The Meskwaki and Anthropologists: Action Anthropology Reconsidered

Notes

Notes Acknowledgments 1. Tax, “Replies,” Current Anthropology 16.4 (December 1975): 534. Series Editors’ Introduction 1. An exception is the recent book in our series by Keelung Hong and Stephen Murray, Looking through Taiwan (2005). Introduction 1. One of the difficulties in writing about the Meskwaki was what to call them. It is no minor matter. For one thing, as tribal historian Johnathan Buffalo has demonstrated, outsiders over hundreds of years assigned various names to the Meskwaki—as many as 128. See Johnathan Buffalo, Tribal Synonymy, copy in possession of the author. Furthermore, historians now understand that the name applied to a certain group is an important signifier of its status vis-àvis those using the name. As David Hurst Thomas argued in his history of the relations between archeologists and Native Americans, the power to name a people often masked power struggles between the two groups. He wrote, “The power to name becomes the power to define one’s identity and very existence.” See David Hurst Thomas, Skull Wars, xxxviii–xxxix. Although I decided to call settlement residents what they called themselves—Meskwaki, or People of the Red Earth—the names that other people used instead of Meskwaki appear in sources that I cite. Briefly, these names include Sac and Fox, Mesquaki, or Fox. When Sol Tax wrote his dissertation, he referred 318 notes to pages 2–7 to the community as the Fox. So did his students. Thus, their project with the Meskwaki came to be called “the Fox Project.” In keeping with current tribal preference, I used Meskwaki except when unavoidable , as in direct quotations, and substituted “Chicago project” for “Fox Project.” 2. Walter Miller Journal, July 15, 1948, Box 15, Folder Miller Duplicate Interviews, Fox Project Papers, National Anthropological Archives , Suitland md, hereinafter referred to as fpp; Lynd, Knowledge for What? 3. Vine Deloria Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins, 83–104. 4. Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins, 83–104 (quotations on 98 and 99). 5. Mead, “American Indian,” 68–74; Stewart, “Anthropologists as Expert Witnesses,” 35–42. 6. Redfield, “Values in Action,” 20–22; Arensberg, “Values in Action ,” 25–26. 7. Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology,” S24, S37–S38; Stocking, “‘Do Good, Young Man,’” 254–55. For an overview of the critique of anthropology from the 1960s and 1970s, see Current Anthropology 9.5 (December 1968) 391–407, especially Berreman, “Is Anthropology Alive?” 391–96. 8. Hoyt, “Children of Tama,” 15–20. 9. Stucki, “Anthropologists and Indians,” 300–317. 10. Foley, “Fox Project,” 171–83 (quotations on 179–180). Foley’s insightful book Heartland Chronicles also touches on the Meskwaki experience with action anthropology, but primarily the book deals with race relations between Tama whites and settlement residents. 11. Gearing, Face of the Fox, 96, 108. 12. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 2, 3. 13. Slotkin, Readings in Early Anthropology, xi, 7, 8. 14. Slotkin, Readings in Early Anthropology, xi, xii, 45; Thwaites, Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents; Joseph Lafitau, Customs of the American Indian Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times (1724) referred to in van Willigen, Applied Anthropology, 18–19. 15. Stocking, “Scotland as the Model of Mankind,” 65–90; Bieder, notes to pages 8–13 319 “Albert Gallatin,” 91–98. Slotkin puts the beginning of anthropology even earlier, in the fifteenth century, when “commercial capitalism and extensive acculturation spread a secular world view among intellectuals” that challenged understandings of the world and its peoples based on Old Testament accounts of creation. Slotkin, Readings in Early Anthropology, vii, 38. 16. Van Willigen, Applied Anthropology, 19, 22; Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology,” S24. 17. Darnell, “Theorizing American Anthropology,” 43–44; Fogelson , “Nationalism and the Americanist Tradition,” 77–78. 18. Fogelson, “Nationalism and the Americanist Tradition,” 78–79; Henry R. Schoolcraft, Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, cited in van Willigen, Applied Anthropology, 19; Partridge and Eddy, “Development of Applied Anthropology,” 9–10, 13. 19. Partridge and Eddy, “Development of Applied Anthropology,” 9, 13. 20. Partridge and Eddy, “Development of Applied Anthropology,” 12; Keesing, “Applied Anthropology in Colonial Administration,” 373–98; Kelly, “Anthropology and Anthropologists,” 6–24. 21. Horowitz, Rise and Fall of Project Camelot, 47–49; Peter Braestrup, “Researchers Aid Thai Rebel Fight,” New York Times, March 20, 1967, copy in Box 175, Folder 7, Sol Tax Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Regenstein Library, University of...