The Meskwaki and Anthropologists: Action Anthropology Reconsidered

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments Having grown up in Iowa, I drove by the Meskwaki settlement near Tama, Iowa, countless times. Although curious about the people who lived there, I knew little more than that they held a powwow every year. Never did I dream I would one day write a book about—and with—them. Life’s journey, however, takes us places we never imagined . For that, I am grateful. When I finally did visit the settlement as a graduate student working on my dissertation, I was fortunate to meet many knowledgeable people willing to help me. I am especially grateful to the people at the Meskwaki Senior Center, who were so hospitable to me during my visits to the settlement. Thank you for being patient with my ignorance and enduring so many questions from this mukuman. Special thanks are due to Johnathan Buffalo, tribal historian for the Meskwaki settlement, and to Suzanne Wanatee. I value your insights and your friendship. Since this work is based on my dissertation, the debts I owe for its completion extend back to graduate school at the University of Michigan. I am indebted to Maria Montoya, my adviser, who perceptively steered me toward the archive of the Fox Project after I stumbled across Frederick Gearing’s book Face of the Fox and who chaired my dissertation committee. I also am grateful to the other members of my committee: John Carson, Philip Deloria, Gregory Dowd, and Richard I. Ford. Your support and encouragement kept me going during the months-long marathon of dissertation writing. Many suggestions made after my dissertation was finished also found their way into this book. I am grateful to Martha S. Jones, the graduate students in the History Department dissertation reading group from the fall 2002 semester , and the summer informal reading group, especially Barbara Berglund, Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, Anna Lawrence, Andrew Needham , and Alice Ritscherle. Your criticisms and questions pressed me to rethink and hone my argument in portions of chapter 3, in particular . I want to acknowledge the support of the State Historical Society of Iowa, which provided funds to support my research. I also thank the Annals of Iowa for permission to use in this book those parts of an article that appeared in the journal under the title “Meskwaki Remember Action Anthropology” in the fall of 2003 (vol. 62, no. 4). I also am most grateful to members of my family—my parents, Robert and LaVonne Schultz of Waterloo, Iowa, who showed, by example, the value of reading and learning; my husband, Michael Daubenmier, who supported my midlife career change, and my daughter, Jennifer, who has her own academic career and appreciates my struggles. Of course, this book owes much of its existence to Sol Tax, who placed the fieldnotes and other materials relating to action anthropology in archives of the University of Chicago and the National Anthropological Archives. “If these subjects are worth study, ‘objective history’ will come better from others,” he said.1 I hope my work meets his standards. x acknowledgments ...