The Meskwaki and Anthropologists: Action Anthropology Reconsidered

6. Fruits of Action Anthropology

6. Fruits of Action Anthropology At the same time Sol Tax was launching the scholarship program, he also continued his search for a source of funds for more significant projects on the settlement. Finally in 1954 Tax chased the right rainbow and came up with a pot of gold—a $60,000 grant from the Schwartzhaupt Foundation of New York City to spend over four years. To secure the grant, Tax skewed the purpose of the project slightly to meet the foundation’s goal of promoting citizenship, by stressing that the project would help settlement residents learn to run their own affairs and that that would make them better citizens.1 The funding ultimately made possible a project that, along with the scholarship program, has borne the brunt of the scrutiny and criticism of the entire action anthropology enterprise: an arts and crafts company called Tamacraft. This examination of Tamacraft’s founding and operation looks at previous evaluations of it, presents Meskwaki evaluations of it, and examines how Tamacraft fit into the broader framework for Tax’s activity with Indians in Tama and beyond. The birth of Tamacraft essentially represents the end of the Chicago students’ presence at Tama, but not the end of action anthropology . While this form of anthropology at Tama was winding down, action anthropology on the national level was continuing to grow and become more concrete. Just as Meskwaki had shared in the creation of action anthropology, they also helped shape Tax’s involvement in Native American affairs. The basic concept—of whites helping Native Americans without telling them what to do—was the foundation for his involvement in a watershed event in the devel- 228 fruits of action anthropology opment of Indian political activity: the American Indian Chicago Conference. The right for Indians to continue to exist as Indians, or cultural self-determination, came at least partly out of the first field party’s goal of allowing the community to continue to exist so that individuals could make their own choices to stay or leave. Similarly , the initiatives that Tax eventually was able to launch at the Meskwaki settlement, especially related to education and economic development, both grew directly out of suggestions from individual Meskwaki. Education and economic development became part of Tax’s vision for Indian communities nationally. The settlement’s brush with withdrawal of federal services alerted Tax to the necessity for, and desirability of, self-determination for Indian communities. The genesis of Tax’s interest in developing Native American leaders is less clearly rooted in his experiences with the Meskwaki, but the timing of his first endeavor in that area suggests a link. At the end of the University of Chicago’s project at the settlement , the community had a scholarship program for their youth and a fledgling business. Tax had an enhanced reputation and a core of beliefs regarding Native Americans: they had a right to continue to exist as Indians, and they had a right to make their own decisions. Those beliefs guided his interest in education, community development , and the right of Native Americans to speak for themselves. Need for Something Dramatic Records of the action anthropology project fail to make clear exactly how Sol Tax found out about the Emil Schwartzhaupt Foundation, but the foundation had turned to the University of Chicago Sociology Department for help in formulating a program to spend the bequest of a German immigrant, Emil Schwartzhaupt, who had made a fortune in the liquor business. By 1953 the trustees had decided on a program of grants that encouraged education for citizenship. The availability of $3.5 million in grant funds may have been general knowledge in the social sciences departments at Chicago. If not, Tax’s mentor at Chicago, Robert Redfield, was close to the sociology department, having earned his doctorate in that department, and fruits of action anthropology 229 knew the action anthropology project well, since his daughter Lisa had participated in the first field party.2 Tax’s proposal for funding attacked a fundamental problem that often occurs when groups of people from different cultures live in close proximity to each other—the inability of individuals to communicate across cultural barriers. As the proposal put it: “We find a general lack of mutual understanding which has caused Indians mistakenly to view their neighbors as oppressors and caused other Iowans to consider the Indians as a burden which threatens...