Salvage Anthropology, the Politics of Science, and Native Land Title in California: 1911-1948

• In Event: Reimagining and Remaking the World: Decolonial and Indigenous STS

Abstract

This essay investigates the anthropological knowledge production surrounding the Yahi Native, Ishi, and the associated institutional interests of the University of California, Berkeley and anthropologist, Alfred L. Kroeber. The paper situates scientific knowledge and law within the same colonial-imperial culture of United States nationalism. It identifies the shared assumptions about Native life that existed in both cultural domains, and it also traces knowledge about the “Indians of California” (Kroeber’s category) as it emerged from colonial context, crystallized in the new department of anthropology at UC Berkeley, and finally determined a set of Native land title cases in California under the pretense of scientific expertise. My paper emphasizes issues such as colonial-imperialism and geo-political context, expertise and scientific authority, institutional prestige and cultural capital, and ideology and legal authority. Through Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s notion of the “Native informant,” I argue that Ishi’s displacement in the anthropological category “Indians of California” marked the impossibility of an ethical relation, a mark that was reproduced in California law. I also argue that the power dynamics that were inherent in this history of knowledge constituted an epistemic hegemony in which Native tribes were compelled to accept the “Indians of California” legal category in order to sustain their claims to land title and limited sovereignty. By elucidating these politics of science and their role in state governance, I aim to foreground these non-scientific dimensions of science and thereby advance critical scholarship in STS.

Author

• Robert S Edwards, UCSD