> There are shelves full of "benign" Amerindian tales in libraries
> everywhere--emasculated, sanitized, predigested pap! Lots of
> them written for non-native audiences as charming "folk tales",
> remnants of the "olden days".
Ok, Ok... I stand corrected. Perhaps I should have used "non-controversial"
rather than benign--Holy cow, are you all touchy out there or what?
Kidding aside, we are interested in identifying recent scholarship which is
considered controversial. The linkage that we are trying to establish is
that of "appropriation." That is, using information from another culture
for purposes of validating their own.
Examples include:
Ruth Benedict: Patterns of Culture. She typecasts Pueblo Indians as
"dionysians" and Plains Indians as "apollinarians." I, personally, am
Pueblo Indian and I don't think I've ever met a dionysian! Anyway, the
analogy is suppose to make Pueblo Indians as passive-noble and Plains
Indians as agressive-warrior. Pueblos are therein seen as being these
warm-squishy, profound kind of being. The reality is that Pueblo people
can be holy terrors when then have a mind to (which is alot these days).
Ramon Guiterrez: When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away. This is a
freudian analysis focused on SW contact between the Pueblo and Spanish.
What's kind of convoluted about this analysis is that it uses a strictly
Caucasian worldview to interpret the values and resulting actions of the
clash of ideologies between two profoundly distinct cultures. Ramon
establishes the dialogue with archival accounts--he apparantly has never
talked with living Pueblo people about these ideas.
Roscoe: The Zuni Man-Woman. Although the ethnographic evidence is there
to identify trans-sexuals (or maybe this is the wrong term) in Pueblo
society, the basic premise is to demonstrate that "primitive people"
accepted such individuals and that contemporary society should do the
same.
I am interested in identifying more examples, not particularly in defending
the above examples.
Thanks,
Ted Jojola
Native American Studies
University of New Mexico