Tracing Ancestry: Personalizing our Role in Decolonization
The following is a paper that was read as part of the session on "Changing Political Climates: The Relational dynamics of Obligation in Urgent Anthropological Research" at the AAA/CASCA meetings in Vancouver, BC. November 21, 2019 Anthropologists like to think that we are the most self-reflective academics when it comes to thinking about how our discipline has an entangled history with colonialism. We discuss how the remnants of this history affect our discipline’s current reputation and conduct, the state of our current relationships with power and privilege, as well as the long-term ethical relationships that we have with the people we work with. As anthropologists we are often aware of how the conduct of our disciplinary ancestors informs the relationships that we have with people today --- we know this through our own inquiry – and oftentimes we come to know this from people who we work with informing us of the negative impacts anthropologists...
