A. Clifton James
Modern Indians, and those closely affiliated with their interests, are not the only people with vested interests in maintaining a protected, orthodox view of themselves. As John Messenger points out for contemporary Irish and African nationalists (1989:115-124), great offensive is often taken at what anthropologists, historians, and other scholars write and say about the groups they study. Following Messenger’s useful lead—he collected and assembled a list of Irish criticisms of his writings and treated it as a body of folklore—here is a sample of the verbal sanctions issued against anthropologists and others whose research reporting is deemed injurious or nonconforming. Sometimes sticks, stones, or other weapons are used in defense of the dominant story line, as well, but scholars are especially susceptible to negative words. As Messenger points out, any group’s regularly expressed grievances form a valuable, relevant body of data that can be used for understanding them. Not all of these complaints were originally constructed by Indians, but Indians soon enough acquire and use the phrasings; and because they come from multiple sources they are by no means consistent.
You are anti-Indian.
You are anti-traditional Indian.
You are anti-modern Indian.
You hate Indians.
You don’t like Indians.
You hate yourself and your White heritage and are taking it out on the Indian.
You are a “Wannabe Indian.” Your problem is that you really want to be an Indian but you can’t be.
You are blaming the victim.
You don’t feel guilty enough about what White men have done to the Indian (i.e., you are not blaming the Victimizer enough.)
You are being false to the true ideals of America.
You really are a racist.
You may not be a racist at heart, but you are mouthing racial stereotypes.
You are a liberal, a utopian do-gooder, a romantic.
You are acting in an un-Christian manner.
Your thinking is utterly corrupted by Judeo-Christian, historicist, lineal, secular, materialistic, and other White biases.
You resent the many wonderful features of Indian life not found in White culture.
You are angry, crazy, hostile, spiteful, jealous, etc.
You are a culture thief or a culture vulture.
What you say about Indians can’t be trusted because someone with a vested interest harmful to Indians is paying you to say it.
You use Indians to get rich or to help your career.
You are not truly interested in Indians—you study them only to understand your own alienated self better.
You are a reactionary, an apologist for capitalist oppressors, racists, and exploiters, a supporter of colonialism, of neocolonialism, of internal colonialism, of the Hegemony, of the Patriarchy, etc.
You are interfering in Indian self-determination or sovereignty.
You are unethical—you should only write and say things that are acceptable to Indians.
You are an assimilationist who believes in equality.
You are ignorant of the true nature of Indianness, tribalism, etc.
Indians are individualists; your lofty generalizations have nothing to do with real Indians.
You are projecting your own selfish individualism and do not understand that Indians inherently and inevitably are dedicated to group life and goals, abandoning self-interest to collective interests.
No White man can ever really understand or think like the Indian and you might as well stop trying.
The people you describe are not really Indian.
Indians have always lied to and deceived anthropologists.
Whatever any Indian says about Indian heritage, history, culture is indisputably true, not to be questioned.
Although Indians may have cautiously revealed some trivial features of their ways, they have always carefully concealed the sacred features of their heritage.
What you say is only true of a very few Indians.
What you say is only true of Indians who have abandoned their real heritage.
You do not understand modern Indians; what you say is true of lifeways that disappeared generations ago.
You never met a genuine Indian.
There are no genuine Indians—Indians are who and what they say they are.
What you say may be reasonably true so far as it goes, but you have willfully ignored many vital things about Indians (gender issues, homosexuality, poverty, powerlessness, non-status Indians, unrecognized Indians, twentieth-century Indians, educated Indians, militant Indians, etc.).
You are not taking the emic point of view.
You do not understand the Indian point of view.
By writing and speaking about Indians, you degrade them.
There’s nothing new in what you say about us Indians—we’ve always known that.
You do not believe in cultural relativity.
You are being analytic and objective.
By claiming their are standards of truth and objectivity in studying Indians, you are epistomologically primitive.
You do not understand that there is no such thing as truth about Indians, there is only discourse or narratives.
There is no such thing as unbiased, apolitical, non-partisan observation, interpretation, or thinking about Indians.
Humanists, and those who espouse subjectivism, understand Indians better than social scientists obsessed with objectivity.
Only friends of the Indian really try to understand them.
If you don’t help Indians by giving generously, you are their enemy.
It takes an Indian to study, understand, explain, serve, teach about, administer, speak for, raise money for, or help the Indian and only Indians should do so.
You are denying or concealing the dirty, immoral underside of White history and culture.
The White man was (and is) worse than the Indian.
Whatever bad habits the Indian may have were learned from Whites.
The White man is fully responsible for everything bad that has happened to Indians.
You deny that before Columbus Indians lived in sovereign nations, and that Indians today after centuries of struggle are rightfully regaining their sovereign nationhood.
You deny that Indians played a crucial role in American history, politics, and culture—as the role model for liberty, freedom, justice, participatory democracy, and the Constitution, as the Saviour of America at critical moments in its history such as at Plymouth Rock and Valley Forge, etc.
You don’t understand that Indians who became Christians, who dressed or acted like Whites, who bought land and paid taxes on it, who sought citizenship, jobs, education, and homes in White communities were only doing this as a ploy in order to survive and to protect their innermost Indianness.
You do not understand that Indians only took from Whites what they thought was important to them, and that they have always been fully in control of their heritage and destiny.
No matter what the Whiteman has done or will do to the Indian, Indians will forever be Indians.
No matter how much Indians change socially, culturally, linguistically, and biologically, they will always remain Indian.
You do not understand that Indian heritage and identity is carried in the blood that courses through their veins, and you deny that it takes only one drop of Indian blood to make an Indian.
You do not understand the common law, or the canons of Indian law, or Supreme Court decisions concerning Indians, etc.
Messenger, John. 1989. Inis Beag Revisited: The Anthropologist as Observant Participator. Salem, WI: Sheffield.