Turning Contempt Into a Career
In a year end reflection, Margaret Wente said she regretted one column from 2008 – the one in which she defended Dick Pound for referring to Aboriginal people as “savages”, pulling her justification from a recent publication by one Frances Widdowson.
Wente is columnist, which is not unlike being a blogger, but with better pay and more status. She has to rack her brain for things to write about; and like many bloggers, she tries to be “provocative”. Her self-defined role as purveyor of controversy-lite, plus her daily deadline, sometimes force her to venture into areas without real knowledge or expertise, armed with a single source. It’s a formula: find a headline, figure out a naughty, politically-incorrect take on it, locate a scholarly-sounding article or contrarian somewhere to back you up, then dismiss REAL science, history, or political theory as “outworn conventional wisdom” or “self-serving myths”. It’s shallow, but heck, she’s got a column to write.
And mostly it works for her – she attracted quite a bit of attention pretending to be an expert on needle exchange, as long as you didn’t actually look at the real numbers (which, of course, she dismissed as the self-serving myths of a health care elite). But when you don’t actually know anything about the subject, you need to pick your sources carefully. Frances Widdowson? REAL bad choice.
The world first heard about Frances Widdowson when she was suspended in the mid-nineties from a contract position with the Government of the Northwest Territories. The GNWT has a formal policy of taking traditional knowledge (TK) of Aboriginal people into account in its studies and policies, and Widdowson was suspended when she publicly derided that practice, and claimed that her Charter Right to freedom of religion was being compromised by having to take into account native “superstitions”. She claimed to speak from the perspective of a “scientist” (I believe she was working on a master’s degree in sociology back then).
My wife was completing a doctorate in biology at the time with one of Canada’s leading ethnobotanists. What struck us both was Widdowson’s astonishing, unapologetic ignorance of what TK meant, how it is used in the formulation of public policy, and how it parallels, complements, and in some cases directs Western science. That’s a topic for another post (anyone interested?); but given that her “argument” appeared to be nothing more than embittered venting, I didn’t think we’d hear from her again.
Wrong. She has surfaced several times in various public policy journals, inevitably with a faux-scholarly dismissal of some aspect of contemporary Aboriginal society. For example, she gave vent to her contempt for the Nunavut Government’s consensus model some years ago, predicting its imminent failure in the absence of our vastly superior Party system. (Funny, it seems to be hanging in pretty well, while our Vastly Superior Party System is looking a bit frayed around the edges.)
She’s now on tour promoting her most recent work, “Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry, the Deception behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation“. Her appearance in Winnipeg yesterday, sponsored by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a conservative “think tank”, drew protesters offended by her book’s assertion that Aboriginal people have “not developed the skills, knowledge, or values to survive in the modern world”, have “undisciplined work habits, tribal forms of political identification, animistic beliefs, and difficulties in developing abstract reasoning”, are “lazy”, “unable to participate in wider society”, based on societies characterized by “savagery” and “barbarism”. Or perhaps they were annoyed by her enthusiastic defense of residential schools as “positive” and “necessary”.
Like acknowledged assimilationist Tom Flanagan (who praises the book), Widdowson is an ideologue (a self-professed Marxist) whose contempt for Aboriginal people is based on what MUST be wilful ignorance. How can you pretend to be a scholar, but show such an utter lack of knowledge of the complex trade, political and military networks that crisscrossed the Americas, pre and post contact? How can you dismiss Traditional Knowledge and ignore a century of successful collaborations between ethnobotanists and native healers, population biologists and hunters?
Since her GNWT days, Widdowson has attempted to brand herself as a lonely voice of objective scholarship, fighting a huge and corrupt Aboriginal “industry” bent on muzzling “the Truth”. She is, in fact, a mediocre writer, a poor researcher, and a bitter ideologue with an axe to grind. Here’s an exhaustive assessment from a person more knowledgeable than I am; Alfred’s blunt, informed dissection of her “research” and “analysis” are a pure joy.
Dick Pound had the grace and intelligence to disavow his own statement, with a sincere apology. Margaret Wente waited several months to express something that started to resemble regret for her defense of Pound – she appears to have sensed, however dimly, that she was wrong.
But Frances Widdowson won’t change. She’s making a pretty good career peddling hate disguised as scholarship to the fringes.
Don’t be fooled.
I would be very interested in a post on TK.
It’s nice to see that you leftists have your crosses to bear too. When I first read about her here, what struck me was not so much her unreconstructed marxism, but how similar her arguments sounded to those of Dawkins et. al. in the Darwinist debates. It appears there is indeed a god for the 21st century and its name is science.
Widdowson’s paleo-communism is so far out there, so weirdly dogmatic, that I feel no need to apologize on behalf of our end of the spectrum. Read some of her political stuff on modes on governance: my god, it’s like a parody of earnest undergraduate Marxist essays from the Thirties – earnest, contorted, incomprehensible, and utterly disconnected from reality.
One thing’s for sure, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy doesn’t sponsor “leftists”. Maybe neoliberals. But not leftists.
Well, they sponsored her. Her view of Aboriginal people lines up perfectly with that of Tom Flanagan’s.
One of your best posts ever. Political scientist Graham White has savaged her in the public policy journals too.
Hers is what we Marxist ideologues used to call “vulgar-Marxism.” For heaven’s sake, she’s still channeling Lewis Henry Morgan! The only reason her mediocre scholarship has any traction at all is because she’s writing what some folks want to hear; they’re none too fussy about the grounds of her arguments.
A discussion of TEK would be welcome. I’ve done a little reading on that subject, but will defer to you in leading the discussion.
I think the Marxism is a red-herring. Anyway I have privately debated Francis a couple of times. Not much heat or light on either aboriginal people or Marxism. Interesting that it is the Frontier Center that gives her a podium and keeps her in the news. The good news is we can wait for the moment when she repudiates her Marxism and writes up in book all the reasons why Marxism is wrong. Of course it will really be a book about all the reasons she was wrong.
I don’t know diddly about neo-liberal-marxo-paleo-whateverism, but I know human scum when I see it.
Haters like this Widdowson person need to have a light shone on their BS. Good work.
( I also would love to read a post about TK.)
Interesting, I’ve not heard of her writings before, being I’m in Alaska and of Native American Indian heritage. That’s most likely why.
Incidentally, her partner in crime, Alfred Howard, deserves equal censure.
Sorry, balb, I forgot that the left doesn’t do apologies.
The appalling, vulgar assimilationism we are seeing mainly from the right reminds me of those who like to argue we’d all be better off without French. They seem to forget that there is not one aboriginal person in this country that would support it, but plenty who would resist it with their lives, and with all the legal and moral arguments on their side. When I read the bilious rants, I sometimes think the best thing that could happen would be to agree with them heartily, put them in charge of implementation and send them out to the communities to try and effect it. “Don’t forget to keep in touch”.
That being said, I suspect most of the Canadian population, left and right, has some assimiliationist instincts born out of a near-universal Western belief in the march of progress. Just about every component of the political spectrum has dabbled in assimilation at some point. Think Trudeau, who saw himself as a great rational, liberal liberator. It isn’t so much that everyone is racist (although there is plenty of that) it’s simply that modern minds have a very hard time digesting where this is all going or even supposed to be going, and it’s easy to lapse into a frustrated, reactive mode when problems appear to defy solutions or when social pathologies seem unbearable. I suspect answers lie more in everybody minding their own business and committing to justice and less-than-perfect compromises than insisting everyone try to jump through psychological hoops to experience and understand the cultural gap, often a double-edged sword. Whose business is it how and why the GNWT sets its wildlife policies and why is this a national issue?
balb, I was serious about that TK post. I’m not setting you up for a neo-con rant.
“her partner in crime, Alfred Howard, deserves equal censure.”
Indeed he does. But I feel a special, historic bond with Frances.
Back in his wild and wooly days in Nunavut, Stageleft used to run an online forum called simply the PDF – the political discussion forum. It was an amazing site; read daily by bureaucrats, journalists, politicians, and a delighted general public. Absolutely uncensored, profane, gossipy, it was where everyone went to find out exactly what was going on. Stageleft was frequently threated by lawyers and leaders, but steadfastly protected the anonymity of his posters and the cheerful anarchy of the PDF.
Widdowson began dropping in the late nineties, and she and I became sparring partners. I was as annoying then as I am now, but under another sobriquet. As it happened, I was reading and thinking a lot about TK at that point, and her simple-minded dogmatism was pretty easy to demolish.
I never met Alfred Howard, but as her co-author, I’m sure Satan has reserved a seat for him beside that special fire set aside for those who use mock scholarship to disguise and ennoble their hate.
Peter, I think for many, “assimilationism” arises from a compassionate impulse, which is essentially: “You seem to be having a tougher time of it than me. Why not try to become more like me, and then you won’t have such a tough time?”
It’s cretinously simplistic, but in all honesty I think it’s sometimes well meant. Of course, we all know which road is paved with good intentions, right? The one that leads to residential schools, massive relocations, dog slaughter, the banning of languages or religious practices…all for the good of the poor benighted sufferer who, if they’d just learn English, convert, give up their weird attachment to their traditions, and move into our suburbs, would be so much happier.
Yes balb, I guess that’s the problem with all those commenters over at SDA–too many compassionate impulses.
But I think you are right in many cases. The harder and more delicate question is what can be expected by way of accountability and progress writ large from the aboriginal communities. I don’t even like to raise that issue on a blog because it just attracts the yahoos. But I think it is a mistake for the aboriginal peoples and their supporters to underestimate the inevitable ultimate psychological reaction to what sounds like endless, repeated complaints of historical grievance and attributions of one-sided responsibility. I’m perfectly aware that is not how they talk amongst themselves, but it has been the spirit of the soundbite for decades now and I fear it may prove to be a self-inflicted wound and has something to do when the assimilationist revival. One of the best thing that has happened to them is Chief Louie because his kind of talk will go a long way towards keeping the decent but uninformed middle on the side of decency.
Sometimes everybody just has to accept the realities of human nature and fallibility.
Great post balbulican.
I didn’t know this about her: The world first heard about Frances Widdowson when she was suspended in the mid-nineties from a contract position with the Government of the Northwest Territories. The GNWT has a formal policy of taking traditional knowledge (TK) of Aboriginal people into account in its studies and policies, and Widdowson was suspended when she publicly derided that practice, and claimed that her Charter Right to freedom of religion was being compromised by having to take into account native “superstitions”.
What kind of Marxist would resort using her religious right as a starting point?
My partner made the mistake of asking for this book for his birthday and a colleague happily bought it for him. We work in the Aboriginal “industry” as Widdowson describes it and he was fooled by the PR that it was examining this professional sector from a Marxist perspective. I wasn’t paying attention, thinking that he was asking for a progressive book, but as soon as I saw the book and her name on the cover, I gasped! “Don’t you know that this is the book that Wente referred to when she attacked Aboriginal people and their culture?” “This is the book that sparked all those Facebook groups demanding Wente’s resignation.”
The book is a poorly researched and written racist screed. No surprise that Tom Flanagan would endorse it or the toxic Right Wing Frontier Institute would invite her to speak. I think her so-called “Marxism” was used as a marketing ploy.
Chief Clarence Louie is another favourite of the Frontier Institute and among the right wing. He’s the Horatio Alger of the Aboriginal world. “If your life sucks it’s because you suck.” And then there is the illustrious Senator Patrick Brazeau, friend and confidante to PM Harper. These guys are serving their right wing cheerleaders well by advancing an assault on all the gains made in the last two decades.
The fact that TK is finally given consideration in classrooms, governance, justice and environmental assessments is a very good thing. If anything we need to do much more. But all these ass hats want to exploit failures (much of it due to unfair negotiations and federal negligence) to advance a policy of assimilation. Like Widdowson, the right wing neo-conservatives like to throw out the vile and racist term, the Indian Problem whenever they spout their solutions. They promote stereotypes to gain broad public support for their agenda, peddling it as some kind of compassionate solution.
I once read an interesting article written by an indigenous peoples activist in Africa. The trust of it was that western media had a fixation with over-reporting failures of the Global South. It served their agenda to infantalise, pity and dumb down their news stories to prevent the empowerment of large swaths of people. I think we see a similar element at work here in Canada.
Peter:
“The harder and more delicate question is what can be expected by way of accountability and progress writ large from the aboriginal communities.”
Yup. A harder, more delicate, and completely different question.
Beijing:
Let’s not forget Calvin Helin, poster boy about two years ago for the “gosh darn, if I can succeed then the rest of you lazy natives can too.”
But that’s okay. The Helins and the Brazeaus are corrupt opportunists who read a political wind, took their shot, and won. It’s kind of refreshing to see native people exploiting native people for a change – makes a change from us white guys doing it all the time.
Dr Dawg, although Lewis Henry Morgan’s ethnology is 150 years out of date, unlike Widdowson, he admired and respected the peoples of the Iroquois Confederacy.
To whom it may concern:
As I think that all public debate is healthy, no matter how vitriolic the opposition, I will make a few comments about the postings regarding myself, Albert Howard, and our work. I am also disturbed that most of these postings are anonymous. Are you trying to avoid legal action, or simply ashamed of your ideas?
It is somewhat disturbing to read the comments by Travis Fast – one of the few people who has identified himself – as I always had great respect for him and his views at York University. As I can recall, we have only had one conversation on the aboriginal question. While riding on the subway home one night, I was essentially arguing that it was inappropriate for people, who were materialist thinkers, to condescendingly encourage aboriginal spirituality. At the time, I also thought that Travis had uncritically accepted the views of Menno Boldt about traditional governance. This is because Boldt seemed to think that tribal forms of political organization, which are based on kinship relations, are somehow “communistic”, when they are actually pre-class. Travis can be assured that there will be no book describing how I became a right-winger, and I think that this remark is very insulting and uncalled for.
As for the rest of the posts, I am dismayed, but not surprised, by the ad hominem remarks masquerading as “debate”. These kinds of tactics generally indicate a lack of intellectual content. It is a very serious charge to call someone a “hater” or “racist”. Don’t you think that this should be substantiated?
It should also be pointed out that Alfred’s review of our book is not the same thing as its actual content (we never refer to aboriginal peoples as “lazy” – in fact, we are criticizing this idea. Also the stages of “savagery” and “barbarism” are used to refer to all human beings. This was the typology of human development elaborated upon by Lewis Henry Morgan). We will be responding to Alfred in due course, and I am surprised that people on the Left find his promotion of spirituality (praying to rocks and trees) and romanticism (returning to the ways of his ancestors) inspiring. I doubt that any of the posters really take these ideas seriously; they are merely confusing condescension with left-wing activism.
The support for TK should be substantiated. Until hearing a convincing argument in its favour I will continue to argue what I think is the truth – that its value lies in extracting money for the Aboriginal Industry, not in enhancing our understanding of the world.
The argument about the complex trade and military relationships also needs to be substantiated. Remember, “complex” is a relative term. More “complex” than the trade and military relationships found in European, Chinese and Persian societies?
The argument about consensus government does not hold water. Just because Nunavut continues to exist, this does not show how the system is functional. A Parliamentary form of government requires political parties, otherwise there is no linkage between the electorate and the executive, and hold it accountable.
Demands for freedom of religion are non inconsistent with Marxist thought. Religion, after all, is the opium of the people and it is a progressive idea that irrational ideas not be imposed upon the population (although people can believe what they want in private).
Saying that Morgan’s views are 150 years old doesn’t show how they are wrong. Are Darwin’s ideas wrong as well?
I have no affiliation with the Frontier Centre, and it supports a variety of viewpoints that it thinks are valuable for public debate (Russell Means, for example, was invited to speak at the Centre). Any agreement that exists between them, Tom Flanagan and myself is due to our modernist assumptions, which is in contrast to the postmodern rejection of science and the enlightenment that exists under the label “Marxism” these days. I talked at the Frontier Centre because I thought it would give me the opportunity to put forth my views, and the Centre had no input into my talk. This opportunity was realized because the trip enabled me to do a two hour radio interview that elicited all sorts of interesting information, as well as two interviews on APTN that were also very fruitful in allowing me to communicate to an aboriginal audience.
Finally, I have not made a good living from my views. I was blacklisted by the academic community for several years and only recently obtained a permanent position. In fact, it would have been much more lucrative to use my skills as a member of the Aboriginal Industry, as some of the posters on this forum have done.
Sincerely,
Frances Widdowson
Someone’s stepped in the glue…this ought to be interesting…real interesting.
@Litigation – I’ll make sure I have popcorn ready in the morning.
Frances Widdowson said…”We will be responding to Alfred in due course, and I am surprised that people on the Left find his promotion of spirituality (praying to rocks and trees) and romanticism (returning to the ways of his ancestors) inspiring. I doubt that any of the posters really take these ideas seriously; they are merely confusing condescension with left-wing activism”…
You just can’t help your self hey Frances.Right of the bat you revert to condensation ,”praying to rocks and trees” ? wtf
This after you state
…” I am dismayed, but not surprised, by the ad hominem remarks masquerading as “debate””….
Your not interested in debate either,your pushing an opinion.
I might suggest you read Alfred Taiaiake’s books first, rather than making condescending remarks about “praying to rocks and trees” .
Balbulican- you might be interested in reading a very interesting review of Calvin Helin’s book “Dances with Dependency: Indigenous Success through Self-reliance”.
I have read the book myself ,and I have to say it’s not really fair to dismiss Helin ’s book totally out of hand.He does raise many important points and get somethings right.He gets in trouble when he start outlining his ideas for a “solution”.
Anyway check out the review:
http://www.mediabuzzard.com/?p=2089
Litigation: Give your head a shake.
Dirk: I’ve experienced some of Calvin’s approaches first hand, thanks. It doesn’t take much to describe problems afflicting many First Nations; the problem is in the diagnosis of causes and the prescription of solutions.
Frances:
I initially started to fisk your response, but I’ve always found your prose a bit turgid. So with your permission, I’ll just summarize and respond to your key points.
a) You attribute the anonymity of posts to fear or shame.
Oh, my – just like old homes week. You used to use the same line back on the old PDF. It was irrelevant to points being discussed then, and it’s irrelevant now. I’ll forgive your confusion of the terms “anonymous” and “pseudonymous”.
b) You don’t like being called a racist or hater.
No, I don’t imagine it’s very pleasant. Well, I think you’re both. But any reader who wants to assess that for themselves is certainly welcome to buy your book and draw their own conclusions. I hardly believe you’re “dismayed”, though. You enjoy the role of wounded academic warrior, the heroic voice of truth baffled by the wicked Indian Industry; it’s your brand. Really hasn’t worn well in the fifteen years you’ve been playing the role. If you’d like a suggestion, Flanagan seems to have moved on to a more subtle “Really, we’re deeply concerned for these people, who clearly need our help in divesting themselves of those awful land claims and treaties and reserves they’ve go themselves into”. It’s a more contemporary spin on the same old crap, but you might try it on.
c) You didn’t invent the Morgan’s typology, or his simplistic, linear theory of cultural evolution.
No, and I didn’t invent Larmarck’s theory of a force that drove organisms to ever higher levels of evolution. But like Morgan’s work, it’s been discredited and supplanted by better scientific models; so I don’t cite it. Hint…
c) You disagree with Alfred’s review, and will be responding to him at some point.
Oh, goodie. Well, do drop by and let us know. I have a root canal next week, but apart from that I can’t think of anything more calculate to stir my anticipation.
d) After a decade, you still haven’t figured out the distinction between the different kinds of Traditional knowledge, and to support your “argument” refer only to its spiritual aspect.
Back in the day when you were laughing at George Blondin’s beaver fetuses, (SUZANNE – please note, Frances used to mock fetuses!), you ignored the actual science being practiced in collaboration with TK holders and practitioners, focusing on and mocking its spiritual dimension. That’s not unlike dismissing the work of a Christian physicist because you think their religious beliefs are absurd.
e) You want to see my support for TK substantiated.
Fair enough. I’ll do a post. I hardly think it will convince you, as you’ve had the same access all these years to the works of Schultes, Davis, Arnason et al. as I have. But others might find it interesting.
f) You feel that “The argument about the complex trade and military relationships also needs to be substantiated.”
For those authentically interested in a sense of the aforementioned complexity, Charles C. Mann’s “1491″ provides an interesting overview based on recent scholarship. I take issue with a few of his conclusions (and several critics have disputed his more generous assumptions about population), but he makes it clear that pre contact Aboriginal groups were anything but “primitive”. For those interested in a deeper, longer dig, the three volume “History of the Native People of Canada” by Dr. James Wright is probably the best starting point.
g) You believe that a Parliamentary form of government requires political parties, otherwise there is no linkage between the electorate and the executive.
Sorry, but dogmatic repetition of an ideological premise doesn’t validate it. Nunavut voters elect members to a legislative assembly: the assembly elects an Executive Council, including the Premier and cabinet. Seems to work quite well so far.
Southern political parties are, of course, part of the Nunavut scene during federal elections, leading to absurdities like seasoned hunters forced by party discipline to try to sell gun registration, conservative candidates forced to argue against language legislation, and so on. Parties may serve the south well enough: they have little to do with Nunavut.
h) “Finally, I have not made a good living from my views.”
Well, as long as you’re happy and have your health.
Sincerely,
Balbulican
You know what?
I would really love someday to wake up in a Canada where I wasn’t constantly running into busy-body social-engineering twits who, understanding very little about aboriginal culture spirituality and traditions, wished to erradicate these things “for our own good”.
It always amazes me that this kind of stuff goes on so openly and regularly.
*sigh*
Another day, another anti-aboriginal bigot. (Sue me if you want)
Sometimes I find it very hard to be hopeful.
Thanks Frances.
M
Balb, I have to hand it to you–you trolled the dragon out of her lair. Well done.
You have already said most of what I wanted to say. I look forward to your post on TK–do you think you might concentrate on TEK, from which European environmental scientists have learned a thing or two?
As noted, pushing Morgan now (and lagatta, I agree that Morgan was respectful, but that wasn’t my point) is quaint and dated. Engels’ adoption of the cultural evolutionary model put forth by Morgan, with its sloppy categories like “savagery” and “barbarism,” is Eurocentric, teleological, and demonstrably wrong. And modernization theory, in which this stuff is now cloaked, should have gone the way of all flesh by now, but Widdowson’s views on the global economy would be all W.W. Rostow all the time, I suspect.
Just one point on Nunavut governance: recall that the population of Nunavut is app. 35,000. I live in Ottawa, with a population of more than a million. Our City Council does nicely without political parties, although we know that they’re backstage in both venues. Setting aside the question of whether or not Nunavut’s consensus government is a condensation of Inuit values–I think the question is far more complex, incidentally, and needs rephrasing–I can’t see how the fragmentation inevitably entailed by political parties would improve matters in Nunavut.
At least the framework presently exists for deep cooperation: Caucus, intensive committee work, an elected Cabinet, the curtailment of the traditional Westminster powers of the Premier, seats (if usually empty) for elders, and so on. And leadership cooperation is imperative to address the serious problems faced by the Nunavummiut today.
Now, if only something could be done about the ridiculous structure of the Nunavut public service…but later for that.
Well I for one am glad that Frances and Howard’s wobbly bits have been exposed for all to see. I admit I have been put off my morning porridge by the mental vision but wobble free in the breeze they must.
To whom it may concern:
I will respond to the posts as best as I can, as I have always found that there are silent observers who might be interested in the actual ideas that are addressed in the book written by Albert Howard and myself. Most of the posters, however, seem to be just interested in insulting me, for whatever reason. My bringing up the question of anonymity was to encourage skepticism about the personal attacks being made. It is somewhat unethical to make such attacks anonymously, because it prevents an evaluation of the motivations behind these remarks. Although Travis Fast felt the need to insult me publicly, when we have always had collegial relations in the past, I will at least be able to take this up with him in the future. Unfortunately, I have no such recourse with the other posters.
It is claimed that my remarks about Alfred’s “praying to rocks and trees” is an ad hominem comment. This is not so. It is a fact, not an insult. Alfred offers just such a prayer on page 2 of Peace, Power and Righteousness. This “thanksgiving” states that “we address and offer thanks to the earth where human beings dwell, to the streams, the pools, and the lakes, the corn and fruits, the medicines and trees, to the forests for their usefulness, and to the animals that are food and give their pelts for clothing, to the great winds, to the lesser ones, to the thunder; to the Sun, the mighty warrior, to the moon; to the messengers of the Creator who reveal his wishes and to the Creator who dwells in the heavens above who gives all the things useful to humans, and who is the source of the ruler of health and life”.
Although Alfred is entitled to believe what he likes, I can’t see how this irrational sentiment can be taken seriously by materialist thinkers, or how it relates to left-wing thought.
Someone claims that I am both a racist and a hater. The reason why I don’t “like” being called these things is because they are not true. This is an ad hominem comment; either it should be substantiated or withdrawn.
What models have discredited and supplanted Morgan’s typology? How is his typology similar to Lamarck’s theory? Morgan’s typology has been absorbed into scientific archaeology (especially his focus on the importance of the different stages of metallurgy and their impact on human societies). His understanding of “enlarging the basis of subsistence” also is what was being argued by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel. It should be noted by those observing this debate that still not evidence has been presented to show how Morgan was wrong.
Someone reacts to the fact that we find Alfred’s review wanting “Oh, goodie. Well, do drop by and let us know. I have a root canal next week, but apart from that I can’t think of anything more calculate to stir my anticipation”. Is this what passes for debate these days?
For the record, I was stating that one aspect of “traditional knowledge” – that beaver fetuses should be thrown back into the water so that they could be “reborn” – was unscientific. Albert Howard and I have focused on the spiritual dimension because this is used to justify the argument that “traditional knowledge” is special and therefore can’t be subjected to the same kind of scrutiny as scientific research. Without spiritual beliefs traditional knowledge is just basic observations – where the caribou go, if the ice is thin, etc. – that anyone, aboriginal or non-aboriginal, can acquire simply by interacting with their environment over a period of time. The Christian physicist analogy is misleading because the physicist’s knowledge doesn’t change because s/he is a Christian. However, spirituality is an integral part of TK.
I look forward to the post on TK. Referring to Schultes, Davis, Arnason et al. does not show how TK is beneficial. This could just be the confusion of popularity with validity that is so common in the TK literature. The argument that was put forward several years ago pertaining to Schultes et al. concerned the relationship between the plants used traditionally and modern pharmaceuticals (evidently “thousands” of pharmaceuticals in use today were supposed to have been derived from the plants aboriginal peoples in the Americas used. This claim is shown to be fraudulent on pp. 183-189 of our book. In fact, only four drugs used today – quinine, cocaine, curare and ipecac – were derived from aboriginal peoples’ “pharmacological knowledge” (they used Cinchona bark, Coca leaves, and the roots from Cephaelis species for general aches and pains, and curare as a poison for arrows, and drugs were then developed by scientific methods to apply to more specific diseases).
With respect to the “complexity” of trade and military relationships, “primitive”, like “complex”, is a relative term. Referring to Mann and Wright is not substantiation of this assertion. What evidence do these authors use to show that the trade and military relationships were complex, and not primitive, in comparison to European, Chinese and Persian trade and military relationships?
The point about consensus government does not address the main problem with the system (a lack of responsible government and the capacity of the electorate to hold the executive accountable). It is not clear how Nunavut is “working well” – high unemployment, low educational levels, massive government transfers, extremely serious social problems. These problems seem to be getting worse not better. This is not surprising when one considers that Nunavut was the outcome of rent seeking behaviour of the Aboriginal Industry, not an attempt to seriously address the dependency and dysfunction of the Inuit.
“I will respond to the posts as best as I can, a…no such recourse with the other posters.”
No substance – just another aggrieved assertion of victimhood. Moving along…
‘It is claimed that my remarks about Alfred’s “praying to rocks and trees” is an ad hominem comment. This is not so…. health and life”.
A lengthy rebuttal of a minor point. Moving on…
“Someone claims that I am both a racist and a hater. The reason why I don’t “like” being called these things is because they are not true. This is an ad hominem comment; either it should be substantiated or withdrawn.”
That would be me. I suggested that other readers should form their own opinion.
“What models have discredited and supplanted Morgan’s typology… Is this what passes for debate these days?”
No, that would be mockery of sophomoric argument. Not debate.
‘Without spiritual beliefs traditional knowledge is just basic observations – where the caribou go, if the ice is thin, etc. – that anyone, aboriginal or non-aboriginal, can acquire simply by interacting with their environment over a period of time.”
Absolutely. Any population of scientists who spend a millenium or so observing and interacting with an ecosystem would certainly acquire knowledge of that system. Most don’t.
I’m afraid you didn’t understand the Parable of the Christian Physicist. While his/her worldview is undoubtedly, radically shaped by religious beliefs, he/she is still capable of delivering observations that are accurate and valuable. Some defenders of TK, particularly on the political side, don’t distinguish between its spiritual context and its value as a source of observed data. I do.
At this point, Frances, when I introduce folks like Schultes, Arnoson, Wright et al., I’m not seriously expecting an informed comment from you. I’m letting our readership know where the real literature and expertise in the field lie. It’s a bit of a vaccine for those who might be tempted to buy your book.
Holy moly – I’ve never had so much fun on a Sunday night without 2 hookers and a bottle of Southern Comfort.
This is shaping up to be an interesting thread.
Balb – Excellent post – you’ve really outdone yourself here.
It’s a real hoot to read the back and forth here – I’ll admit I’m too “lazy” to have read Widdowson’s book yet.
However, I did want to contribute by saying I would agree that there is an oversized and deeply entrenched “Aboriginal Industry” in this country. I have seen it in several communities I used to live in, and I see it here in Ottawa.
Now I don’t want to give the impression I support your “findings” or agree with your book Frances – I haven’t read it. I very much value and/or respect the opinions of many of the posters and regulars here so I doubt I will agree with many of your assertions if I ever do read it.
But like I said about Brazeau – even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Carry on.
Sorry to say Frances, but you have done little to change my impression of you or your book. You still insist on using loaded terms like the “Aboriginal question”. That to me is a hallmark of racist thinking given the history of the NAZI regime and their concern with the “Jewish question”.
You dismiss TK as being too influenced by spiritual beliefs. That’s quite the short cut because I am sure one could definitely criticize the evolution of western science of being highly influenced by religious beliefs. In fact, in these last decades, I would say that much of western science is being directed by corporate interests and funding. Lots of conflict of interest issues being raised by how current research is being conducted if you haven’t noticed.
I have your book but I haven’t read it from start to finish. I was put off by the little I have read. Your’s and Tom Flanagan’s end game is to have Aboriginals abandon their treaty rights under the guise of helping them get a leg up in Canadian society. As an indigenous person from elsewhere in the world, I totally disagree and reject your justifications.
Change is never easy and Gandhi’s “fighting” quote is worth bearing in mind:
First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win.
Stay the course Frances.
@fighting quote – Hmm… someone doesn’t quite grasp the concept of irony here.
Frankly my frink, I don’t give a damn…pomos are going the way of the dodos
FQ, irony precedes post modernism by quite a few centuries – and unlike Lamarck and Morgan, it hasn’t been replaced by better approaches.
I’ve always found it particularly useful as an metric for assessing a respondent’s capacity for creative thought, as opposed to their capacity for sophomoric argument.
Beijing, you’ve hit one of the key ironies of this entire debate. A recurring theme of the New Conservative Saviours is that Aboriginal people are being victimized by a new, hidden aristocracy of Aboriginal elites and evil consultants who deliberately prolong their dependence.
Their solution to this: Aboriginal people should give up their lands, abandon their treaties, surrender their land claims, and give up their languages and cultures. In other words, Flanagan, Widdowson et Al argue that they should give up virtually everything they’ve won or protected and immerse themselves in the maintream.
In the meantime, of course, other Conservative advocates are busily trying to redefine “the mainstream” to exclude immigrants and other weird folks with the wrong language or colour.
BY:
“The Aboriginal Question” is a locution favoured by unreconstructed Marxists (”the woman question,” “the national question,” etc.). Those of us who’ve moved on a bit see all of these “questions” as homogenizing of their subjects (The Haida are not the Nunavummiut are not the urban Native people in Saskatoon are not the James Bay Cree), and find it more useful to talk about gender, “race” and class and their intersections (e.g. Chandra Mohanty) , but each to his or her own.
Everyone:
The blind faith in Morgan that we see here is touching, coming from someone who allegedly rejects blind faith. Morgan is a product of his time: he had a Eurocentric intellectual’s love for easy “universal” typology combined with value-laden, colonialist assumptions of the “their present is our past” variety.
As for so-called “primitive” societies: Trade complexity? Try the Kula ring. How about higher mathematics?
But there are more points to be made about Widdowson’s quaint orthodoxy from another era. First, the Euro-Canadian state has placed much of the First Nations and Inuit into a framework of dependency which has historically shifted wildly between assimilationism, paternalism, and benign–or not-so-benign–neglect. That has, quite predictably, had catastrophic effects that Widdowson can’t–or won’t–recognize.
I don’t know where she got the notion that I believe Nunavut is “working well.” It isn’t. Nunavut is a conjuncture, where a kind of on-going bricolage is taking place, as people attempt to self-reconstruct after decades of impositions by the white folks–from dependency on the silver fox fur trade, which then collapsed, to more or less forced sedentarization, with European-designed housing and town layouts that did violence to family and wider social relations, to completely out-of-synch education that leads nowhere…And those impositions continue.
The issue is one of coevality, to quote Johannes Fabian. Our approach to the Inuit should be on equal ground, sharing one time (not, in other words, assuming that their present is our past). Their voices must be heard and respected: we need engagement, not more colonial imposition. That implies respect, not Widdowson’s sneering condescension.
In any case, the notion of adding political parties to the current mix is simply breathtaking. The Inuit have managed to survive in one of the harshest environments in the world. Their landskills are something to marvel at. Through centuries they have developed values of cooperation, non-confrontational lifeways, a sharing ethic. To want to impose new forms of antagonism upon the already stressed Nunavummiut is to be wilfully blind. They don’t want political parties, and it’s their call.
I take Widdowson’s implicit point that aboriginal approaches to spirituality are more holistic than those of most Europeans. But so what? Without getting onto a side-trail about what the notion of spirituality actually entails, it seems to me that praying to rocks and trees (if she wants to put it that way) is no worse and possibly more benign than praying to a supreme being that no one has ever seen because someone in a black robe tells us to. It’s a sign of respect for the environment. What’s wrong with that? That kind of thinking has kept them alive for millennia.
Enough for now.
Those of us who’ve moved on a bit see all of these “questions” as homogenizing of their subjects (The Haida are not the Nunavummiut are not the urban Native people in Saskatoon are not the James Bay Cree), and find it more useful to talk about gender, “race” and class and their intersections (e.g. Chandra Mohanty), but each to his or her own.
Just in case this is misread: using the three categories I noted is not in itself homogenizing or essentializing, unless one assumes that all women think this, or all “Blacks” do that, or all workers believe the other. The issue for analysis is precisely those particular intersections I referred to. “The Aboriginal Question,” however, is a phrase that essentializes the “Aboriginal” and implies only one set of problems with one solution.
Balb said…”Dirk: I’ve experienced some of Calvin’s approaches first hand, thanks. It doesn’t take much to describe problems afflicting many First Nations; “…
well excuse me.
Balb said..”the problem is in the diagnosis of causes and the prescription of solutions”…
Exactly my point
I am not trying to be argumentative,but again the book should not be dismissed out of hand. It’s a good starting point(despite it’s flaws) from which to expand peoples understanding of the issues.Particularly in light of all the publicity etc that this book garnered .
Anyway from the review published in ‘Indigenous Policy Journal’…
…”The author provides some excellent interpretations of the historical injustice, critique on current situations and political constrains of Aboriginal governance structures and instills hope in the reader that there is an end, with valid solutions, to such unrelenting problems faced by all Aboriginal people. Tragically, Helin offers nothing innovative or practical and simply mirrors and concedes to the will of the Canadian corporations and government’s wishes. It is tragic because this book is so widely promoted throughout mainstream media as the answer to the problems facing Aboriginal people and now, Indigenous leadership are beginning to acknowledge and endorse Helin’s misguided solutions.
On ‘Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry’, Alfred Taiaiake acknowledges that there is such a beast,this is nothing new.
Indeed most of my native friends have stories about the nepotism,& corruption that afflicts many Band Councils,indeed some of then go so far as to say some reserves are run like bannana republics.Anyway Taiaiake writes:
…”There is nothing novel or insightful in their conceptualization of an “aboriginal industry.” In fact, the idea is lifted from the Métis scholar Howard Adams’ seminal work in Prison of Grass (Fifth House) and my own work on the subject, Peace, Power, Righteousness (Oxford University Press), both of which have a sustained focus on the cooptation of First Nations leaders and “comprador” Aboriginal leadership and the problem of parasitic white professionals. But both Adams’ and my book are over a decade old; isn’t it an obvious point by now that white professionals profit off the misery and have a stake in perpetuating the colonial injustice? As a critique of this problem, the book is boring drivel that anyone working in this field has heard and read many times over by now”…
But as balbulican states the solution is not that;
…”Aboriginal people should give up their lands, abandon their treaties, surrender their land claims, and give up their languages and cultures. In other words, Flanagan, Widdowson et Al argue that they should give up virtually everything they’ve won or protected and immerse themselves in the maintream”…..
under moderation ?
“well excuse me.”
Sorry, didn’t mean it that way. What I was trying to say is that you can attribute the disfunction on some reserves to the innate laziness of native people, to some fundamental flaw in their culture, to the Federal Government’s reneging on the terms of their agreements, to a national culture of colonialism, or to any of a ranges of causes, depending on your ideological bent. Academics, I find, tend to adopt conceptual models, add their own gloss, and then defend them for the rest of their lives. Practitioners tend to be more flexible, pragmatic, and less ideological.
Very well put Dirk – I just read Mr. Sulu’s review, and I was going to point this same thing out (which I tried, very clumsily, to do earlier).
Unfortunately Widdowson’s book contains some problems that lend itself to criticism. However, it is a welcome addition to the ‘fashionable nonsense’ that our postmodern social science departments delude themselves in, with their overinfatuation with identity politics.
In my mind, Widdowson spreads herself too thin: she should have stuck to looking at land claims and followed the money trail on numerous claims to SHOW rather then TELL, the endless self-serving ‘industry’ corruption that is cloaked under postmodern identity politics.
In doing so, she would have helped show people how this is presently occurring in Canada (with parallels to Australia and New Zealand). There is a dearth of research in this area. As for the other areas of the book – too much rhetoric and not enough substantiation ends up polarizing important issues that deserve much more attention. For example, aboriginal education: why not look at some of the positive gains that have been made rather than worst case scenarios (also same with the Justice chapter). For instance, write about programs like the Nunavut Sivuniksavut program in Ottawa and why this is so successful. Instead, worst case scenarios are presented with a weak correlation made between low educational levels and the rise of culturally appropriate education.
However, these critiques are not meant to distract from more pressing problems fomented by the fashionable nonsense sweeping our universities. The social sciences lack any balanced account of these issues, and consequently when diametrically opposing viewpoints are presented, they are shut down with accounts of racism – ironically from the adherents of Foucaultian power knoweldge followers. It is too easy to dismiss the Widdowson’s as racist or “eurocentric.”
TK is vociferously pontificated without any discussion as to what it actually is. Funny that…”oh, it will get taken out of context if we tell you” sort of nonsense is presented and experts become really vague. Presenting it as an article of faith by the ‘experts’ will not stand the test of time.
Why are bloggers so surprised someone is finally standing up and saying the emperor has no clothes? Anyone that has been around these issues for a while knows about the quackery that is allowed to go on unchecked … while people are quick to criticize, it is interesting to note, some academics quietly agree with some of the arguments and general thrust of the book.
Strange times, strange times indeed
ironically from the adherents of Foucaultian power knoweldge followers
What the hell does this even mean?
You really can’t get much more self-consciously Eurocentric than Widdowson and Howard.
“However, it is a welcome addition to the ‘fashionable nonsense’ that our postmodern social science departments delude themselves in, with their overinfatuation with identity politics.”
I think you may have intended to say something to the effect that it is a welcome ANTIDOTE. However, I’ll definitely agree that it’s an addition to a fashionable stream of nonsense. I’m not sure we’d agree on which one.
“TK is vociferously pontificated without any discussion as to what it actually is. ”
Well, that’s not quite true, although ideologues like Frances pretend it’s the case. May I respectfully refer you to recent thinking and writing by folks like George Wenzl, Peter Usher, Fred Weihs, Thor Arnason, Valerie Assinewe – need more? Contact the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board. They’re taking a long, hard look at how TK and TEK can be meaningfully integrated into policy making, legislation, and research. looking at best case applications from other jurisdictions.
‘Why are bloggers so surprised someone is finally standing up and saying the emperor has no clothes?”
I’m not surprised at all. As I said, I’ve been having this argument with Widdowson for a decade. And of course, with Tom Flanagan quietly dictating policy in Ottawa, any academic fig leaf available is going to be deployed to justify the policy of assimilation. Sorry, who’s “surprised”?
Let me respectfully look at Nunavut…
TEK and polar bears? Oooh that is a hot point…are we really going to rely on anectdotal ‘evidence’ from knowledge holders who are financially motivated and compensated for ‘harvesting’ sports trophies for american hunters, or scientists (like Derocher) who are motivatd by baseline data to create policy regarding the global commons? B…a…s..e..l..i..n…e..DATA…hmmmwhy are femal polar bears 20 cm shorter in the Beaufort Delt region since the 1980s…dunno…ask a TEK hunter?
Usher, et al…what a cabal! Read them and you get no further ahead – they all end up citing each other…And I quote: “there is a long exhaustive account of the importance of TK (let me cite my friends who cite me in our incestuous ‘peer reviewed’ journals)…and so this article will not explain what it is…but how it should be IMPLEMENTED (by me of course – ta dah!)”
Fashionable Nonsense incidentally is a title of a book.
“What the hell does this even mean?”
I think FQ is obliquely contrasting Pudovkian and Eisensteinian modalities of montage as meta-commentary/meta-content, with a soupcon of Innes.
fashionable nonsense is a title of a book about pomos…
Univeristies are presumably for universal ideas…a threat to traditional knowledge
Usher et al…what a cabal. This is the sort of incestuous subterfuge they employ as academic… and I quote: “While there is ample evidence to indicate the importannce and efficacy of TEK in resource management (oooh look at all my friends that I am citing that cite me in the same incestuous ‘peer reviewed journal’ hee hee!)…the purpose of this paper is therefore to dicuss TEKs IMPLEMENTATION (by me of course – hey what a cool job I now have).
Nunavut and TEK…polar bears and the global commons anyone. owe about Andrew Derocher’s baseline data Nunavut has discredited, showing that bears are 20 cm shorter than what they were 20 years ago. Ah, but that science stuff – way too eurocentric, eh? Perhaps there is resisitence to science in Nunavut because it conflicts with the financial compensation of ‘traditionally harvesting’ bears for American sports hunters?
Surprised? “Dr. Alfred” has “earned” his “PhD” in “native advocacy” (oops I mean Natie Studies). Wearing a gold medal around his neck now has given him the reverse snobbism that accompanies any accounts that contradict his own “ontological” claims. The message is: If you disagree with me you must be a racist….Widdowson also mentions children in the book – is she also a pedophile as well?
Widdowson states, “Albert Howard and I have focused on the spiritual dimension because this is used to justify the argument that “traditional knowledge” is special and therefore can’t be subjected to the same kind of scrutiny as scientific research.”
Then Fighting Quote states, “TK is vociferously pontificated without any discussion as to what it actually is. Funny that…’oh, it will get taken out of context if we tell you’ sort of nonsense is presented and experts become really vague.”
Essentially both commentators are making unsupported claims about TK’s apparent lack of “scientific scrunity” without actually providing any sort of rigorous ’scientific’ evidence to back up their assertions. Widdowson, at least, should be aware that social science provides numerous, tested, methodological means to empirically test their premise. Failing to do so, yet constructing an argument around this point is most definitely not scientific and means their entire position constitutes nothing more than a very hollow strawman. And FC bashes pomo constructs… Amazing.
Hmm, so guess my question is what evidence can Widdowson or FQ provide to back up their claims about TK?
Throbbin, again I know where you’re coming from. There is an Inuk industry (I don’t know anything about the other Native groups) complete with career-Inuit, token Inuit, puppet Inuit, etc.
But what Frances seems to misunderstand is the root of this industry. It’s pure capitalism. Inuit owned companies (7% last time I checked) based in Nunavut (also 7%) can charge a percentage (14 total) over a non-Inuit owned-southern company. There’s no IQ (Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, Nunavut’s TK equivalent) in that. The policy is born of the same dangerous ideas that have cause a financial crisis on a global scale.
Should the policy be abolished? I think a good, bottom-up solution would be to open up the competition with two streams, where the applicant decides to commit either seven or 14 percent of the final bid to a fund that can be used to help the needier of Nunavut’s residents, and not the richest, and smallest, cohort. Where the stream is just one of the factors used in making the decision. But that’s an idea I just came up with in writing this post, so I’ll have to put more thought into it.
Back to Frances. Whatever needs to be done about the “Aboriginal Industry” it doesn’t have anything to do with science, spiritual beliefs, or anything not called broken capitalism.
To cite Morgan’s idea on one thing and justify it by pointing out that other of his ideas have been absorbed into science is ludicrous. Parallel: promote Newton’s ideas on Alchemy and justify it by pointing out that gravity seems to still be hanging around, and hey motion too. I understand that there are “Alchemists” out there who would take offense, as you should. But I suppose from reading her posts over the years that Frances revels in the parallel-to-Alchemist role of misunderstood really-really-right-if-you-could-just-see “scientist”.
PS I’ve read two of the three IMPORTANT works cited in his thread (if you don’t know: 1491 and Guns, Germs and Steel. Both contribute loads more than they are wrong about in regards to the history of the “Americas” in general and the indigenous people here specifically, and are great sources of information for the general public and the kind of book that SHOULD BE PROMOTED for consumption by people who care about Native history in NA) You should read them too.
And disclosure: I’m Inuk, and I was an original PDF moderator (my only task being the deletion of old and dead threads to conserve space (the internet was BIG, physically, then))
Like many ideologues (see the thread on abortion running parallel to this one) Widdowson and Howard need to simplify the world a bit and push it to extremes to defend their position.
In Widdowson’s world, TK is a kind of voodoo – make believe “knowledge” derived from a superstitious worldview, and forced down the throats of brave scientists struggling in heroic silence to jump the hurdles of these foolish beliefs to get at The Truth. The natives who actually believe this nonsense are either simple fools, or crafty exploiters, aided and abetted by their corrupt sidekicks in a vast. global conspiracy.
The truth is a good deal more prosaic than that. Cultures living for centuries (or millenia) within an environment develop a deep familiarity with both the elements of that environment, and with their interaction. Scientists can and do save a heap of time by investigating that expertise.
yhib:
As I understand it, Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit is a codified set of values–an approach, with possibly over-wide generalization these days, that arose out of elders’ meetings in the late ‘nineties. Doesn’t TK comprise more than that–for example, orientation skills on the tundra, environmental knowledge, that sort of thing?
I but ask. I know that the Nunavut government calls IQ “traditional Inuit knowledge” (http://www.gov.nu.ca/hr/site/beliefsystem.htm), but that seems to me to be confusing knowledge with values. (Note the actual name of the page.)
I can’t believe that racism in the guise of pseudo-science-babble still exists. I supposed I should believe it. Every generation has its share of idiots and hate-filled people. But it should just flounder in nobody-takes-it-seriously land. What really bothers me is when it isn’t just dismissed as crank nonsense, but has enough clout to require counter-argument.
@Dr.Dawg
Whatever the original plans for tangible IQ for “implementation” into the government in the late nineties (the idea was cloudy even then) the concept has grown to encompass many things that fall under the vague categories laid out (how to start a fire on the land with moss and the sparse vegetation (traditional) so that you can make tea (non-traditional) or anything a staff elder decides to show civil servants). And there is no cohesion in the way IQ IS implemented in the GN, if it is at all. I worked for a department that had an Elder, paid a hefty full-time salary. Was it necessary? Is the whole system confused and in need of streamlining and stewardship? These are questions.
But misunderstanding of what Inuit values are vs. traditional Inuit knowledge (your values are a large part of the thrust of your learning and comprehension after all) or concerns about the implementation of vague principles or practical knowledge isn’t what drives Frances so-called “Aboriginal Industry”. To draw such clear lines between the two is disingenuous at best, the basis for a base career peddling racism hidden behind a thin veneer of scholarship at worst. I have a feeling it’s somewhere in between, but anyway it’s not territory anyone should be prowling.
[...] EDIT: There’s a lot of talk about Widdowson’s position on traditional knowledge, Aborigianal sprituality, and so on. She certainly seems to have remarkable ability to alienate, and whatever purely policy/economic value her ideas may have are easily lost in light of comments like this: …I am surprised that people on the Left find his promotion of spirituality (praying to rocks and trees) and romanticism (returning to the ways of his ancestors) inspiring. I doubt that any of the posters really take these ideas seriously; they are merely confusing condescension with left-wing activism. [Frances Widdowson, in a comment on StageLeft] [...]
Interesting discussion, but let’s try teasing out the wider implications of the argument for a second as well. For those who haven’t read the book, it should be noted that indigenous peoples are not the only subjects under attack here (although we do take the brunt of it). The authors also mount a defense of slavery based on the same racist argument they use to defend the so-called progress inaugurated by the residential school system. See pages pages 75-76.
APTN did a two part interview with Ms Widdowson over the book, as well as noting her with Frontier and the activists turning out. Part 2 tonight. So at least one tv team is covering her views.
Good for APTN. The
Shmohawkguy who took a year to set up their news Department was a gifted and deeply committed journalist totally committed to real, objective coverage of people and issues that matter.balbulican said…”Sorry, didn’t mean it that way.
No offense taken,but thanks for taking the time to clarify.
bald said…”What I was trying to say is that you can attribute the disfunction on some reserves to the innate laziness of native people, to some fundamental flaw in their culture, to the Federal Government’s reneging on the terms of their agreements, to a national culture of colonialism, or to any of a ranges of causes, depending on your ideological bent. Academics, I find, tend to adopt conceptual models, add their own gloss, and then defend them for the rest of their lives. Practitioners tend to be more flexible, pragmatic, and less ideological.”…
Well put,action is what matters.If one wants to be treated like a nation one must act like a nation.
As Taiaiake also points out it is one thing to understand the cause of much of the dysfunction on reserves ,and as you state to assign blame.It is quite another to get off ones ass and do something to change the reality.
That said the difficulties faced by grassroots indigenous peoples are huge particularly when one is dependent on the good will of the Band Councils for services etc.Committed activists are very vulnerable and in many cases the Band Council and the Indian Act Chiefs do everything in their power to isolate those people who are committed to real change.
In short they play the Indian Act game because they profit from it.Indeed they are accountable to the Indian Act and hence the ‘white government’ ,not their own people.And therein lay the irony.
Some people can then turn around and point to the Chiefs,the lack of transparency,fiscal responsibility,nepotism etc etc and say ,see Indians are incapable of governing themselves .
Yo Frances,
I called you (in addition to being an anti-aboriginal bigot) – a busybody and creepy wannabee social-engineer.
I note that you didn’t respond to that.
Thanks for the affirmation of my commentary with your silence.
“Some people can then turn around and point to the Chiefs,the lack of transparency,fiscal responsibility,nepotism etc etc and say ,see Indians are incapable of governing themselves .”
Indeed Dirk.. Absolutley 100% Indeed!
In fact, after all my years at trying to change things for the better – wrt lobbying for improved accountability — I came to the conclusion that the ONLY reason that CRAPers and such were interested in the subject was exactly SO they could claim “See – Indians can’t manage their own affairs”.
My response was — I do not see any other kinds of strident activism in Canada demanding improved accountability from their governments MORESO than Aboriginal activists have done — like setting up roadblocks (at the expense of possible extreme peril to themselves) or doing things to shut down their band governments — like mass sit-ins at their band offices (which have occured in dozens of reserves across the country).
While non-native Canadians may express disastifaction with their governments at times… nobody takes it to the level that Aboriginals have done. Which I think — proves that Aboriginals in many instances take accountability more seriously than our non-aboriginal counterparts. ( on many reserves.)
I will never forget the circus side-show that brought Leona Freed (The CRAPers puppet) to Vancouver Island, who after people objected to the presence of CRAPers at the meeting on accountability started shouting “We can’t have self-government… We’re not ready!” over and over again.
I’d like you all to notice something very interesting that I’ve observed.
Anybody see any blogging tory – or right-winger make noise about corruption in Indian Affairs SINCE the Harper Government has been in power?
I have not. And believe me – I’ve looked.
Now that the Conservatives are in power – and THEY have the ball in their court — suddenly “Accountability for Indian Governments towards their members” is no longer a burning issue.
Funny thing that!
A perverse capitalism is certainly one part of the problem (recently manifested by Simailak-gate). Another part of the problem (and one could make the argument that this is but a facet of modern capitalism – especially in an area with such a small population) is nepotism…but not necessarily Inuit-Inuit nepotism (which exists on it’s own, no doubt).
There exists a broad and entrenched network of back-scratchers sprinkled throughout the GN and many Inuit institutions. Considering the interconnected relationships between so many Government departments and Inuit Org’s, it was only a matter of time before this kind of network adapted itself from the NWT system to the Nunavut system. These Civil Servants and Inuit Org’s employees interface with private interests regularly (in both social and professional capacities). In what was famously labeled the “dinner party circuit” by a woman near and dear to my heart, these folks associate with one another, and make sure certain interests are protected and promoted.
Now this is not to suggest that Inuit are not involved in the mix (or mixes of our own for that matter), but anyone who has been to a First Air Ball, a Ducks Unlimited Charity Dinner, a TI charity Golf Tournament, or any number of other exclusive social functions will know exactly who these folks are.
Gosh. Shame on those folks who support TI’s charity golf tournament. Disgusting that they contribute to the community they work with. And how appalling that they actually have the nerve to work there at all.
@Throbbin
Most of that is for another time, topic, place. Who benefits from what and by what means and who else milks the system etc isn’t the point this time around.
Inuit (and Indians) aren’t supposed to have lived in “Western Society” (as though anyone was) and therefore, and it gets muddy here, the ways of dealing with Native people to this point in history need to be dumped wholesale and “they” should be forced, basically, to adapt over-night without the programs and support that were fought for tooth and nail over the last 50 or 100 years. The idea variously feels like forced assimilation, cultural genocide, and taken very, very narrowly, like a good idea. One nugget of partial truth isn’t actually a good idea though.
@balbulican
That’s a bit snarky. Frances thinks the kind of folks she’s “gotcha” include your kind of folks. If she thinks of you, she likely thinks of you that way. And, rightfully so, that bothers you to some degree. You’ve been “debating” (beating a dead horse) on and off with the woman for a decade at least. And you’ve been on the offensive with these two contentious threads the last couple of days.
But to take such a defensive stance, then attacking, like a slack-jawed yokel, a straw man at 7:30 in the morning. And right next to poor Throbbin there. “These folks” attend right along side “not-these-folks”, the TI golf tournament and everywhere else Throbbin mentioned. The two groups know where the line is, and working in the community/not working in the community is not it.
I don’t golf.
@balb – support for Charity is great – that wasn’t my point. My point was anyone who has been to these tournaments has seen the network in action. You know this, and yet decided to get sarcastic on me regardless. A co-worker once said to me that in a perfect world, none of these institutions, and the industry itself wouldn’t need to exist, because we would have addressed the issues ourselves. Many of the elements within the “industry” do great and necessary work, and I have worked with them and for them on occasion. I have not singled any element out – but I do think the day we are on our feet is the day that said industry doesn’t need to exist anymore.
@yhib – Poor me huh? I don’t see any straw man – go back and read it again.
You’re probably right though, I’m venting and digressing from the main discussion. But that’s no licence for you to throw about comments of logical fallacies (especially undeserved one) and adopt a patronizing attitude.
An antidote to Widdowson’s vulgar and pejorative “praying to rocks and trees”:
http://www.ubcpress.ca/search/title_book.asp?BookID=4503
Short review here:
http://www.articlearchives.com/environment-natural-resources/ecology/1579382-1.html
@Throbbin
Whoa, I’m confused. Balb lit the strawman. But he doesn’t golf. So . . . I think you need to re-read what I wrote.
@balb
It’s a frustrating game. Like debating Frances Widdowson. Except golf has only 18 holes. Frances is full of it them.
@yhib – I was mistaken, sorry dude.
Now that we’re back in good graces, wanna grab a cup o’ java sometime?
@Throbbin
I’ve been cooped up for months, and I’m now finally getting out. I blame the bus strike in part but, by coincidence on my 30th birthday (late Nov.) I found out my mother was in a residential school for 5 years (not the norm for Frobisher Bay kids her age, there was, after all, a high school there that was a residential school itself) and that information was much more difficult to digest than I thought it would be. Anyway it’s clarified a documentary film idea I’ve been moulding, and I had time to get that drawn up and all lined up for shooting this summer, further funding pending of course.
So, short answer Throbbin, atii. Coffee is good. Buses back is GOOD.
I am glad that so much debate has been generated by the original post. Perhaps it would be a good idea to refocus, however, so that the main points, supposedly under debate, don’t get lost in the incoherent circle jerk that is before us?
It should be restated that references to “question” are a Marxist, not a Nazi, form. This is a device for scientific socialists, who don’t want to presume that they know the solution to a preconceived problem (Nazis, on the other hand, talked about “solutions”).
There is no “defense of slavery” in our book. What we are trying to do with the mentioning of this mode of production is to show how labour is linked to progressive politics – something socialists were interested in before they became postmodern and preoccupied with “identity”. As Jared Diamond has pointed out, one should not confuse the identification of causes with the justification of results.
I am still waiting for elaboration of why I am a “racist” or a “hater”. I assume that if this cannot be substantiated, it is an intimidation tactic to try to prevent the truth from emerging (good luck with that).
I am also still waiting for evidence that will show how Morgan’s theory of cultural evolution is “wrong”. The example about alchemy is a false analogy. I am specifically referring to the theories of Morgan – that advancements in productive technology (e.g. the stone, bronze and iron ages) are related to social complexity, as is reflected in scientific archaeology, as well as how “enlarging the sources of subsistence” (Morgan) is related to the development of guns, germs and steel and European conquest of the Americas (Diamond). These are the ideas of Morgan that are used in the work of Albert Howard and myself. What is the equivalent of “alchemy” in Morgan’s theories that this person is talking about?
I appreciated the post about TK and the problems of acquiring baseline data from this source of information. It is not that Albert Howard and myself take the position that TK is useless (as some have asserted). It is helpful for surviving on the land; the problem comes when you need specific information to provide a benchmark so as determine whether the polar bears are getting smaller, the ice is getting thinner, the temperature is getting hotter, etc.. This requires systematic recording – a circumstance that is not possible in the traditions of pre-literate peoples. For those who are looking for substantiation of how TK research attempts to avoid scientific scrutiny, a number of pieces of evidence are provided in chapter ten of our book “Traditional Knowledge: Listening to the Silence”. This includes the argument that TK is “superior” to science (without any evidence except that aboriginal peoples with Stone Age technology didn’t destroy the environment as much as Europeans who had progressed into the Iron Age). There are also statements about how challenging the opinions of elders is the most “disrespectful” thing that you can do. I believe a previous reference has been made to the “taken out of its cultural context” argument – that traditional knowledge cannot be elaborated upon because it will be “misused”. And then, there’s my personal favourite – that elaborating upon TK will be a violation of a sacred oath. TK, according to this world view, was given to aboriginal peoples by the Creator for their exclusive use, and to mention it to non-aboriginals is to contaminate it. It sounds to me like the Emperor is naked.
One of the more rational posters argues that there are success stories with respect to using indigenous traditions in the education system and the justice system. Could you possibly on elaborate on how these traditions have facilitated aboriginal participation in the wider society?
There seems to be a bit of confusion about the position of Albert Howard and myself with respect to aboriginal culture. Our position is that aboriginal peoples should continue to practice their traditions as they see fit. With respect to personal beliefs, after all, many non-aboriginal people believe in an imaginary supreme being, alien abductions and an immortal Elvis. These people are free to believe these things, but there is no insistence that they be taught as science (except “intelligent design”, however, but that is another post in its own right). What we are objecting to, therefore, is the Aboriginal Industry’s condescending strategy of saying that these traditions are important in modern societies (Aboriginal Industry associates object to the teaching of Creationism in the school system for non-aboriginal people, but ardently advocate this for the native population). For the most part the retention of aboriginal traditions will have a minimal benefit for the wider society; all their promotion does is deprive aboriginal peoples of the choice of participating in the wider society. This advocation of atavism, of course, keeps aboriginal people dependent upon the Industry.
Sorry Frances for the circle jerk…it’s a guy thing…next time we’ll wait ’til you are done before we commence the festivities.
In the cases of wanting to determine if the polar bears are getting smaller, the ice is getting thinner, or the climate getting warmer, you seem to be unable to accept that life experience and Traditional Knowledge tell us these things. Because YOU cannot measure these trends, because there is no “data” available to you you mock the very real knowledge that tells us the ice IS getting thinner.
Please excuse the audacity of a people who don’t need to follow the scientific method or establish benchmarks to know if ice is gradually getting thinner over a period of time. (Incidentally I hear you’re a professor now…what’s that saying…those who can’t do, teach.)
The reason I think you’re a racist is because of your last paragraph – because you seem to assert that Aboriginal peoples are so hopelessly primitive, savage, unintelligent, or naive that we cannot possibly want to preserve our traditions for ourselves, and that it’s the industry that tries to tell us to maintain them. Or that we couldn’t possibly preserve TK AND choose to function in wider society (incidentally I am dictating this and my consultant is translating and typing these words for me). Or that TK can only be valued when it benefits the “wider society”.
It is this kind of bullshit – the sincere belief that anyone who values TK or cultural traditions is either ignorant and backwards, or crooked and opportunistic – that makes you a racist.
Hope that clears it up for you.
Frances,
Wth respect to education, I feel that you have over-stated your claims in the book: Are aboriginal educators really espousing traditional knowledge in schools to the detriment and exclusion of ‘western education’? My sense is that some level of culture based education is called for and is very important…read American pragmatist, John Dewey (a contemporary of Morgan’s) ‘Experience and Education.’ Most educators know that you build from where people are at, and incorporate emotional/affective aspects into pedagogy for it to be translated into ‘learning’. Overall, education levels are improving with the dire exception of Nunavut; and yes, this is in part from the squandering of land claims money which is often the reason why education gets put on the backburner in post land claims cases…the situation there is unlikely to improve. The reason why models like NS in Ottawa are so successful is that Inuit kids can attend, get tutoring in the evening and be in a context that is totally conducive to learning -one where they are not crammed into a house with 10 other people who have all sorts of social and health problems. The university down the road is not alien, nor is the city…and so when it comes time to go on to post sec. their chances of success increase exponentially. Other cases of where Aboriginal groups put money into education from land claims capital also exist and have been shown to have good results…
However, these considerations bring up some issues with your conceptual framework given the emphasis on Marx…the emphasis on economic/material aspects determining the superstructure is problematic
as empirical evidence suggests sociopolitical factors also impact culture which Weber subsequently incorporated in his comparison using Asia to explain why Asia did not enter into capitalism despite the necessary antecedents as described by Marx (Weber’s protestant thesis). In other words, there is a lot going on in the cultural mix, and perhaps this is why the linear causality attributed to Marx/Henry Morgan (often referred to as developmental historicism) is problematic given the empirical evidence that has refuted Marx and which Weber had access to considering he was able to formulate some of his theories during the disaster of communism in Russia.
But I digress. The issue here is to look at Education as being the cornerstone re. Aboriginal policy and find best case practices. Like Weber, compare what is happening in other countries re. aboriginal education to see that historical materialism may need to take into account factors outside of the material/economic. My sense is that programs like NS ‘create’ a culture, outside of the Marxian economic base/superstructure model; and these programs will gain steam (or as Weber noted, “status”) and in turn provide the kind of policy to be emulated and built on.
As for universities – that is another matter altogether – and so the real change must come from the k-12 program in order to reform system; unfortuantely the ”postmodernism on steroids” situation at universities would rather hear from dreamers like “Dr.” Alfred who tell mytho-poetic tales of parallel universes, and then angrily spit vitriole when challenged by ‘racists’ as to the validity of his claims. The left loves to mock/hate the Sarah Palin’s of this world as scientific ignoramuses, yet hypocritically and obsequeiously pump up the egos of the “Dr. Alfreds” as some progressive form of “recognition.”
re. Throbbin,
Your comments are completely out of line: TK is a product of white people that created it around 1987 Brundtland commission, which then subsequently got poltiicized at the local level. Most people in the mid 1990s who were using this term weren’t aboriginals. In that short space of time look at what has happened: traditional has been replaced by ‘indigenous” (see Stevenson – a big time Aboriginal industry proponent, Arcitc, 1996 for a discussion on this) because the term ‘traditional’ presupposes aboriginal people do not possess ‘non-traditional’ knowledge. however indigenous is also now seen as problematic (see Agrawal, 1995 dismantling the divide between traditional and western knoweldge) because it is really hard to tell who is ‘indigenous’ and who is not? Are the scots? Picts, Kelts? How aobut ukranian farmers that have lived in northern Alberta since the mid 1930s…are we to expect them to go ‘home’ back to Europe. Don’t you see…the term is entirely problematic. That is why people use the term ‘local knowledge’. Of course Inuit have local knowledge, are very intelligent, and this form of knowledge requires much experience on the land, etc. etc. Nobody (I hope) is denying that. But why put it on a pedistal. Sometimes it is wrong. In the case of the polar bears, it was felt that there were actually more bears in parts of the Arctic, not less, as people were seeing them come into town. But the data suggests otherwise. To pretend that there are fewer bears in order to appease TK holders is pure condescension.
This is why, I like Frances, have kept repeating: Show me, don’t tell me. What is this mystical race based form of knowledge that only certain ethnicities can hold? Confusing knowledge with values, beliefs and practices is simply not an answer: the Aztecs sacrificed virgins to appease the sun god: this is a practice and a belief; not knowledge. And if it is knowledge, then it wrong. What is so threatening about that?
If I left the impression I was entering a debate with you, Frances, it wasn’t my intention. If you read my posts, I directed all of my comments DIRECTLY to people not named Frances Widdowson. I mentioned your name, mention my name. Mosha Folger, in full, for future reference.
As I’ve been witness to your incomprehensibility and obfuscation since about a decade ago myself, I can say your postings have never been worth my time to reply to, so I haven’t. That’s my prerogative I’m sure you know, but I’d like to point it out at the front.
This is the first time I’m addressing you, and I do so personally. For you to ask the rest of the readers who I am to do what I’m doing is one of your fallback tactics that I saw 10 years ago.
But to the point:
Your views hinge on a conspicuous absence of scientific evidence. Can I prove that Morgan was wrong? I don’t have to. His work has been read, analyzed, dissected, and largely shown to be dubious work riddled with over-reaching. The alchemy example is meant to demonstrate that Newton espoused ideas in alchemy that are true, but the entirety of alchemy has been cast aside and replaced with new knowledge. Scientific model in perfect form.
Morgan’s ideas, those he espoused anyway as this social evolution idea was not his to begin with, have been mostly cast aside, with the few things it got right still being taught to kids around the world. Or in Morgan’s case young adults around the world. Ideas about human (biological) evolution underwent a tectonic shift with genes and the new found scientific evidence of their sometimes random (and often not random) ability to mutate. Nay, the essential nature of these gene mutations.
If there is such a thing as social evolution, it’s not linear, and does not fit a nice mould created 125 odd years ago before 125 years of knowledge, scientific evidence, was gathered.
I’d like to point out the exponential rate that human knowledge gathering has grown during those 125 years.
But beyond all of that, the applicability of the description of linear, savage-barbaric-civilized evolution of culture (culture which owes its existence, incidentally, to evolution and its tendency for randomness) — of humans in isolation where 90% of contact with other humans was generally unpleasant and with the same neighbouring people — have for a people living on a planet connected in ways unimaginable in the 19th century. I paraphrase a name I can’t recall, but since the 1870s (nevermind 7500BP) we’ve gone from communicating at the speed of horse to the speed of light.
When you get to this point I remind you of something you read a couple of minutes ago: “your postings have never been worth my time to reply to, so I haven’t.”
I referenced you in conversation with others, you felt the need to call me out personally about this communication, which was with other people, not you. Displaying much cowardice, you didn’t ask me to reveal myself, which you seem otherwise quick to do, but attacked me obliquely by posing rhetorical questions to everyone else. I felt the need to respond to that course of events, NOT your work. So with all of that said, none of this changes the above statement regarding the “defense” of your positions.
Fighting Quote:
A few things.
First, “traditional” is still very much in use today regardless of some articles arguing (however forcefully) for more refined or PC definitions.
Second, you build a strawman argument around a single anecdote:
But why put it on a pedistal. Sometimes it is wrong. In the case of the polar bears, it was felt that there were actually more bears in parts of the Arctic, not less, as people were seeing them come into town. But the data suggests otherwise. To pretend that there are fewer bears in order to appease TK holders is pure condescension.
This is why, I like Frances, have kept repeating: Show me, don’t tell me. What is this mystical race based form of knowledge that only certain ethnicities can hold? Confusing knowledge with values, beliefs and practices is simply not an answer: the Aztecs sacrificed virgins to appease the sun god: this is a practice and a belief; not knowledge. And if it is knowledge, then it wrong. What is so threatening about that?
No one is putting TK on a pedestal at all. No one is suggesting that TK is mystical in any sense. These seems to be a inventions on the part of yourself and Frances. The polar bear question is still unresolved, and it is a poor example informed, I suspect, by media attention to controversy more than any methodical analysis of what’s going on with the bears or a realistic idea of local viewpoints. Further, when you say the “data suggest otherwise”, you are implicitly privileging Western scientific knowledge because you are using “data” as something other than what you claim is local Aboriginal TEK. And by claim I mean that “people seeing them come into town” is not local or trad. knowlege, it is “folk knowledge.” Indeed, both you and Frances could be argued to be equating traditional knowledge with a general concept of folk knowledge, esp. with your limited interrogation of the nature and use of TK.
In terms of TK’s utility to Western science, which you and Frances seem to be challenging, there are plenty of papers (by hard scientists many of them!) empirically arguing for it with careful attention paid to it’s limitations – rigour demands it! No one is claiming any sort of thing where it is privileged over hard science; TK is argued to be complementary and two-way. To suggest otherwise slanders the credibilty and integrity of scientists and community members who benefit from TK. See, for example (google scholar “Traditional Knowledge”):
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss3/art2/main.html
and
Huntington, Henry P. 2000.” Using TEK in science: methods and applications.” Ecological Applications, 10(5):1270-1274
[Both articles are free through gscholar. Many more maybe found using the 'cited by' link in gscholar, but some will be behind journal subscription walls.]
Speaking of complentary, what we’re actually discussing here is not something so much to do with a couple of Old Men, but an empistimological evolution. My earlier link to the Cruickshank book was meant to illuminate that somewhat. TK and Western science are two different ways of interpreting reality (ways of knowing), and they complement each other in the sense that science fills in the gaps where TK lacks (ie quant and causal factors for observed change), and TK fills in where science doesn’t (ie local change outside science can quants. or tests for). Cruickshank argues with evidence about this in the historical context, as mix of knowlege results the production of new knowledge – and some usurption of one way of knowing by another. The premise argued by you and Frances suggests that there is an either/or struggle between TK and science, but do so by missing the larger point on the purpose of science. Science is fundamentally about producing and advancing our knowlege of things by incorporating as many ways of examining them as we can find because that forms a more complete understanding of the world, and not just one limited by irrational favouring of just one monotheistic epistimology. Knowledge is also a processual and dynamic thing, and the recognition of TK’s utility and incorporation into Western science is a manifestation of that.
Others have ripped Widdowson’s abject poverty of knowledge about TK to shreds. The Arctic Sky: Inuit Astronomy, Star Lore, and Legend
by John MacDonald is a good read, though. Whoops, no “benchmarks!”
Let me return to Morgan, and then touch briefly on the “identity” strawman.
The difficulty with Morgan’s unilinear notion of cultural evolution, setting aside the teleology embedded in it and in Engels’ rendition of it, is really threefold: first, the Enlightenment notion of progress is more an article of faith than anything else, the “temporalization of the Great Chain of Being” as A. O. Lovejoy puts it; second, a plethora of societies stubbornly refuse to be governed by the model (hence AMP and other excuses), while others suffer a reverse in living standards because well-meaning “modernists” mistake other world-views and practices as “primitive” (the water-temples of Bali being instructive in this regard–see Steve Lansing); and third, from a global perspective, modernization (so-called) for some countries requires the underdevelopment of others.
I’m prepared to expand upon all of this if Widdowson stops accusing me of group masturbation.
Finally, no anthropologist worth his or her salt endorses identity politics and its concomitant, the essentialization of “culture” (more-or-less bounded wholes, etc.) these days. And neo-Marxists of many tendencies embody issues of “race” and gender, as well as class, in their analyses, managing to avoid “identity” in doing so. Frankly mechanical notions of base and superstructure and unilinear social evolution punctuated by revolutions have given way to far more sophisticated accounts of social change–accounts that do not require the “civilizing” force of white folks to be imposed upon benighted savages and primitive peoples (I’m thinking “British Rule in India” here, although Marx got less optimistic towards the end).
To be brief, to pose mechanistic vulgar-Marxism as the only viable opposition to identity politics is either sloppy or dishonest. It’s a straw man–a diversion. What we should be talking about is respectful encounters as equals. Incidentally, one last jab: the notion of a “wider society” is reification, if ever I’ve seen it.
Whoops–the “progress” I referred to is precisely that teleology I was objecting to. I didn’t set it aside after all. It’s impossible to set aside, in fact. Mea culpa.
Interesting discussion on TK and theory…I will check your sources, however at this point in time I remain skeptical about ‘epistemological relativism’ at least the radicalisation of it.Should scientists work with Inuit elders? Of course! But meaningfully. Does this mean that they can learn from Inuit knowledge holders – of course! But from my experiences, TK does get put on a pedestal, despite conflicting anectdotal reports. Part of the ‘industry’ is that it is basically impossible to get a research grant unless your methodology includes TK. That is simply wrong!
In my experiences with TK, it appears to be local knowledge passed down from one generation to another. Why is it that Greenlanders do not refer to it? Do they not have TK, or are they just unaware of it? Odd that such an epistemological gulf would separate Nunavut and Greenland. In other words, it is a social construction built up around a poltiics of difference (Home rule vs. Land Claims perhaps).
Very few references in the literature actually describe what it is or provide transcripts (Nakashima and Roue have in reference to EIAs, but inadvertently condescend to the elder, referring to him being ‘articulate’ rather than commenting on the substance of his information). Apart from this, I have not come across much in the way that shows how TK is a different epistemology or how it can only be understood by one ethnic group. This means, it remains a form of postmodern identity politics that emphasise putative ethnic differences. This is problematic.
TK reflects embodied knowledge rather than Cartesian, abstract knowledge–two different epistemes. The aim is not to erase one or the other, but to “translate,” as best as possible, between the two.
Where on earth did you get the idea that there’s no notion of TK in Greenland?
[...] hits a homer February 4, 2009 — shmohawk Over at StageLeft, Balbulican nails Frances Widdowson and her excuse scholarly writing for what it is – racist and [...]
That’s not what happens. Check sources before slipping foot into mouth. The directive is there to ensure that southern scientists don’t do what they have in the past – exclude northern Indigenous peoples like the know-it-all pompous arses they can sometimes be. It encourages respect where there was tremendous disrespect in the past. Ergo, why Widdowson’s nose was rubbed in it.
Another misconception based on… what? You ask a question, clearly admitting a lack of knowledge. Then you surmise that because you don’t know or haven’t heard, it doesn’t exist? The Indigenous Greenlanders I’ve spoken with or have known are keen about TK. Just so’s you know, African’s are keen about TK too, as are hill tribes in India, folks in South and Central America, Aborigines in Australia… so where are you getting your information?
Finally, think of TK as an Indigenous version of the Farmer’s Almanac. You know, hundreds of years of farmers watching various cycles in agriculture, the environment, weather, animal husbandry, etc. It is keen observation on one’s surroundings mixed with a healthy dose of common sense and no small bit of personal experimentation. Y’know, like: moss grows on the north side of trees, ergo you may find your direction while on a hike. Fish when the fish are biting (morning and evening). And so on.
It is idiots like Widdowson et al who try to put themselves up on pedestals by crapping all over Indigenous peoples. And they get exactly what they deserve.
Fighting Quote:
Interesting discussion on TK and theory…I will check your sources, however at this point in time I remain skeptical about ‘epistemological relativism’ at least the radicalisation of it.Should scientists work with Inuit elders? Of course! But meaningfully. Does this mean that they can learn from Inuit knowledge holders – of course! But from my experiences, TK does get put on a pedestal, despite conflicting anectdotal reports. Part of the ‘industry’ is that it is basically impossible to get a research grant unless your methodology includes TK. That is simply wrong!
I am aware of no “epistimological gulf” between Greenland and Canada regarding TEK. Do you have evidence for this assertion? Greelanders do use TEK – again, use teh google.
Also, failing to get research grants because you do not include TEK in your proposal is not the same as putting TEK on a pedestal. That is an issue between you and your grant reviewers and is not necessarily generalisable to all researchers. At the same time you disparage “anecdotal” reports about the veracity of TK, you provide a vague anecdote of your own with “…from my experience…”
Odd that such an epistemological gulf would separate Nunavut and Greenland. In other words, it is a social construction built up around a poltiics of difference (Home rule vs. Land Claims perhaps).
First, you have not established the existence of an “epistimological gulf”. Second, if such a gulf were to exist it would not suggest at all a “social construction built on political difference,” merely the lack of TK attention in the Greenland context, which may have any number of causal factors. You’re committing a logical fallacy.
Apart from this, I have not come across much in the way that shows how TK is a different epistemology or how it can only be understood by one ethnic group. This means, it remains a form of postmodern identity politics that emphasise putative ethnic differences. This is problematic.
Oh dear. See previous.
@Dr. Dawg
The notion that Greenlanders aren’t aware of traditional knowledge likely comes from the fact that it is so integrated into daily life in Greenland that looking for it is akin to looking for a written layout for the knowledge used in the emancipation of slaves south of the border. It’s there, because slavery as they knew it in 1850 is gone. That there isn’t a modern document laying out what needs to be done to free those African slaves and maintain a society with them as free Americans doesn’t mean that the knowledge doesn’t exist.
@fightingquote
Greenland, thanks to its distance from the “homeland”, had 75 more years to “evolve” inside the Danish system. A system that was, at worst, worried about someone else exploiting what they ‘owned’ but couldn’t themselves exploit (the thrust of the current Northwest Passage debate). So Greenland remained largely isolated and run by the Natives. The consequences of this include Greenlandic being the working language of the government; Greenlandic becoming the sole official language this year (Nunavut has FOUR unofficial official languages); great works of western literature being translated into Greenlandic; the importance of hunting is undertood by the Homerule government.
In asking questions you should be researching before you speak, you’ve dismissed off hand a prime example for the inapplicability of Frances position in modern times. Even without taking the pre-Homerule years into account Greenlanders have had 20 more years than Nunavut to work at getting things right. Given enough time Inuit will adapt to survive in the Canadian system, while maintaining the traditional knowledge Inuit fought to have incorporated into that system. As Dr. Dawg says, it’s about understanding the other, but not from the perspective of the other. If “scientists” like Frances Widdowson refuse to understand traditional knowledge from a scientific viewpoint, and continue to try to get into the heads of aboriginal people to try to understand science, their viewpoints will be largely dismissed as useless.
Does Frances Widdowson see Aboriginal people and their world view as deserving equal respect to western colonialists and their belief systems? Absolutely not. That is why I think she is a racist and hater.
And she reveals herself through her choice of expressions and her backhanded attacks, such as this one:
Our position is that aboriginal peoples should continue to practice their traditions as they see fit. With respect to personal beliefs, after all, many non-aboriginal people believe in an imaginary supreme being, alien abductions and an immortal Elvis.
I’m not sure if “imaginary supreme being” is supposed to describe or include Judeo-Christian beliefs or not, but equating Aboriginal traditional beliefs with beliefs in alien abductions and immortal Elvis is pretty freaking dismissive and insulting.
“Think of TK as an Indigenous version of the Farmer’s Almanac. You know, hundreds of years of farmers watching various cycles in agriculture, the environment, weather, animal husbandry, etc. ”
Thanks, I really like this definition of TK – a farmer’s almanac…but with a twist, right? – you don”t have to be the same ethnicity as a farmer to have farmer knowledge, but you do have to be the same ethnicity as someone who has indigenous knowledge,correct? Just a bit confused here that’s all. Could a white person for instance have Dene Knowledge if they spent enough time on the land? And could a Dene person have ‘farmer knowledge’ if they spent enough time farming? for instance.
Also, if one refers to traditional or indigenous knowledge – does that mean it is in reference to other forms of knowledge. I have heard that it is in reference to ‘western knowledge’. Just a bit confused here – perhaps you could clarify for me if this is indeed correct, and if it is, then what constitutes western knowledge, stuff like Algebra, I suppose?
Thanks for the help…
“Could a white person for instance have Dene Knowledge if they spent enough time on the land?”
See the most recent post on TK.
@fightingquote, I’m going to try to get through your note, but I’m going to call you a racist. And that is what you are, and for that reason this thread will die now.
Can a white man from western Europe have knowledge of Arabic algebra if he spends enough time being taught by someone who has the knowledge?
Algebra was first discovered and used in present-day Iraq and further east, and brought west to Europe, and excuse me as I assume, to where some of your ancestors were witness to its adoption. But the problems that were being solved with algebra were already being solved with geometry. Algebra is more efficient, so it usurped geometry in that area. That doesn’t mean we forget geometry. It’s useful in many other ways.
Now why you are a racist. The quote below shows blatant racism in full colour for all to see. I will translate out of double-speak what you’ve said, so as not to waste the time of anyone else:
Farmers, whose families have taught the succeeding generation farming for hundreds of years; taught them how to live off their land; to plant at the right time, to water right, to tend, to know when to harvest; those farmers have knowledge. They can even bestow the knowledge of farming on people not of the same colour!
Aboriginal people, on the other hand, whose forebears taught the next generation how to survive; what to avoid and promote on the unforgiving land; taught their children where to hunt for specific game; people who taught how to fish; those people do not have knowledge. And even if they do have some other kind of “knowledge” they certainly couldn’t pass that “knowledge” on to someone of a different colour.
What use would that other colour person have for that “knowledge” anyway. The other colour person’s knowledge is correct on certain, even many, things, so their knowledge must be right about everything.
Therefore aboriginal people, with traditional knowledge, aka knowledge that was gathered for millenia before this other, correct, knowledge was imparted, are wrong.
End of translation.
Think about algebra. Think about where we’d be without it. Now think about where we would be if we threw out the rest of geometry after we began using algebra.
Others are much better at concealing their racism behind academic double-speak. Leave it to them.
hijab- what a jab! I was simply trying to have some fun that is all and point out these terms are inherently problematic. I agree with you that farmers knowledge in like indigenous knowledge – in other words local forms of knowledge. But the semantics of indigenous puts it up against another other…which presumably is western knowledge…and I am sure the North African moors would take great umbrage for me calling “Al”gebra ‘western’ as this is commonly associated with the great Arab civilizations, which was being developed when the Europeans were living in backward “dark” ages.
The answer to my rhetorical question is that unlike the farmer’s knowledge, white people can never behold Dene knowledge (or IQ, etc. etc), because this knowledge was handed down by the creator to the Dene, unlike Algebra which is universally accessible (despite some people claiming Aboriginal people are ‘holistic’ learners which is racist nonsense) and not handed down to the Arabs by Mohammed.
Ignore my comment (or at least dismiss it off-hand), claim an attempt at humour, then defend your ignorant racism with the same ignorant racism. That is the hallmark of “got nothing else.”
OK, NOW it dies.
yhib, please come back…let’s continue on with our fruitful discussions. I am sorry if I offended you. I really think that we are starting to get somewhere and I am sorry to see the level of hostility remains….so let’s get back to metatheory as it is an important epistemological starting point for tackling the empirical and normative aspects of what Frances has to say.
Frances,
Your argument about the relationship between labour and so-called progressive politics is unsustainable. And you do justify slavery in your book. You claim that Blacks are the progressive force they are today (unlike indigenous peoples, generally) because they were ripped from their primitive attachments in Africa and eventually subjected to the progressive wonder of wage slavery.
GC
To whom it may concern:
Once again, there is no “justification of slavery” in our book. This is a confusion of the identification of causes with a justification of results. Slavery is a historical fact; it happened. It was part of the tendency of productive forces to develop (discussed further below), whatever one’s moral response is to this historical circumstance. Similarly, it is a fact that workers are exploited by capitalist relations of production. This results in the formation of labour unions, as well as a more developed political consciousness, in the recognition of common interests during the struggle against said exploitation. Does the recognition of this fact justify the exploitation of the producers of all value in society?
As for Mosha Folger – alias “Yhib” – who shut down the discussion with his knee-jerk accusation of racism against another poster, you should reconsider using such intimidation tactics. In the end, it is you who will suffer, by discouraging others from challenging you with their honest opinions. The nature of this bullying, and its impact on debates about aboriginal policy, will be elaborated upon below.
To discourage the degeneration of the discussion into such fascinating topics as golf, I will address four subjects: 1. When are views racist and/or hateful? 2. Was Lewis Henry Morgan “wrong”? 3. Does TK contribute to our current understanding of the natural world? and 4. How can aboriginal educational achievement be improved?
1. When are views racist and/or hateful?
I am grateful that a few people chose to answer this question, instead of just making the accusation without providing any substantiation for their claim that I am a “racist” and/or “hater”. Although I do not agree with their views, these posters should be commended for attempting to support their arguments with evidence. This is in contrast to the originator of this post, who refused to do this, just stating that “other readers should form their own opinion”. This is arrogance at its worst.
Poster #1 argues that I am a racist because I “seem to assert that Aboriginal peoples are so hopelessly primitive, savage, unintelligent, or naive that we cannot possibly want to preserve our traditions for ourselves, and that it’s the industry that tries to tell us to maintain them. Or that we couldn’t possibly preserve TK AND choose to function in wider society…Or that TK can only be valued when it benefits the ‘wider society’”. According to Poster #1, it is “the sincere belief that anyone who values TK or cultural traditions is either ignorant and backwards, or crooked and opportunistic” that constitutes racism.
Poster #2 asks the question: “does Frances Widdowson see Aboriginal people and their world view as deserving equal respect to western colonialists and their belief systems? Absolutely not. That is why I think she is a racist and hater”. This person then goes on to state that “I’m not sure if ‘imaginary supreme being’ is supposed to describe or include Judeo-Christian beliefs or not, but equating Aboriginal traditional beliefs with beliefs in alien abductions and immortal Elvis is pretty freaking dismissive and insulting”.
Then there were the comments of Poster #3. This poster, in a valiant attempt to separate knowledge from ethnicity, explored the idea that it is one’s careful observations of the environment, not some kind of racially based “spirituality”, which determines understanding. Therefore, a Dene person who becomes a farmer can contribute their observations to the Farmer’s Almanac, while a Ukranian farmer who becomes a trapper can contribute to knowledge about northern wildlife. Also, while algebra was invented by a Persian in approximately 800 A.D., all people – Persian and non-Persian – can benefit from this discovery and incorporate it into their understanding of the world. To call this form of knowledge “western” or observations of wildlife “indigenous”, implies Poster #3, is to assume that particular worldviews are racially determined.
This led Mosha Folger to respond thusly: “I’m going to try to get through your note, but I’m going to call you [Poster #3] a racist”. Mosha Folger seems to come to this conclusion, not because he has understood Poster #3, but because he is pre-programmed to call everyone a racist who disputes his views. The comment of Poster #3 is actually opposing racism (the idea that knowledge is racially determined, as in Adolph Hitler’s pernicious views about “Jewish science”).
As for Poster #1’s comments, I do not think that aboriginal peoples are “hopelessly primitive, savage, unintelligent” in their attempts to preserve their traditions. All cultures want to do this to some extent, and they should feel free to do so, as long as this does not violate human rights standards. What is being objected to concerns the arguments of the non-native Aboriginal Industry, which encourages aboriginal people to hold onto irrational beliefs and oppose scientific views of the universe. To the extent that these beliefs continue to be accepted in the educational system, they will prevent aboriginal people from functioning in the wider society. Anti-evolutionary viewpoints about “the Creator” placing aboriginal people in North America from the “beginning of time”, for example, are already having a corrosive impact on the discipline of archaeology. Museum exhibits are being pressured to downplay the Bering Strait theory because it offends the sensibilities of aboriginal organizations. As for “valuing” TK, all that is being said is that one cannot expect it to be used and paid for unless it provides some kind of social benefit. This has nothing to do with individuals who want to preserve and document TK for themselves.
In response to Poster #2, the “imaginary supreme being” referred to is the delusion known as “God” (Dawkins) – “Judeo-Christian” or otherwise. A belief system “deserves respect” when it is supported by evidence. Neither an immortal Elvis nor alien abductions can be supported thusly, and so they cannot be “respected” as ideas by materialist thinkers (although one can respect the right of people to believe these things if they want). The same goes for communicating with muskoxen, throwing beaver fetuses back into the water so that they can be “reborn”, using sweetgrass to keep evil spirits away and thinking that taking a sauna enables one to see into the future. To see the similarities between the irrational ideas put forward by some non-aboriginal people and those put forward by some aboriginal people is not to be a “racist or a hater”. It is to treat aboriginal people as intellectual equals and to actually include them in the debates that are occurring throughout the world. It is the idea that all aboriginal people are “spiritual” that is actually racist. This is to assume that the native population is inherently irrational, with no hope for future intellectual development.
2. Was Lewis Henry Morgan “wrong”?
Now that one is not automatically labeled a racist for considering the theories of Lewis Henry Morgan (and by extension Karl Marx and Frederick Engels), real debate is starting to take place on this subject. This is a welcome development; the “racism” charge has created obstacles for the examination of these theories, and then, because the proponents of cultural evolutionary theories are afraid to defend them publicly, postmodern relativists are able to declare that “no one thinks like that anymore”.
One poster is critical of Morgan’s theories – and by extension those of Marx and Engels – because of “the emphasis on economic/material aspects determining the superstructure”. S/he maintains that “empirical evidence suggests sociopolitical factors also impact culture which Weber subsequently incorporated in his comparison using Asia to explain why Asia did not enter into capitalism despite the necessary antecedents as described by Marx (Weber’s protestant thesis).”.
In response to this poster, “the emphasis on economic/material aspects determining the superstructure” is not to deny the importance of sociopolitical factors. It is just to assert that economic factors are the most significant because they are foundational – without “enlarging the source of subsistence” (Morgan), there can be no increase in population and no ability to have the time to develop new technologies. It has been recognized by the cultural evolutionist V. Gordon Childe that ideas can act to impede technological progress (and I would argue that this is happening with respect to aboriginal policy today). I do accept some of Weber’s insights – such as the evolution from traditional to legal rational forms of authority – but see that these are linked to developments in the productivity of labour.
The second poster – Mosha Folger – says that he doesn’t have to “prove Morgan was wrong” because Morgan’s “work has been read, analyzed, dissected, and largely shown to be dubious work riddled with over-reaching” (i.e. – “the people don’t think like that anymore” argument). His only attempt to refute Morgan’s ideas is the following: “if there is such a thing as social evolution, it’s not linear…” and that “…the applicability of the description of linear, savage-barbaric-civilized evolution of culture (culture which owes its existence, incidentally, to evolution and its tendency for randomness) — of humans in isolation where 90% of contact with other humans was generally unpleasant and with the same neighbouring people — have for a people living on a planet connected in ways unimaginable in the 19th century…”.
I have difficulty in responding to these comments; perhaps this is due to the fact that this is obfuscation, not argument?
A third poster argues that “the difficulty with Morgan’s unilinear notion of cultural evolution, setting aside the teleology embedded in it and in Engels’ rendition of it, is really threefold: first, the Enlightenment notion of progress is more an article of faith than anything else, the ‘temporalization of the Great Chain of Being’ as A. O. Lovejoy puts it; second, a plethora of societies stubbornly refuse to be governed by the model (hence AMP and other excuses), while others suffer a reverse in living standards because well-meaning ‘modernists’ mistake other world-views and practices as ‘primitive’ (the water-temples of Bali being instructive in this regard–see Steve Lansing); and third, from a global perspective, modernization (so-called) for some countries requires the underdevelopment of others”. This third poster then goes on to state that “mechanical notions of base and superstructure and unilinear social evolution punctuated by revolutions have given way to far more sophisticated accounts of social change–accounts that do not require the ‘civilizing’ force of white folks to be imposed upon benighted savages and primitive peoples (I’m thinking ‘British Rule in India’ here, although Marx got less optimistic towards the end)”.
In response to this third poster, Morgan’s theory of cultural evolution is not teleological; nor is the Marxist notion of progress an “article of faith” (this is just the wishful thinking of a postmodernist). As Alex Callinicos explains in his book Theories and Narratives, Marxist notions of progress are not teleological because “the account [given] of the meaning of the historical process, and more particularly of the state of affairs in which it culminates, explains the succession of social forms making up the content of that process” (teleological uses the end result as part of the explanation for that end result). In historical materialism, “the succession of social forms” is explained by the tendency of mankind’s productive forces to develop (technological efficiency and an increasing division of labour).
This third poster’s reference to the “underdevelopment of [other countries]” in “so-called modernization” actually assumes the existence of progress. What s/he is pointing to is a political problem, caused by the exploitative nature of imperialism; it does not refute the idea of progress itself.
3. Does TK contribute to our current understanding of the natural world?
It is important to point out that TK has both an empirical and a spiritual component. While the latter cannot help us to understand the natural world, the former – observations of nature while hunting – can. What should be noted, however, is that the methodology of local knowledge is much less developed than that found in modern scientific research (it is actually a protoscientific methodology – trial and error). Measurement and recording are very important aspects of scientific methodology, and without these tools many modern discoveries would never have been possible (we use the examples of the scientific discoveries of Galileo, Redi, and Lavoisier). Although various arguments have been made about local knowledge information being “passed down” from generation to generation, the fact that this relied upon memory casts doubt upon its accuracy.
Although many commentators seem to think that criticism of TK’s spiritual component is an unfair tactic that sets up a “straw man”, they fail to understand one of the main purposes of including spiritual beliefs in the definition of TK. This is to stop people from questioning the accuracy and representativeness of TK observations. When the spiritual component of traditional knowledge is questioned, advocates point to aboriginal peoples’ basic knowledge of the flora and fauna. Challenging the capacity of aboriginal peoples’ local knowledge to accurately measure wildlife populations, on the other hand, results in the traditional knowledge lobby asserting that aboriginal estimates should be uncritically accepted because native spiritual/racial intuition enables the acquisition of knowledge that is inaccessible to non-aboriginals.
4. What can be done to elevate aboriginal educational achievement?
I appreciated the remarks of the poster about aboriginal education programs. This is the sort of discussion that needs to go on to improve aboriginal educational outcomes. For the record, I totally agree with the comments that this poster makes about Taiaiake Alfred. The condescension that is shown towards this unscientific and reactionary “warrior” is very destructive to higher education for both aboriginal and non-aboriginal students (Alfred claims that almost half of his students are non-aboriginal).
This poster encourages the examination of the “positive gains that have been made rather than worst case scenarios…”. As examples, s/he refers to “culturally appropriate education” initiatives “like the Nunavut Sivuniksavut [NS] program in Ottawa ”. It is implied that this success is due to “culturally appropriate education”, but it is also noted that “the reason why models like NS in Ottawa are so successful is that Inuit kids can attend, get tutoring in the evening and be in a context that is totally conducive to learning -one where they are not crammed into a house with 10 other people who have all sorts of social and health problems. The university down the road is not alien, nor is the city…and so when it comes time to go on to post sec. their chances of success increase exponentially”.
This poster also asks whether there is encouragement of “traditional knowledge in schools to the detriment and exclusion of ‘western education’”. S/he also maintains that “some level of culture based education is called for and is very important… Most educators know that you build from where people are at, and incorporate emotional/affective aspects into pedagogy for it to be translated into ‘learning’”. According to this poster, “programs like NS ‘create’ a culture, outside of the Marxian economic base/superstructure model; and these programs will gain steam (or as Weber noted, “status”) and in turn provide the kind of policy to be emulated and built on”.
In response to these assertions, it is not clear whether the success of the NS program is due to “culturally appropriate education” or the fact that aboriginal students get to live in a healthy environment in Ottawa, where they have been removed from the dysfunctional communities in which they were living in Nunavut. As the poster recognizes, success for aboriginal students requires that they become comfortable living outside their kinship group, and the NS program is obviously helping with this. These are circumstances that have nothing to do with “culturally appropriate education”.
I certainly agree that a great deal of thought needs to be devoted in trying to “build from where people are at, and incorporate emotional/affective aspects into pedagogy for it to be translated into ‘learning’”. But, if the goal is to improve aboriginal educational levels, it must be recognized that there is a difference in the complexity of information to be learnt in pre-literate and modern societies. The challenge is to develop methods that bridge this gap in the least traumatic way possible. Unfortunately, most aboriginal education initiatives are intent on denying that there is a developmental difference between the enculteration of hunting and gathering traditions and modern educational requirements. This prevents the emergence of effective policies to address aboriginal educational deficits.
Sincerely,
Frances Widdowson
“This is in contrast to the originator of this post, who refused to do this, just stating that “other readers should form their own opinion”. This is arrogance at its worst.”
Heh. No, Frances. I’ve actually introduced a whole new group to the Wonder that is you, and sincerely suggested that they investigate your writings and make up their own minds. Arrogance? Nope – faith in our readership’s capacity for critical thought.
A rather more interesting discussion of TK is occurring in another thread. You’re welcome to join, but if you don’t mind a friendly piece of advice – stop treating our readers as though they’re dim undergrads at a thesis defense and you’re a visiting scholar. Thanks so much.
Back for more.
I’ll just stick with the Morgan/Engels critique for now, since my example of the Bali water temples (in defence of TK) has been sidestepped.
Just before I get to that, one correction: placing “modernization” in quotation-marks and referring to the underdevelopment of the periphery does not imply any notion of “progress.” It counters the assertion that all societies, given the opportunity, mechanically move from foraging to the slave state to feudalism to capitalism and then to communism: from economic scarcity and inequitable distribution of wealth to economic abundance and the equitable distribution of wealth. My point–obviously–was that some parts of the world are denied economic abundance because of the very “modernization” that Widdowson supports. She may not be prepared to admit this, but her vision of modernization is imperialist and ethnocentric/assimilationist.
On to Morgan.
Morgan’s theory of cultural evolution is not teleological….In historical materialism, “the succession of social forms” is explained by the tendency of mankind’s productive forces to develop (technological efficiency and an increasing division of labour).
This value-laden statement is hardly a refutation of the teleology implicit in the notion of unilinear social evolution. The latter simply reeks of Hegel. And it’s not borne out by observation: not every society goes through the stages outlined; not every one will; and many, within the global context, have moved off the simplistic grid in other directions (e.g., a number of the Kayapo, having literally the best of both worlds; ditto the water temple priests of Bali, who now use computers as a tool in their complex calculus of water-distribution; ditto Inuit landsmen who have included GPS in their practice without replacing the original skills.)
Certainly population alone will lead to an increasing division of labour and so on, but again this doesn’t apply to every society. Nor do these changes necessarily reflect an increasing “complexity.” Statements like Measurement and recording are very important aspects of scientific methodology, and without these tools many modern discoveries would never have been possible (we use the examples of the scientific discoveries of Galileo, Redi, and Lavoisier) don’t really tell us much. What of the Aztec calendar, for example? I believe I posted a link earlier on African mathematics. The “modern” (European-dominated) period is not the fons et origo of all rigorous records-based discoveries. Nor do the precise landskills of the Inuit depend upon written record-keeping: oral tradition was sufficient.
Widdowson’s explicit valuing of “modernization” over traditional lifeways is complicated further by half-truth s about the Inuit. “Dysfunctional communities?” Sure: the fall-out, as I mentioned earlier, of implication in capitalism (sivler fox) and then imposed sedentarization, and then the inevitable anomie. I’d provide a reading-list, but Widdowson just cherry-picks the points she want to address, and I have better things to do than top try to educate her.
Last word to Franz Boas, who wrote, in 1904 (no postmodernist he!):
From the very beginning there has been a strong tendency to combine with the historical aspect a subjective valuation of the various phases of development, the present serving as the standard of comparison. The oft-observed change from simple forms to more complex forms, from uniformity to diversity, was interpreted as a change from the less valuable to the more valuable, and thus the historical view assumed in many cases an ill-concealed teleological tinge. The grand picture of nature in which for the first time the universe appears as a unit of ever-changing form and color, each momentary aspect being determined by the past moment and determining the coming changes, is still obscured by a subjective element, emotional in its sources, which leads us to ascribe the highest value to that which is near and dear to us.
Frances,
You seem really confused about why people correctly label you and your work racist when what you claim to be talking about is “culture.” Perhaps this is because you and your partner have clearly waisted most of your time sifting endlessly and uncritically through the corporate media’s racist misrepresentation of indigenous peoples, instead of reading some credible literature on the subject.
Your ignorance shines through when you claim that Howard Adam’s notion of “cultural racism” is an “oxymoron.” I don’t expect you to know this, but Adams actually borrows this concept from a classic essay by Frantz Fanon (”Racism and Culture”) which highlights a modification in the way that imperialist expansion, exploitation and forms of domination came to be ideologically justified by those who benefited from these practices. What Fanon does is trace the historical evolution of racism as a systematized form of oppression oriented around crude assumptions of biological inferiority (which became no longer sustainable) to a more subtle form grounded on notions of cultural inferiority. What Fanon calls the emergence of “cultural racism” thus anticipates what contemporary critical race scholars (often of the Marxist-feminist variety) have termed the “culturalization of racism.” Under this new guise, the object of racism shifts from those genetically identifiable characteristics once thought to mark certain individuals or groups as inferior, to what Fanon calls entire “forms of existing” or “ways of life” (i.e. culture). Although the content of your racism is of this latter variety, it ultimately serves the same ideological purpose that the old-school version did: to justify colonial practices of dispossesion, exploitation and domination. Same bourgeois, colonialist crap that your new friend and ally Flanagan has been shovelling out for years.
And your reiteration of why you justify slavery in your book (by making an argument that justifies worker exploitation) is a testament to how reactionary and silly your work is.
GC
I really have to question how useful it is to accuse the likes of Frances of racism, even the modern watered-down version that doesn’t add up to much more than challenging a lot of people in another culture. She seems to be much more a scientific imperialist, insisting that her knowledge is superior and must be accepted as trumping any challengers or even second-guessers by definition, because it is based on “observation”, “systematic method” yada, yada. One would never know from reading her that wildlife biologists in the North have often seriously over or underestimated wildlife populations and the threats to them.
Peter: your point is taken. But when Widdowson’s scientific imperialism is:
a) applied consistently and unremittingly over a decade to Aboriginal peoples, AND the political and educational instruments they are developing
b) linked to suggestions that Aboriginal people should abandon their land claims, treaties, self government structures, and meekly assimilate,
then one cannot but help suspect that there’s more at work here than simply scientific triumphalism.
A few definitions of racism may help:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each racial group possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially to distinguish it as being either superior or inferior to another racial group or racial groups. The Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular racial group, and that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief.
Based on these definitions, where is Widdowson’s argument racist?
I think she is arguing that all ethnic groups are capable of developing abstract thought and entering into modernity. If there is a problem with her thesis it lies here at a metatheoretical level, rather than a racist one.
Refer to dictionary??? Thanks, but that’s no help at all.
Oh I don’t know, just thought a few semantic clarifications may be in orde given all the confusion surrounding what constitutes racism.
Incidentally, this week’s Nature of Things is worth watching as it touches on a touchy issue, the arrival of Inuit from Siberia…interesting stuff, but I do wonder how some of the TK holders will take the scientific analysis presented by Thompson. Worth watching at any rate.
You know, I don’t much care what word you want to use, FQ. Call it “a decade long, systematic, repetitive denigration of Aboriginal culture and institutions” if you prefer.
I appreciate the attempt to clarify the definition of “racism” here. To say that a particular group has a “way of life” that will exist in perpetuity, regardless of who says it – Fanon, Adams, etc. – is actually the racist claim. This is because such an assertion assumes that ancestry is inextricably tied to culture, and therefore any attributes of a group – positive or negative – must be due to their biology – i.e. “race” (the idea that aboriginal people are innately concerned about the environment, for example, puts a positive spin on what is actually a racist claim). This is definitely not the argument that Albert Howard and I are making. We are stating that cultural features come about by accident, due to particular environmental circumstances. This was Morgan’s argument (and also Diamond’s) – that the distribution of plants and animals around the world made things like wheat production, and then a number of related technological advancements, possible.
It should also be pointed out that the view of technological stages put forward by Morgan concerned humanity’s development as a whole. As is elaborated upon by Leslie White, who carried Morgan’s ideas forward in the 1950s-1970s, this process is complicated by cultural diffusion. Because culture is learned behaviour, one culture can absorb the advancements of another, even if it did not make a particular discovery itself (because of a lack of conducive environmental influences). The uneven development of cultures, therefore, becomes combined through cultural diffusion. This is Leon Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development that we elaborate upon in our book.
This is what occurred with respect to the examples of the Inuit’s use of GIS and the water-temple priests in Bali (I do not understand the nature of the claim being made in the African mathematics example). It is important to point out, however, that the use of computers could obviously not have been developed by a hunting and gathering or horticultural society, because none of the technological prerequisites could have been in place for this to occur (metallurgy, electronics, etc.). Consuming a technology is one thing; developing the infrastructure for its production is another.
To identify the developmental gap between traditional and modern cultural features is not to “denigrate” aboriginal culture or institutions; various cultural features and institutions are still important to native people themselves, and they should preserve them as they see fit (as long as they do not violate human rights standards). However, to maintain that a number of these traditions will aid aboriginal participation in modern society, and therefore should be incorporated into the educational system, is another thing entirely. Scientific methods, logic, philosophy, etc., have evolved in the context of a culture of literacy, and therefore modern pedagogical methods will need to be adopted if the goal is to encourage aboriginal participation in a variety of occupations (and this is what is being promoted).
Scientific methods are not “my” knowledge. Recorded observations, measurement, and controlled experimentation enabled human beings to avoid being misled by an unrepresentative observation. Local knowledge is much more susceptible to unrepresentative observations, which is why it is relatively limited in terms of what it can understand.
The argument about whether or not a gap in cultural development exists between hunting and gathering societies and modern nation-states, and the political concern about how this will be interpreted, are two different things. It seems to be the fear about the latter that is causing claims about the former to be so emotionally opposed. This is preventing us from accurately understanding the problems surrounding aboriginal-non-aboriginal relations.
Scientific methods, logic, philosophy, etc., have evolved in the context of a culture of literacy, and therefore modern pedagogical methods will need to be adopted if the goal is to encourage aboriginal participation in a variety of occupations (and this is what is being promoted).
I didn’t know Inuit elders use TK in engineering and nuclear physics. I thought this was about wildlife “management” and hunting.
Widdowson misunderstands both of the examples I advanced. Here is a good video by Ron Eglash about African higher mathematics, developed, mirabile dictu, without the loving attention of missionaries and colonists.
My point about the water-temple priests, of course, was not that the advent of computers defined their practice, but the other way around. They operate, and have done so for centuries, a complex calculus of water distribution. Rather than reject what outsiders had to offer, they seamlessly absorbed computer-use into their cultural practices, but they did so without the felt need to give up their epistemology, “superstitions,” etc. Same for GPS among the Inuit landsmen.There’s a lesson here, if Widdowson would but learn it.
However, to maintain that a number of these traditions will aid aboriginal participation in modern society, and therefore should be incorporated into the educational system, is another thing entirely.
The traditions I spoke of in Bali, which also used specific farming methods that the so-called “Green Revolution” supplanted for a while with disastrous consequences, were effective, productive, and not well understood by the reforming modernists both in Bali and from abroad–until Lansing and his team were able to reveal the complexity of those practices. I can assure Widdowson that he didn’t start from the standpoint that superstitious nonsense was blocking the transition to a modern society. That approach had already been tried, and failed dismally.
Local knowledge is much more susceptible to unrepresentative observations, which is why it is relatively limited in terms of what it can understand.
Nonsense. It is knowledge gained over many generations, which has the same effect of weeding out “unrepresentative observations” as formal scientific procedure.
Nonsense. It is knowledge gained over many generations, which has the same effect of weeding out “unrepresentative observations” as formal scientific procedure.
Dr. Dawg, this subject is certainly helping you get in touch with your inner conservative.
Frances may want to ponder why tens of thousands of grandmothers make homemade chicken soup for their sick grandkids, but few feed them chocolate or deep-fried seafood. No doubt she worries this misguided practice will cause the little tykes to lose their way in med school. At the very least, we should demand they provide us with objective, testable evidence that it does any good or maybe an alternative theory of what causes the flu.
Peter, you’re drawing back the curtain on the nefarious “Kid Industry”, a conspiracy of greedy manufacturers, unscrupulous parents, corrupt and self-interested so called “educators”, and, worst of all, “children” who ruthlessly exploit their own kind by pretending there are significant differences between themselves and real humans (which the “Kid Industry”, in an attempt to maintain an obviously artificial but lucrative distinction, refers to as “adults.)
Alas, poor persecuted and misunderstood Frances — her work is not being received with open arms by academics either.
Perhaps she should just call it a day and pack it in.
Citing Frideres’ critique of her scholarship…the pot calling the kettle black, no?
I agree the titles of the chapters are incendiary and she may well have spread herself too thin, overstated her case and used in places selective secondary citations as I have mentioned in previous posts – problems that many pomo writers are able to get away with; but remember, the book was picked up by MQUP – not exactly a vanity press by any means, and secondly, her thesis is where you may want to check her scholarship – a critique of the RCAP report, which I see John richards has also provided similar concerns in Creating Choices, Rethinking Aboriginal Policy (2006).
Reminder…the Nature of Things is worth a watch this Thursday as I think it may stimulate some more discussion on TK and science.
Frances,
Niether myself (above), Fanon or Adams ever make the claim that a given “way of life” will exist unmodified in perpetuity, which you suggest is racist. In a way, however, this gets at my ultimate point: you have proven yourself to be a two-bit scholar who has failed to do the reading and research required to develop the claims you make in your book.
As Frideres correctly suggests, your combination of selectively sifting through the capitalist press to obtain what little informtion you provide, coupled with referencing yourself (you know, getting an abstract accepted at the CPSA doesn’t mean your work is worth the paper it’s written on) does not constitute scholarship. You and Howard have proven yourself to be just a couple of Margret Wente’s and Johnathan Kay’s masquarading as left intellectuals.
The Enlightenment you speak of hails critical self-reflection as one of it’s virtues. Might I suggest living up to your own suggestion and start abiding by this creed. Your sectarian and ignorant BS is starting to making my neolithic brain hurt.
GC
“The titles of the chapters are incendiary and she may well have spread herself too thin, overstated her case and used in places selective secondary citations as I have mentioned in previous posts…”
Quite. Frances Widdowson is to sociology what Anne Coulter is to political journalism – a propagandist whose mediocre scholarship and turgid prose would fail to attract any attention at all if it weren’t spiced up with a little juicy Injun-baiting.
Damn. I had a book with MQUP and allowed myself some swelling of the cranium. Back to earth–with a thump.
My powers are lacking, and the thread lives. Ah well.
“As for Mosha Folger – alias “Yhib” – who shut down the discussion with his knee-jerk accusation of racism against another poster, you should reconsider using such intimidation tactics. In the end, it is you who will suffer, by discouraging others from challenging you with their honest opinions.”
Nothing knee-jerk about it Frances Widdowson. I read his comments, thought about them, they were racist, and so I called him a racist for writing racist things.
“This led Mosha Folger to respond thusly: “I’m going to try to get through your note, but I’m going to call you [Poster #3] a racist”. Mosha Folger seems to come to this conclusion, not because he has understood Poster #3, but because he is pre-programmed to call everyone a racist who disputes his views. The comment of Poster #3 is actually opposing racism (the idea that knowledge is racially determined, as in Adolph Hitler’s pernicious views about “Jewish science”).”
I understand quite well what ‘fighting quote’ said. Dene knowledge was bestowed by an imaginary “creator” while algebra was not sent down to “Muslims” by their imaginary “creator”, Mohammed. No, wait, Allah. No . . . wait.
Therefore Dene knowledge is not real, and algebra is. Set aside the fact that thousands of years of knowledge about algebra was gained in pre-Mohammedan times by non-”Arabs” (Indians for example). To dismiss the knowledge of millions of people based on the notion that the knowledge they possess was supposedly sent from on-high as opposed to gathered over thousands of years of direct observation is racist.
“The second poster – Mosha Folger – says that he doesn’t have to “prove Morgan was wrong” because Morgan’s “work has been read, analyzed, dissected, and largely shown to be dubious work riddled with over-reaching” (i.e. – “the people don’t think like that anymore” argument). His only attempt to refute Morgan’s ideas is the following: “if there is such a thing as social evolution, it’s not linear…” and that “…the applicability of the description of linear, savage-barbaric-civilized evolution of culture (culture which owes its existence, incidentally, to evolution and its tendency for randomness) — of humans in isolation where 90% of contact with other humans was generally unpleasant and with the same neighbouring people — have for a people living on a planet connected in ways unimaginable in the 19th century…”.
I have difficulty in responding to these comments; perhaps this is due to the fact that this is obfuscation, not argument?”
We know, you are unable to respond to obfuscation, just deal in it.
“the people who don’t think like that anymore” argument? Please. I’m just an interested writer with a few years of university under my belt and an analytical mind. But even I know the “people who don’t think like that anymore” are called “scientists”. If people “still thought like that” we’d “still be there”. But “there” (ie 130 years ago) your ideas would likely be garnering much more acclaim, so I can see why you’re unwilling to admit we’re anywhere else.
The only bit of Morgan you can really point at as still in general circulation to defend your citing of his bunk ideas is tangentially related work concerning metallurgy. But that’s just the kind of shaky “science” that undergirds so much pseudo-academic racism.
Hi Mosha, welcome back…
This week on the nature of things Niobe Thompson’s film, Inuit Odyssey will air. It is about a relatively technologically advanced warlike people that were able to exploit the new world and massacre everyone in sight; the incentive being trade in rare metals. The conquistadors you ask? No the ancestors of today’s Inuit, the Thule.
I know that Robert McGhee, one of Canada’s better known Arctic archaeologists – his research helped contribute towards the ideas presented in the film; however, these ran into a lot of resistance by Inuit who claimed a very different history….hence the film is considered controversial, and one of the reasons why he supports Widdowson.
When Widdowson refers to Guns Germs and Steel, some of Diamond’s thesis is reflected in the film, as to the reasons for human migration, which for the Thule was driven by trade, technology and the environemt (mini ice age).
Anyways, it will make for interesting discussion I am sure, and timely given the discussion.
I’ll try to get to the replies soon. In the meantime, here are a few items of interest:
1) response of Albert and myself to Taiaiake Alfred’s review (since the original poster seemed to be so enamoured with this criticism); and
2) an “shock jock” interview with CJOB in Winnipeg. Although the interview is a little sensationalist, it does flesh out some key ideas on the subject.
http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2009/01/16/2304/
http://www.fcpp.org/main/media_file_detail.php?StreamID=1107
OK, let’s head over to CD. Widdowson’s other half has posted one of the most offensive bits of commentary I’ve ever seen: vulgar, racist quackery that cries out for a stomping. Add your boots, folks. Common decency demands it.
Give us a link, Dawg.
Sorry–Frances Widdowson provided it, but here it is again
Yuck. Thanks…I guess.
I have to admit it’s refreshing to see Howard and Widdowson let the mask of mock scholarship slip a bit and reveal the raw rage that actually fuels their “thought”.
Dr. Dawg, did you actually read their whole response? I confess I couldn’t get past the first paragraph – you know, the part where they indicate they can’t believe that a First Nations critic was actually able to write a response by himself?
Nope, no racism there. Heh.
Yup, I ploughed through it, and left a brief comment of my own. I addressed precisely the issue you mentioned, after dealing with Howard’s misrepresentation of “postmodern relativism.” (Can’t you just see the spittle and the curl of his lip when he utters that phrase?)
Actually, the image I keep getting is the hilariously bickering communists of Earl Birney’s “Down the Long Table”, raging at each other with impenetrable dialectics. How many Nabokovs can dance on the head of a Pnin?
May flights of Engels see them to their rest.
Hey, do you suppose one of us is the shadowy “postmodern traditional knowledge consultant and neo-left critic/puppeteer”?
I hope it’s me. I’ve never been called “post-modern” before. I wonder what the furniture is like. Ikea?
@balbulican – Ikea, where all the furniture is named after the Swedish hockey players who didn’t make it to the NHL and the uncredited musicians who backed ABBA on their hits. Very pomo.
Dawg, you have far more patience than I. Could not make it all the way through Howard’s response.
I’d rather be a derider than a derrida, myself.
I forced – repeat – forced myself to chew on Howard’s rebuttal of Alfred’s review, word by word. I don’t know how I did it without woofing. I came away with the impression that Howard wasn’t disputing what Taiaiake Alfred had written, once having dissed the guy, so much as trying to convince himself that he wasn’t saying “don’t believe those corrupt and conniving white consultants and their inherently paternalistic agenda over there because we’re much better white consultants pushing a similar paternalistic agenda over here.”
In the end, it doesn’t really matter who’s pushing it when the ultimate aim is the same.
I find this whole discussion amusing – it reminds me of a young Frances Widdowson five years or so ago, raging against the prevailing Aboriginal scholarship but never putting her own work out in an academic publication for rigorous scrutiny.
She finally has done so. And now everyone on this blog is dumping on her in EXACTLY the same way she used to dump on Aboriginal academics five years ago. Sniping from the bushes and hiding behind big fancy words using public blogs and conferences, rather than engaging in peer reviewed discourse.
If people on this blog are serious about taking her on, then do something productive – Write! Write newspaper articles. Write newspaper editorials. Or better yet, take Widdowson and Howard on in the academic journals. They chose to start the conversation there by publishing at an academic press. Why don’t people respond to her using the same medium? At least then something more productive may occur.
Anonymous, you’re making a large, and erroneous, assumption; that the people you’re reading on this blog are not or have not argued with Widdowson/Howard in other venues and media, or in “real life”.
The exchange here is blog-like in tone because – wait for it – are you ready – this is a blog.
Wonderful! Post the references so I can look up your the peer-reviewed responses to the Widdowson book. And I invite the others here to do so as well. I would be most interested in reading them. I find the stuff posted on this blog to be interesting, but extremely unsatisfying, and ironically, just as weak as the arguments offered by Widdowson. Isn’t it a little ironic that people here are decrying the lack of rigour in Widdowson’s book, when the posts here are just as unrigorous (and even more so – at least Widdowson tried to use literature to advance her arguments and published them in a university press)!?
Why not organize an edited book with a university press that brings together academic papers by the posters here on the Widdowson book? Wouldn’t that be a logical extension and outcome of this type of conservation?
Again – get out of the stands and get into the game.
Hey, anonymous…. who are you to call for full disclosure?
C’mon, assume the position…. against the wall, arms out, legs apart, and…. let’s just see what you got in yer wallet…
anonymous:
That’s not critique–it’s assertion. Either get into the specifics or mosey along.
Alfred over at CD demolished the book. Howard’s response? He couldn’t have written the review himself, because he’s an Aboriginal.
Why should we take such quacks seriously enough to publish papers about them? I’m already working on two others at the moment, that deal with serious subjects.
I’m all for conservation. Sign me up.
Now, now, guys. Let’s be nice to folks like anonymous, who has mastered just enough of the vocabulary (ooohhh…”peer-reviewed”!!) to convince themselves that they sound learned.
To Dr. Dawg:
1) According to Balbulican, blogs are at their very core “assertion”, not argumentation.
2) Who decides who the quacks are? Why not demonstrate through rigorous analysis that Widdowson are in fact quacks? I can guarantee you that you are not going to show they are quacks in this blog. Take them on in the academic journals. Otherwise, you are basically preaching to the converted – which I guess is the root of the “circle jerk” comment above.
3) As for full disclosure – I’m not calling for it – I’m just suggesting that the posters here consider treating academic work seriously – which means engaging such work in academic journals or books. Snipe from the bushes all you want. It’s not convincing to me and I want to be convinced! So please, convince me.
And really – I don’t think anyone wants full disclosure in a place where to question fundamental assumptions within the Aboriginal politics field is to be labelled a racist and Aboriginal hater.
To Balbulican – what’s up with the ad hominum attack? I don’t claim to be learned. I’m the first admit I don’t know much about anything. So please, appeal to my reason. Please, convince me. My request for peer reviewed materials that critique Widdowson is sincere. It’s not a veiled defense of their work.
So treat me seriously – I want to be convinced. I just don’t find the debates as they have been developed here to be helpful, yet.
Although I agree with the above poster about blogs being somewhat “raw” and therefore unsatisfying intellectually, I think that they do serve some useful purposes. They allow people to vent and get things off their chest that would not be possible otherwise. More importantly, they appeal to an audience who could not be reached very easily through peer-reviewed journals. Finally, these forums are immediate, and allow more give and take than is possible in more structured venues. However, they can get out of hand, with insults almost obliterating any actual content. Although I think there is a bit of a double standard being used in my case, I guess I have to take a little bit of responsibility for allowing things to degenerate in the way that they have…
So, let me try to clarify a few things pertaining to the comment of a poster that “Alfred over at CD demolished the book. Howard’s response? He couldn’t have written the review himself, because he’s an Aboriginal”. This then resulted in a new round of venting, with accusations of “racism”, “hatred”, “colonialism”, etc. acting to prevent a rational discussion of Alfred’s response from emerging.
First of all, it was never stated that Alfred could not have written the review himself because “he’s an Aboriginal”. What was actually being referred to were the similarities between Alfred’s wording about “socialism from above” and that which appeared in the writings of a traditional knowledge consultant and neo-left critic of our work. This critic is enamoured with Alfred’s ideas and seems to think that they have something to do with socialism (which they do not – Alfred’s ideas are actually racially essentialist and anti-labour). This condescension shown towards Alfred and his “Wasase movement” partially explains the arrogant tone of his commentary.
Secondly, it can hardly be claimed that Alfred “demolished” Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry. Most of the “review” consists of insults, and much of the “criticism” is in response to a misrepresentation of the book’s content. From some of his comments, in fact, it is apparent that Alfred did not even read the book, and he must have relied upon another source for his information. Although the animosity that Alfred feels is undoubtedly shared by a number of posters on this forum, it is important to keep spite separate from analysis.
One of the only areas where Alfred actually responds to the scholarship in Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry concerns the question of whether or not the Iroquois Confederacy influenced the American Constitution. The “evidence” that Alfred uses to dismiss Elisabeth Tooker’s scholarly review of the historical documents pertaining to the matter is a political statement by the U.S. Senate. Is this the sort of “scholarship” that the posters on this forum appreciate?
Alfred’s popularity is not due to the fact that his work is carefully researched; its value seems to lie in the justification that it provides for the parallelist initiatives of the Aboriginal Industry. When real debate begins about the historical forces influencing aboriginal-non-aboriginal relations, Alfred’s books will have a minimal impact. They will merely remind us of a time when cage rattling masqueraded as scholarship.
(Editor’s note: Frances, this comment went into moderation – not sure why. Apologies for the delay in its appearance. Balb)
Post the references so I can look up your the peer-reviewed responses to the Widdowson book.
No need to wade through those turgid academic journals. balb reviews everybody elses responses and we review his. We all think we’re incredibly thorough and insightful, and so our thoughts have now entered the realm of scientific truth. Neat, eh?
“I can guarantee you that you are not going to show they are quacks in this blog.”
In this thread and the thread on TK, you have both substantive discussion of several Widdowson theses, as well as my own winning mockery/abuse, plus links to other substantive reviewer/critics. If those persuade some readers, great. If not – shrug.
‘I’m just suggesting that the posters here consider treating academic work seriously – which means engaging such work in academic journals or books.”
As I noted above, some do. At least one reader/writer in this thread has contributed substantially to two major works on TK. If they choose to identify themselves, fine. Otherwise, just keep telling yourself – it’s only a blog.
‘We all think we’re incredibly thorough and insightful, and so our thoughts have now entered the realm of scientific truth. Neat, eh?”
Huh?
Ok balbulican, thanks for your response. I see I’ve come to the wrong blog for a fruitful discussion of Widdowson’s book.
I’ll look elsewhere, and direct my students elsewhere. Can anyone here recommend a good left-wing blog that takes things a little more serious, minus the sniping and personal attacks? I’d like a dose of rigorous and thoughtful left-wing discussion to balance my right wing tendencies. But I’d rather avoid the personal attacks and scholarly laziness that tends to dominate here.
I would appreciate any suggestions about other left-wing blogs. Thanks and happy blogging!
Gosh, I’m crushed. Pause. Okay, I’ve recovered.
@Frances Widdowson –
Finally, Frances, I don’t understand why you are participating in these debates. Deliberative theory and political psychology teaches us that blogs aren’t deliberative arenas where true learning and persuasion occur. In other words, you can’t win!
You’ve published the book through a respectable university press. Leave it at that. Engage with critics in academic scholarship. Participating in these types of venues will gain you nothing and continue to damage your career.
Be an academic…
Hmm. I wonder if Anonymous is setting the stage for an honourable retreat by herself.
In any case, Anon, I can answer your question. Without controversy, Widdowson is just one more mediocre scholar and poor writer. This is simply marketing to keep her brand alive.
@anonymous – Whooee! Fer a feller who don’t believe in blogs, yer sure doin’ a lotta bloggin’. Strangely enough, the mainstream media has bent over backwards to deliver a more blog-like offering. Academic journals? Who reads ‘em? Same dust gatherin’ stuff like all them gummint studies and reports and inquiries.
There are gazillions of academic peer-reviewed papers and studies demonstrating the existence of AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming). That hasn’t prevented the vested interest denialist movement from winning supporters through sham pseudo scientific BS papers and articles published in quack journals and, yes, blogs.
You don’t think blogs are worth botherin’ with? Quit botherin’.
JB
Well put, JB.
I would add that in any decent blog, each thread develops its own tone, tempo and timbre, usually (but not always) set by the blogger in the initial post. It’s ineresting to contrast this thread with the current TK thread, which is quite heated but entirely civil.
I’d like a dose of rigorous and thoughtful left-wing discussion
Either our anonymouse hasn’t read the thread, or (more likely) he or she is just trolling. Many of us offered thoughtful responses, quoted sources, the whole academic shtick. In fact, several of us are scholars, and a few of us even know what we’re talking about.
If Nonny wants to engage us in an actual discussion, several of us are ready. So far, however, there’s been no sign that this is Nonny’s intent.
[...] the moment – one is a civil, interesting discussion on its meaning and application, and one is an increasingly confusing but ever-entertaining attempt by Frances Widdowson to demonstrate that she’s not actually a racist, after [...]
Just saw Widdowson’s response. Leaving the concern troll to one side, let me pick up on Tooker’s position that the Great Law of Peace had nothing to do with the drafting of the US Constitution.
This is admittedly a controversial issue, but Widdowson’s cherry-picking doesn’t make it less so. Donald Grinde and Bruce Johansen have a different point of view. They’ve appeared on panels with Tooker.
The uncontroverted fact is that the Founding Fathers were well aware of the Iroquois Confederacy and its Great Law of Peace. Here’s a link to Grinde and Johansen’s Exemplar of Liberty, quoting a number of primary sources. I’m agnostic on the issue, to be frank, but you can’t wish this all away simply to defend the thesis that native people had nothing to offer the colonizers, which appears to be Widdowson and Howard’s position.
Meanwhile, Widdowson’s backpedalling anent Howard’s disgraceful attack on Alfred is a remarkable bit of acrobatics.
Ok – I give up! You guys and gals win. My last contribution and then I bid you adieu.
The Iroquois thesis is crap – read:
Philip A. Levy, “Exemplars of Taking Liberties: The Iroquois Influence Thesis and the Problem of Evidence.” William and Mary Quarterly (1996) 53(3):587-604.
In that same issue, there Grinde et. al respond. A very good debate issue – something this blog should try to emulate, but in blog form.
My goodness, that’s more final farewells from Anonymous than the Who have had goodbye tours.
As a Shmohawk proud and true, I say that the U-S-of-A is based on something. The ideas that formed the thinking for the union didn’t come out of thin air. The French Revolution shaped some of the Framer’s ideas, as did Westminster’s example. So did the Confederacy, right down to symbols such as the eagle with the clutched arrows, and the “all men are created equal…” Although they botched the Tree of Peace by replacing it with a damn pyramid (how american, eh), and forgot to include women as full active members of society; in the Confederacy, women had the power to strip men of their authority.
But we mustn’t admit that North American Indigenous peoples were more advanced in some things than those grubby, stinky Europeans who got lost and we found on our beaches with copious amounts of perfume splashed over them to cover their atrocious body odour. Oooh… no way!
Apologies in advance to any rather potent Euro types who still splash copious amounts of perfume on yourselves. Still… take a bath, mate.
I’m glad you added that last apology. I stand by my traditions – everyone knows that exposing the skin to air and water is unhealthy, and perfume is cheap – but for some reason most people don’t seem to want to stand by me.
@anonymous –
Alas, I can see that you are right. When there are deliberate misinterpretations of statements (a reference made specifically about Alfred as an “irrational, undisciplined, condescended-to indigenous academic”, was pluralized into “damned ‘irrational’, ‘undisciplined’ indigenous critics”, presumably to give substance to more venting about “racism” and “aboriginal hating”), and attempts to refute misconceptions become the subject of infantile discussions about “packpedalling”, I guess it’s time to call it a day.
Damn, I AM good.
Balb at 9:39 am: “Hmm. I wonder if Anonymous is setting the stage for an honourable retreat by herself.”
That’s “BACKpedalling”, Frances. With a “B”.
Nonny:
I’m not overly impressed by that article–while Grinde and Johansen overstated their case, Levy does the same in reverse. He quibbles. Adams writes of a “king” with an ordinary council of sachems: G&J cite this as a “sachem” with an ordinary council of lesser sachems. We are asked to believe that this is a serious difference, and that G&J were using this “misquotation” to advance the (quite defensible) thesis that Adams knew of the sachemship system before Morgan’s research (599). That is really stretching a point.
Earlier, he fusses about the number 48 not being 50 (592), supposedly tripping up G&J on a matter of detail; then, confronted by a reference by Adams to 50 families [actually sachemships, as discovered later by Morgan] of the Iroquois, suggests that this is merely metaphorical, a reference, instead, to the warring city-states of ancient Greece [Were there 50 of them?](600-1). Sauce for the goose, as G&J might say. Levy makes much of the fact that the word “families” rather than “sachemships” was used, but, once again, I think this is stretching a point to make a point.
Payne’s piece in the same issue is less polemical and makes more satisfactory reading. My own feeling is that the knowledge of the Six Nations Confederacy might well have played into the “checks and balances” underpinning of the US Constitution. I see less evidence for wider claims. G&J do a fine job of countering their opponents’ arguments, but that doesn’t strengthen their own case, which, as I noted, seems overreaching, but not dismissible holus-bolus (see, for example, p.627–there’s some meat there).
I do note that most of the fiercest critics of G&J are not scholars at all, but notables like Dinesh D’Souza, Patrick Buchanan and George Will. Names ring a bell?
There’s more, but enough for now. If you’re serious, you’ll engage.
Balb:
Widdowson meant “packpedalling.” She’s carrying a lot of Eurocentric baggage, after all.
@balbulican –
As weak as tea; and getting weaker.
Darn – is Frances gone? You guys were too hard on her! Shouldn’t you ask her back so that you can have some more fun?
We could do that, yeah. Or I could flay my hand with a cheese grater, then stick it in a pot of boiling javex.
Hmmm…..
I wonder who “anonymous” was? I must admit that I have my suspicions…
The minute you try to fight these folks on their own ground, they turn tail and run.
Why, Doc, whatever COULD you be suggesting? Surely you don’t think a scholar of Widdowson’s unquestionable rectitude could…no, the mind reels.