he sees the recognition of the discipline at the time as a motivation for scientists. On the other hand, refusing to convert to the Reich meant repression, incarceration or deportation.
I also learn in one of my class that the very high bureaucratic system of the Nazi helped committing horror. One person was only putting stamps on paper, that it meant an instruction for someone to be deported or incinerate, the worker did not see it happening and was doing the same “simple” task all day and everyday. For the persecutor, they were “only” following the instructions. Routinization, high division of labour and very hierarchize organization were (and are still) powerful instruments to implement policies. “Convoluted verbiage”(p. 130) form scientists, also is part of these elements that helped masking the reality of what was happening.
Schafft notes that “some of their values matched with the outside world”. “Anthropologist could feel they were making a contribution to a better world.”
“How could the world be made healthier, more productive and more efficient?” (p. 130). Anthropologists and others criticize these aspirations today, but most people still believe in them. Common words such as “development” “progress” “efficiency” when aligned believes on “ethnicity” (a more politically correct racism), can lead to eugenic thoughts.
The knowledge we can deduce of WWII is important, it can help avoid other events to happen, but should be used in everyday life as well to refute some practises of corporations, of the state, etc.
I was first chocked and hard to hear the last paragraph in Schepper-Hughes’ text (p.66), but not really able to criticise it. I eventually could make my mind on that. Agreeing with this last paragraph means accepting that the people who committed and were part of those horrible acts are somehow related to me. Hard task. Needed? Maybe, in order to try my best to never reproduce this again…
When examining different fields it seems that they have all had some institution influencing them in the past whether it be religion, colonialism or some other form of government. Colonialism has certainly caused many ethnographers to view others as more uncivilized since most ethnographers have come from a European descent. It is hard to argue with the things you are taught over and over throughout your lifetime. Especially since, as Schepher-hughes states, ethnography seems to have come from a desire to make up for the wrong that we have done. It is not surprising that many, even though they had good intentions, got stuck in the western trap. When looking at Ishi for example, Kroeber states time and time again that he was friends with Ishi and wished the best for him but in the end just used him as an exhibit. I believe the universities and political bodies of the time influenced the people so much that even if they wished to be good it became very hard to change their ideals. Ethnographers could always just turn back to their western ways of thinking without any consequences on themselves even if it meant disregarding someone else. The rest of the world wouldn’t mind too much and they were the male academics so their word was basically the law. One example is how universities would do free ethnicity certifying in Germany. If the universities were for it then many must have believed it to be true.
Nowadays we still have this western trap to fall into but it has become much harder because the world is becoming more globalized and understanding. It is still possible to disregard people or cause them harm by not being a bystander but the consequences may be higher. People may be looked down upon by peers if they do not preform as is expected now. Although many people may still be stuck in this colonialist way of thinking as it has only recently begun to fade out. Ethnography has become available to a wider range of the population however and this allows people to stay out of this trap. Instead of just white males it is open to basically anyone with the desire for ethnography and allows for substantially more views to be broadcasted. Although universities still do many things just for money and are still run by the upper class whites so it is hard to say how much they really have changed and besides, this is only one of the steps towards better ethnography. We as ethnographers always need to remember the previous dark side of the discipline as well as make sure we understand ethics and try to maintain an unbiased view of others (However hard and daunting it may seem).
Anthropology has been created during the colonialist area. Anthropologists were hired by governments to get to know how the local societies functioned in order to have more power on them.
The main interest of doing anthropology was to entrench their power. Anthropology was deeply linked to politics.
Today, I think some research are still closely linked to the government’s interests but it is less explicit than during the colonialist period.
I believe that there are different ways of avoiding such traps. First of all, as Geertz did, I think that giving voice to people who are part of the studied culture is the most important thing to do when an anthropologist tries to give a whole and truthful account of their culture.
The other ways are to not to be attached to any interested company or scientific association linked to a government.
Anthropologists have a strong power as they are presenting to the world a society which can’t directly talk for itself.
Consequently, biased points of view have to be avoided and I will suggest that anthropologists go do fieldwork without a particular interest. They would be less subjective and more attuned to the culture they study.
From the article “Scientific Racism in the Service of the Reich,” Schafft illustrates the way that a state can abuse and manipulate their social scientists to produce reports that back up policies to oppress “unwanted” peoples in the society. Not to say that many of these anthropologists, geneticists, doctors, and other professionals did not want to comply, but he reminds us that many that did not comply were killed or sent to concentration camps, therefore causing others who felt similar to give the Nazi regime what they wanted in order to avoid death. He answers the question that his students proposed to him of “Why did it happen? And Why didn’t anyone stop it?” One person cannot stand up against a huge force alone and I recently watched a film on Vichy France in my class on the Holocaust where school teachers who taught during the period who ignored it when other teachers or students were pulled from school or fired for being Jewish. They felt helpless and did not want to become in danger themselves or put their families in danger. I am not surprised that the Rockefeller foundation was funding the experiments on twins in concentration camps because anti-semitism was a widely accepted viewpoint at the time, even in Canada and the United States. I can see how in early genetics studies they could easily promote the idea that we have eliminated natural selection and by sterilizing the “unwanted” that will bring it back and make a stronger nation of people. Many people still believe that today.
In the article by Scheper-Hughes on Ishi, it was again Museums, Universities, and Institutes for Science that made it possible for ethnographers to become complicit in colonial agendas even without their knowing it, but thinking that they are furthering knowledge on the subject. She suggests that in the future they can avoid these traps by not being bystanders or silent witnesses taking notes. Anthropology should not be “the daughter to this era of violence.” We have the research ethics board as a tool that can promote values that do not lead to oppression of Others, but I cannot think of anything else except the inner self since many radical racist authors get published all the time. I feel that ethnographers could avoid using their knowledge to promote policies by governments who want to stigmatize a people by being aware of the language you are using and the implications of such and also trying to release your biases especially western where one could study a group very foreign to them and exoticize it as abnormal.
I can understand why anthropologists would not want to examine the ways in which anthropologists were complicit in the atrocities committed during the Third Reich. But I think that anthropologists are uniquely qualified to examine their own profession’s problems and learn from their mistakes.
The study of culture tends to focus on what makes groups distinct from one another. The Third Reich is an extreme example, but research that marks a group as especially unique can be taken up by governments and ran with to justify all sorts of things. That can happen without a close relationship between anthropologists and the government and is why most anthropologists don’t directly work for governments. The pressures to agree with your government persists today. Anthropologists find most of their funding from governments and governments have an agenda to fulfill with their research dollars. Ethical guidelines can keep anthropologists from repeating the mistakes of the Third Reich and other anthropologists who used their knowledge for exploitation.
It is also important that the idea of “the greater good” not come before the good of individual research participants. Scheper-Hughes idea of activism is great, but anthropologists have to consider a lot of interests before they can align themselves with any organization. If cleaning out the gene pool or using cultural knowledge to exploit a community seems positive than the greater good will come before individual.
Schaffer and Scheper-hughes explore the manner in which scholarly and moral integrity become subsumed within an atmosphere of political violence and academic self-interest. In each of the case studies outlined, academic consensus weighed heavily on the interpretation of evidence,ngenerating the conditions whereby intellectual capital could serve dangerous and devastating ends.
In the case of Ishi of the Yahi people we have an interesting example of the multiple forces which are mobilized in the academic endeavor of studying culture. Kroeber’s writings and his silence on the plight of the very people he studied gives us insight in to early twentieth century anthropology and its functioning as a vehicle of imperial conquest. Kroeber’s apparent pain on the loss of Ishi to tuberculosis hints at an underlying moral conscience, a state of reference which clearly eroded in the face of political agendas and the security of the scholarly status. How must he have experienced the painful ways friendship and the pursuit of scholarship become related? Was he haunted by the spirit of Ishi and his people?
Again we see the themes of academic complicity in political projects and the burden of silence inspiring violent ends in the case of Nazi Germany. In this instance complicity was directly constructed by the political elite of the nazi party in Germany who managed to conscript numerous anthropologists into producing propaganda and promulgating falsehood. Anthropology at the hands of nazi germany was a cultural weapon of deadly force which underlines the need for uncomprimized ethical and moral standards in the execution of scholarship.
The considerations and pitfalls anthropologists face today bear a resemblance to this era of colonial scholarship but we are guided by the knowledge of these despicable acts and the apparent ease with which they were carried out. It is important to be wary of academic pressures, language and the power to influence change. To ignore these factors is to compromise not only scholarly integrity but perhaps the lives and well-being of others.
In the past Ethnography’s have been conducted by white males from a colonial perspective. Nancy Scheper-Hughes addressed these issues with regards to genocide. In the past structures and institutions that fund ethnographers and allow for this work to take place manipulate ethnographers through power relations into as Nancy describes it complicity in the maintenance and promotion of German national socialism leading to a range of mass human rights violations and genocide in Nazi-occupied Europe. Their has been a trend of Otherness with regards to Ethnography and a very white vs. the other or the oriental perspective. Future Ethnographers need to recognize their mistakes in the past and attempt to work with community to realize their perspective instead of assuming another perspective.
Schafft’s article depicting scientific racism with regards to Nazism illustrates the dichotomy of otherness. Schafft makes apparent the idea that the Nazi anthropologists probably thought what their work was doing was good. This illustrates that when gaining access to culture outside of your own can be tricky and one must approach this with intensive ethical measures. Going into the future Anthropologists must use the research ethics board as an essential tool and must be aware of past oppressions in order to prevent future ones.
Anthropology, as compared to other fields, sits in the unique position of having been more or less founded to assist and perpetuate the dominance of colonial powers. The first anthropologists studied indigenous peoples in order to gain insight into the possibility of control, manipulation, and utilization of these peoples as a resource to the empire. While I believe most anthropologists would agree that we cannot forget that legacy (indeed the moral and ethical advances of the 1960’s don’t leave a gap large enough for forgetting) I would posit that we have already put in place a number of safety measures within anthropological academia that can ensure less harmful research in the future.
In her analysis of the case of Ishi, Scheper-Hughes describes the apology made by the University of California, Berkeley’s anthropology department to Native California regarding the wanton genocide of California’s indigenous peoples and Ishi’s funereal treatment in specific. While the apology quoted was questionable at best, and many California natives were dissatisfied, such measures and gestures are a sign of positive change and better things to come. NAGPRA itself is one of the most effective apologies that could possibly be made. In the context of an unforgiveable history there is nothing that can be done that will truly atone for the sins of our anthropological forefathers. Pragmatically the past is unalterable, and all that is left for us to do as an academic community is to attempt to reconcile as many broken promises, cultures, and families as possible while continuing to move forward. We should not forget that men like Kroeber once lived, knew men like Ishi, and treated them as they did. However, neither should we forget that as a field we have moved on from the actions, guidelines, and justifications of that era. In the future we may look back on the studies of today with disdain, but we can rest assured that ethically anthropology is on a steep upward slope.
The factors that remain reassuring in Scheper-Hughes article about Ishi (Kroeber’s possible feelings of guilt, later reconciliation through NAGPRA) do not, however, stand for Schafft’s article. What to me is most disturbing about the article is also what is most disturbing about the Holocaust; about Nazi Germany in general. It is the degree of widespread acceptance of the actions of anthropologists (and all other members of german society) at the time. Schafft points out with gusto the Rockefeller institution’s contribution to the KWIA, disillusioning the reader as to whether Nazism was a solely Germanic disease. She also points out the various ways in which anthropologists in Eugenics programs deflected the true implications of their research methods, “writing out” the torture they inflicted to ease their own minds. While it is undeniably true that their were no great incentives to disagree with the dominant thought paradigm at the time, the types of experimentation described by Schafft cause us to truly question whether there are any morals or ethics intrinsic to humanity. The mass acceptance of such human rights atrocities, half-hidden under the guise of racial science, worries me to no end because of its very nature: mass acceptance. While one might hope that the various ethics boards, handbooks, guides, and lessons from the past would prevent humanity from encountering recurrences of the systematic type of genocide seen during the Holocaust, the sheer institutionality of Nazi racism and human rights violations stand boldly in the face of the institutions we have created to resist such horror. If we reach a point where the vast majority of a society agrees with and is willing to follow a system so intrinsically inhumane, the instituion is itself part of the problem. What tools of morality and organization are left when millions of people at once agree upon a new, flawed set of morals?
Ishi’s Brain, Ishi’s Ashes was written in 2001, but it is as vital a discourse today as it was eleven years ago – actually, I’d argue the poignance of the article and its narrative may have appreciated, given the debates today over the Enbridge pipeline, omnibus bill and Harper’s treatment of Aboriginal rights. The recent legislation, Bill C-45, that gutted the Navigable Waters Protection Act left a huge number of Canada’s natural water bodies unprotected and failed to first seek approval of Aboriginal council – a constitutional responsibility. As a second-generation Canadian, I feel my hands are somewhat tied until the next election. I can and do oppose Bill C-45 by any means possible, but the most empowering action I feel I have been able to take is to stand with First Nations communities. The First Nations constitutional right to be consulted prior to implementation of any legislation that could ‘adversely impact human rights’ lends their collective voice political credence where mine falls short (though maybe it legitimizes mine to some extent). They have leverage, a bargaining power from a Treaty that I can’t claim any right to, despite the fact that we share concerns and fears. I’m not entirely sure whether I should be upset by this.
In the case of Ishi, I struggled to sympathize with the anthropologists in question until I noted the almost ad hominem disempowerment I was subjecting their narratives to. Though they seemed to agree – that the brain should be returned, that it should not have been sent initially, and furthermore expressed guilt – still I felt animosity towards them, even though they were agreeing with what I thought was just and acting to resolve the issue. Rather than just blame them for actions I deemed contemptible that was not in fact directly their fault, only a fault of the insensitivities associated with their specialization, I tried to re-frame the issue in terms of my own experience and deconstruct the images I was associating with problems. Anthropological mistakes: colonial mistakes. Apologetic anthropologists: me. Culprit (Kroeber): Harper … and so on. Anyway, I’m still not sure what to think.
It also bears mentioning that by simply associating the issues highlighted in this article with the image of Ishi’s brain and subsequently solving the issues by returning and honoring the brain/Ishi, I feel like this article is somewhat dangerous. By effectively establishing images and then dealing with them justly, it insinuates resolution – leveraging the solved issues as a sort of scapegoat or distraction, more or less allowing the issues to continue unresolved and unnoticed. In the same vein as Warren Hastings’ trial for corruption in Mughal India. Of course you can’t exactly scale social conceptualizations, but one should certainly approach ‘happy endings’ in research with care.
The notion of progress is essential to narratives of genocide and colonialism so as to frame the opponents (ie. victims) of these projects as obstacles and by doing so, de-humanizes them.
Both Schafft and Scheper-Hughes examples, of colonialism in North America and genocide in Europe, highlight the use of progress to co-opt people and command the ‘official version’ of what came to pass. Essential to ‘progress’ in the Western sense is the dualism of nature and culture, as well as the license to decide who and what falls into each category.
The mass death of indigenous peoples in California has managed to retain a degree of invisibility even today in popular discourse, a testament to the power of vision in the analysis and valuation of conflict. Citizens of anglo-settler colonies (Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand) are well aware of the effects early colonists had on local populations, but it often takes the hazy form of generalized ideas about oppression. Distinctions are drawn between imperialist programs in North and South America, with the Spanish and Portuguese campaigns characterized by systematized murder and outright destruction. The vanguard of European settlement even had a name: the Conquistadores, with it’s connotations of Spanish machismo and brutality. In contrast, the North American narrative is more hap-hazard. Though massacres, residential schools, and other examples of oppression by settlers and their descendants, exist, the cumulative effects on indigenous groups is framed as at least partially accidental. To be sure, the introduction of diseases was inevitable, and unstoppable, though no efforts were made to aid the survivors. Also important to this history are some of the questions not asked; a kind of critical invisibility. For instance, no one questions the imperative that Canadian and American settlers move west and grab up the remaining land. The push west is simply framed as competition between Britain and America, and later the nascent Canadian state. “If we hand’t taken that land,” the story goes, “someone else would have.” Excusing the aggressive expansion by invoking the necessity and inevitability of competition and exploitation, the political elites were able to frame dislocating practices as methods of preparing the way for the full use of the landscape.
The genocidal project of the Third Reich, though rooted in a very different context, nonetheless displays a number of traits that also characterized the colonial project in the Americas and beyond. The first step involved the animalisation of Jews through the use of visual and auditory media. Depictions of Jews featured not only stereotypical appearances, but also conflated Jews with demons and other otherworldly creatures. Blame for the war and Germany’s economic malaise were heaped at the feet of Jewish citizens through radio propaganda. There was no need for such tactics in North America, as colonists naturally took to the view that the ‘savages’ they encountered were closer to nature than themselves. However, the Nazi concept of “lebensraum” or ‘living room’ is reminiscent of colonial approaches to land-use. The planned liquidation of large portions of Slavic eastern Europe to prepare for German settlers was not seen as theft or murder, but the appropriation of land for better use. Not surprisingly, some of the most cruel and bloody episodes of the war occurred in this future German breadbasket, with civilians and captured soldiers being massacred at a ferocious pace.
Addressing the first question, I believe structures are crucial to the physical application of political violence, but it takes concepts, often cloaked in historical or ethical imperatives, to activate the structures. Therefore, as anthropologists and students of anthropology, we must investigate not only the structure of political violence, but the ideas that unite the disparate parts and allow the machine to function. I believe the potency of these concepts is key to bringing so many people into these destructive projects.