Radical Indigenism

Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi character Ender is a genius- a savior in his desperate world, set in the future. Ender adjusts to new and unknown territories with a strange ease. One example of this exceptional ability, or quick thinking, is revealed in one of his first encounters with null gravity. Before stepping into the battle room, unique as it adheres to null gravity, Ender recognizes a need to reorient himself. He knows that if he interacts in the battle room with the same orientation he used outside the battle room he will fail, because the battle room is unlike the corridors in which he now stands. He will need to reorient himself.

Ender is wise in this understanding, and all would be wise to consider the applicability of this theory as we interact with and engage with practices which are foreign to us. Garroutte emphatically endorses the necessity of the reorientation process in her theory of Radical Indegenism which “assumes that scholars can take philosophies of knowledge carried by indigenous people seriously (10).” Garroutte is asking anthropologists to begin their scientific task by recognizing their own orientation as an illegitimate starting point when considering other culture’s philosophies of knowledge. In other words, anthropologists must reorient themselves to the culture they enter, not only allowing for different methods of living, but allowing those methods just as much dignity as our own. One important result of this action is the unique perspective it affords indigenous peoples.

At face value, this theory appears commonplace and should expect a warm welcome from the anthropological community. After all, it caters brilliantly to a relativistic worldview. It appears to relieve the scientist from making any claims or assertions concerning morality or personal responsibility. Why hasn’t this concept been in practice for years? It seems to be the underpinning of secular cultural anthropology.

But, if one searches deeper, it is clear that Radical Indigenism is calling for more than just a relativistic acceptance of others, it requires a self criticism that Western anthropologists as a whole have yet to undertake: that of scientific inquiry/methodology, and ontology. Beneath our claims of relativism, Gourroutte suggests we still pass off indigenous philosophies of knowledge, concerning American Indians as an example, as “‘primitive’...that have been superseded by contemporary ‘factual knowledge,’” or we label these philosophies symbolic, “rather than literally truthful” (103). Gourroutte calls this a “cultural ascendancy of scientific models of inquiry” (103). In other words, beneath the claim of relativism is a modernist factual science Western anthropologists use as a standard against which they measure other philosophies of knowledge . This does not look so relativistic after all.

Priest addresses this paradox (or perhaps hypocrisy), relating the stance anthropologists claim to have taken concerning morality: “there is no basis of appeal to any ideas or values beyond those already affirmed within a society (64).” After showing anthropologists general avoidance of moral and ethical language, Priest states that in annual meetings “anthropologists selectively latch on to one particularly ethnocentric moral strand of moral thinking in our own culture, one way of conceptualizing morality and elevate it to a preeminent position” (64). This parallels to Garroutte’s portrayal of the tendency to claim relativism, while continuing to judge according to one (Western) defined cultural standard.

Garroutte’s push for the “resistance to the pressure upon indigenous scholars to participate in academic discourses that strip Native intellectual traditions of their spiritual and sacred elements,” and assertion to judge indigenous philosophies as “claims that, to one degree or another, reflect or engage the true,” are an exception to secular anthropology. Radical Indigenism is exceptional as it calls the stance of relativism to transcend even philosophies of knowledge. This transcendency is necessary as it gives voice and honor to the structures from which indigenous peoples, such as American Indians, form their identity.

Tune in soon for more on this topic :)

Ender's Game-Orson Scott Card

Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America- Eva Marie Garroutte

Christian Theology, Sin, and Anthropology-Robert Priest chapter 4 of

Anthropology and Theology: Gods, Icons, and God-talk- Walter Randolph Adams, Frank A Salamone