From: ask-AT-unlinfo.unl.edu (alpana knippling)
Subject: Hindmarsh etc.
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 09:26:57 -0500 (CDT)


I have really profited from learning abt recent Australian events from
Peter Stewart and Gareth Griffith, both of whom I think are doing a 
good job of drawing larger points from the Hindmarsh event (which I 
gather isn't over but is ongoing). This is an exemplary activity 
teaching us what to learn from (current) history so we can intervene in it.
What do listmembers think of their ideas and the following ones: 

--that a "crisis" of anthropology is unfolding at the end of the 
millennium (as if Robert Johnson's regular postings didn't already remind us 
of this)? How does this disciplinary crisis speak to us?
--the Hindmarsh controversy, although it is imbued with local 
politics, has echoes everywhere you find indigenous peoples: Native 
American sacred sites were destroyed first literally by vested 
interests and corporations and then figuratively in American popular culture 
(e.g., all those films abt haunted houses built on Native American burial 
grounds); the tribals in India (e.g., the Chipko movement and numerous
police-authorized takeovers of tribal land, the killings and rape of 
tribals). What does all this say for academic intervention and 
theorization? This is not a rhetorical question. For instance, here in 
Nebraska quite a few left-wing academics have taken up 
the "cause" of Native American rights and abuses; they work actively 
in the "reservations" (sorry, I cannot refrain from these quotation 
marks around everything!), doing the work of translating texts for the
new Native American generation that doesn't speak or read Native languages
any more, among other activities. I myself admire the zeal but remain 
ambivalent abt it too. What do others think of academic responsibility
in situations where human rights are violated, esp. given the crisis 
of anthroplogy?
Oops, second point became longer than intended. Before signing off, 
would people mind very much if I told the deadheads out there in 
cyberspace what a long strange trip it was?   
Best,
Alpana Knippling
ask-AT-unlinfo.unl.edu

 


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