New Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories and Representations. Sergei Kan and Pauline Turner Strong, eds. Lincoln: University of Nebraska. 2006. xliii + 514 pp.
Reviewed by: Kirk Dombrowski, Associate Professor, CUNY Graduate Center and John Jay College, CUNY
If one were to imagine the fields of psychology, ethnosemantics, and ethnohistory to be three points on a plane, each pulling ethnographic description in its own direction, then the majority of Native American ethnology, past and present, could easily be contained within the triangle that connects these three points. This is not all bad. It gives the field a kind of consistency of perspective almost entirely lacking in other anthropologies, a point which Darnell alludes to in her genealogical essay in the front of the volume (pp. 3-16), and one which is true of several, though by no means all, of the essays in the volume. Where else but in Native Americanist anthropology, for example, is uncritical reference made to anthropological sources (ethnographic and theoretical) from the 19th and early 20th centuries; Malinowski never had it as good as Mooney or Sapir, it turns out, and seemingly never will. In other essays, quite the opposite is true, as authors seeking “new perspectives” find themselves outside of this familiar triangle, which gives this collection a tension that perhaps belies its dedication to a single teacher, or better, testifies to the sorts of tensions underlying a complex lifetime and legacy of Ray Fogelson’s academic work (to whom this festschrift is dedicated).
One result of this triangulation is that the psychology developed among conventional Native Americanist anthropology is of a particular sort, resulting from the well known if rather unmarked aspect of the field: the often close reliance of anthropologists on single individuals as transmitters of cultural knowledge. Culturalist explanations and individualist psychology have always been easy partners, both with each other and with a method so closely allied to individuals who seek to “epitomize,” to borrow Fogelsons’ term, as well as transmit cultural forms. The problem, however, is that this powerful individualist tendency permits (encourages?) the downplaying of prominent social, linguistic, and historical contexts (and their psychologies) inaccessible through a chosen consultant, or made such by the sort of relationship requested by the anthropologist. Thus, as the editors point out in their brief biographical sketch of the career of Ray Fogelson, his close relationship with Lloyd Runningwolf Sequoyah allowed him unique access to Cherokee “magico-medical beliefs” at a time when “few local younger people “took the elders seriously”” (p. xxvi). Left unexamined, though, are what those younger people did take seriously, and why. Is it an accident that Lloyd Sequoyah found himself both interesting to anthropology and uninteresting to those of Fogelson’s own age group? And what did this realization (made especially present by the anthropologist), mean to Lloyd Sequoyah’s sense of self, culture, time? The latter have been central to much Native American ethnology, but never seem to be asked in quite this way.
The tension between history and ethnohistory, if you will, or between the culturalist psychology of Native Americanist anthropology and one that embraces the fine grained historical contingency of individual subjectivity runs throughout the book. Moore, in one of the better essays in the volume, notes the search by “many of the contributors of this volume ….to develop analytic vocabulary for talking about these and other aspects of contemporary life” (p. 186). Noticeably absent from this new vocabulary are the psychological concerns expressed by Fogelson and Hallowell before him, though Moore’s essay is a partial exception. My guess (somewhat following Moore) is that the lack of fit between past vocabulary and current situations results from the fact that culture, in the contemporary context, has become highly politicized (Moore refers to this as “identity politics” [p. 186]) and that, as such, the sort of culturalist psychology attributed to ethnohistorical Indians is difficult to maintain. Nesper’s essay is a good example of this. In a smart essay on the continuities of resistance, he seeks to salvage an ethnohistorical standpoint, and consequently moves away from any direct concern with the psychological or individual. Brightman’s essay does the same, as he tries to reconcile the ethnohistory of ethno-anthropology. Similarly for Buckley.
Essays by Anderson, Brown, Bender are less reticent about past approaches, and remain well within the conventional triangle introduced above, reflecting ethnohistorical concerns matched with a culturalist psychological approach. All stand in contrast to the chapter by Dinwoodie who, taking up the topic of Hopi conceptions of time—one of the oldest saws in anthropological repertoire—points out that much of the confusion over whether the Hopi do or do not have a conception of time is itself a product of this sort of cultural psychology, one that sees individuals as slightly problematic vehicles for cultural symbols. Citing Sapir’s admonition, that “culture patterns…cannot be realistically disconnected from those organizations of ideas and feelings which constitute the individual” (p. 345), Dinwoodie flips the conventional reading of this quote, however, with the aim of putting culture back in history, subject to contingencies from individual life events to the ever changing global context.
Others chose not to engage this issue at all. The essays by Kan, Jastrzembski, DeMallie, and Becker represent interesting correctives on historical events or movements that involve either Native people or those who study them, but they contain little psychological focus or depth. This was not their concern, obviously, and mentioned here only to indicate which essays stand outside of the argument made here.
Yet something similar but more challenging is going on in four of the most interesting essays in the collection (Gleach, Harkin, O’Brien, and Strong), where representations of Native Americans in discourses (incompletely) outside of conventional ethnology are the main focus. I found these articles to be particularly intriguing because of the parallels with, and dependency on, conventional ethnohistorical/ethnographic work. Interesting, though, this parallel is not followed in the direction implied by the tensions of the volume as a whole. One wonders, for example, what might result from placing these “other” ethnohistories side by side with the ethnohistorical approach celebrated in the volume….how different is ethnohistory (chapters by Kan, Jastrzembski, DeMallie, and Becker) from “white” ethnohistory (of Pocahantas, for example, or French versions of Indians and the far West, or the ethnography of Native America underwriting the Camp Fire Girls). Taken together, these ironically other ethnohistories place our current resolutions in limbo. If the aims and allegiances of other ethnohistories are unproblematically linked to commercial, ideological, and even particular individual projects, doesn’t that raise the same question for the ethnohistories rather unproblematically advertised as authentic in some of the essays in this volume (and many more outside of it)?
Lastly, in one of the more curious essays in the volume, Urban launches completely outside the conventional triangle of Native Americanist anthropology in a linguistic-centered move that leaves the conventional ethnosemantics entirely behind. His essay is synthetic, and takes as his topic both “cultural newness” and “linguistic imperatives,” and asks about their role in cultural transmission. Urban ties his discussion to the “rational grounding of authority” (p. 88), and a metacultural encouragement of novelty that foregrounds force, using myths by and representations of Native Americans as comparative cases. Unlike Moore’s essay, Urban’s does not concern itself with past approaches at all, working instead entirely outside of the ethnosemantic/ethnohistorical tradition. This is the most “new” of the new perspectives represented here.
The diversity of approaches is tobe expected from so wide a body of scholars, connections to Fogelson aside. Importantly, the volume contains as advertised a number of new directions that serve (intentionally or not) to highlight some of the problems with the past, problems not solved by ongoing reference to native collaboration or heightened reflexivity. This contribution outweighs those of the individual essays, though it must be gained by reading between the essays, as it were.
