Linda Tuwihai Smith’s decolonizing methodologies of
research for indigenous communities provide a framework with which to analyze
Waskar Ari’s historical Earth Politics, Kirsch’s Reverse Anthropology,
and Bacigalupo’s Thunder Shaman. Smith’s recognition of research’s ties
to colonial expansion and imperialism, plus engaging with indigenous ways of
knowing, challenges scholars to consider their positionality and relationship
with their subjects. The works of Ari, Kirsch, and Bacigalupo exemplify the
need for a decolonizing approach that can contribute to indigenous movements,
and while each author contributes to that vision, the paradoxical nature of
decolonized academic research persists. Issues such as liberalism as the
framework for making claims, particularly for environmental struggles, may not
be reconcilable with the goals of decolonization. This indicates that
decolonization is a constant struggle that may never be achieved by any
academic discipline, but can shape research in needed ways for building alternatives.
Decolonization in an academic context should be seen as a constant struggle in
which the racial, gendered, and class origins of research shape methodology but
the act of decolonizing a field remain a constant orientation of anthropology.
Ari’s Earth Politics, a history of the Alcaldes
Mayores Particulares movement in 20th century Bolivia through a study of four
male leaders, written by an indigenous scholar, is a good place to start. Ari
endeavored to demonstrate how Aymara and Quechua-speaking Bolivians developed
an independent politics combining land rights, spirituality, and ethnic
preservation. The AMP drew from colonial-era laws and land titles to defend
their communal lands, make claims, and resist assimilationist policies from the
liberal state or the labor movement to de-Indianize their communities. Ari’s
study contributes to decolonial research by conceptualizing a mode of thought
or analysis for AMP leaders that possesses its own rational basis. Furthermore,
the subjects of Ari’s analysis, drew on colonial-era legislation to assert
their political movement, as legitimating an Indian republic. According to
Smith, coloniality, or imperialism, is a lived experience and Earth Politics
verifies it in the context of Aymara and Quechua-speaking Bolivia,
specifying it as caste society in which internal colonialism operates (Ari, 11).
He also carries out what Smith called for by incorporating indigenous ways of
knowing into the text. AMP leaders, such as Toribio Miranda, conceived of land
rights, Aymara religiosity, and colonial-era laws through Aymara ideas, for
example, sumaqamaña (Ari, 84). Ari’s sources also include indigenous ways of
knowing since he utilized memoirs and testimonies by historical actors,
allowing their memories of AMP activism shape his narrative.
The notion of a simple binary of Indian versus non-Indian breaks
down due to Ari’s inclusion of gender as a category of analysis, another
important aspect of research Smith identified in the intersections of race and
gender (Smith, 46). Gender shapes perceptions of “Indianness,” particularly
dress, which meant men could sometimes shift between cholo and Indian
categories. The very fluidity of Aymara and Quechua identities, as well as
cholo working-class, also challenges simplistic binaries or notions of
authenticity (Ari, 145). The religious and political components of earth
politics in this context similarly defy essentialist explanation. Catholicism,
the labor struggle among farm workers, struggles against urban segregation, and
resistance to state projects of mestizaje or “de-Indianizing” all speak to a
heterogeneous body of thought encapsulated by the AMP. Unfortunately, the
question of where to go persists with Ari’s decolonizing history. His work
illustrates that detailed historical studies of indigenous populations, Andean
or otherwise, can be done. But in so doing, male historical actors are still
privileged, though gender as a factor in the structure of the AMP, plus its
activism against sexism from the state, is included.
A similar decolonizing approach by Bacigalupo’s Thunder
Shaman attempts to address history and indigenous epistemologies among the
Mapuche. Bacigalupo, who like Ari, accounts for her own positionality in
relation to her subject, a shaman named Francisca, developed a close
relationship with Francisca over several years of research in Millali, Chile.
Her shared hybrid identity with Rosa, for instance, created a point of contact
while destabilizing essentialist assumptions (Bacigalupo, 22). Likewise, she
approached the book as a bible co-produced by Francisca, for future Mapuche. A
thunder shaman, or machi, possesses a form of historical consciousness that
perceives time differently, opting for multitemporality, shaping history through
dreams, trance, and spirits (Bacigalupo, 70). Thus, shamanic or machi
historical consciousness and epistemology differs from positivistic Western
narratives of history. Bacigalupa’s shaman is a practitioner of a form of
cosmopolitics which combines social, political, and ecological factors
(Bacigalupo, 164).
Furthermore, the history produced by shamans, often relying on
memory, also challenges official or state documents and legal discourse to
exceed, subvert and avoid the state archive, while drawing on indigenous
grafismo and inscriptions (Bacigalupo, 132). Bacigalupo identifies a form of
perspectivism and new ontologies in shamanic histories, since the machi are
associated with collective ancestors and historical individuals, such as Rosa
who lived in the “before time” period in the late 19th century. Mapuche views
of capitalism and sorcery and their history as subjugated peoples by the state
also contains a counter-narrative that alludes to the settlers as the
barbarians (Bacigalupo, 59). These aforementioned aspects of Bacigalupo’s
writing indicate a noble endeavor to include indigenous ways of being, systems
of knowledge, and contribute to Mapuche social movements by elucidating one
approach Mapuche have to history..
Despite writing Thunder Shaman as a bible of
Francisca’s work, Bacigalupo does not fully explore the question of shamanic
historical consciousness in the contemporary struggles of the Mapuche over
environmental and land concerns. Therefore, while writing from the lens of shamanic
historical consciousness, which she argues does not follow a wingka historical
narrative, she does not apply her research to contemporary issues, such as
timber companies, except for distinguishing Francisca’s approach to timber
companies as rejecting the frame liberalism requires of indigeneity
(Bacigalupa, 165). For Smith, this would be a weakness in Bacigalupo’s
ethnographic research, for not applying the results of research to contemporary
conflicts with timber companies. Nonetheless, Mapuche shamanic historical
consciousness undoubtedly shapes Mapuche activism and relations with the state
today, and by producing a bible of Francisca recognizes the necessity for
decolonizing research to contribute something that includes the subject’s
testimony, acknowledges the author’s position in relation to the community
while including indigenous ways of knowing. In this sense, Thunder Shaman fulfills
some of the goals of decolonizing methodologies.
Stuart Kirsch’s Reverse Anthropology, explores
Yonggom indigenous analysis in Papua New Guinea. The act of positioning his
work as a reversal of anthropology by foregrounding Yonggom modes of thinking
constitutes a decolonizing project, or at least the promise of it. He also
identifies this as aligning ethnography with social movements (Kirsch, 3).
Kirsch focuses on social relations and unrequited reciprocity through Yonggom
ritual, magic, myth, and relations with the Ok Tedi mine. He begins the study
by subverting stereotypes of Melanesia as a land with history, showing how the
region’s exchange networks with the rest of the world predate colonialism,
although the focus on birds of paradise trade networks still privileges the
West. However, in that relationship, Kirsch identifies the importance of
Melanesian trade and colonialism for the rise of conservation (Kirsch, 36).
Consequently, a more robust history of Papua New Guinea is still needed for
decolonizing research that explores the region’s connections to Southeast Asia
and Australia before European contact.
After establishing that Papua New Guinea was and remains connected
to the broader world and shaped, through birds of paradise feather trade and
colonialism, the rise of conservation movements, Kirsch endeavors to locate
Yonggom and Muyu ritual, magic, and analysis of contemporary problems through
the lens of reverse anthropology. For Kirsch, the Melanesian definition of
social relations, which incorporates non-humans as beings with agency, is built
around reciprocity. Their mode of thought shapes relations with their
environmental. Komon komon hunting magic, for example, works as persuasion that
acknowledge interagentivity. Yonggom practices of totemism and perspectivism,
according to Kirsch, are defined through social relations as well (Kirsch, 75).
The community’s relationship with the mining corporation, which
has irrevocably damaged the environment, becomes the focus of Kirsch’s argument
of ethnography aligning with the movements of indigenous communities, applying
research and indigenous epistemologies for ways of rethinking or finding
solutions to conflicts like mining corporations and environmental impact. For
the Yonggom, the corporation is responsible for not just pollution of the
river, but a larger set of problems related to unrequited reciprocity with the
community and environment. This constitutes corporate sorcery (Kirsch, 120).
Corporate science ignores social relations, not seeing the hybrid combination
of social relations and things (Kirsch, 129). The loss of a finger, for
example, provides grounds for claim making and demands for compensation
(Kirsch, 122). With this approach, Reverse Anthropology, though somewhat
romanticized, commits ethnographic research to decolonizing projects and
indigenous political movements. The damage of the mining operation and the
corporate scientific studies that see resolution only in terms of monetary
compensation, which ignores social relations among various beings, can become a
generative moment for legal and environmental struggles that seek to subvert
naturalism. In that respect, indigenous analysis, as used by Kirsch, can take
on decolonizing results and methodology.
In summation, Smith’s call for decolonizing methodologies for
research on indigenous peoples remains relevant. Researchers must confront the
power dynamics and origin of research in colonialism, incorporate indigenous
ways of thinking, avoid essentialism, promote indigenous researchers, and
contribute their research to something beyond producing or reproducing
knowledge. Bacigalupo, Kirsch, and Ari accomplish this to varying degrees, but
it is not clear one can ever fully decolonize a field or area of study. Decolonization
should be understood as a process that does not end with promoting indigenous
research and using indigenous epistemologies, but one in which power dynamics
of research are fully accounted for to challenge power. Decolonizing a
discipline, in short, requires constant evaluation of the discipline’s
methodology, history, conclusions, and is best as an ideal for research.
Bibliography
Bacigalupo, Ana M. Thunder Shaman: Making History with Mapuche Spirits in Chile and
Patagonia, 2016.
Kirsch, Stuart. Reverse Anthropology: Indigenous Analysis of Social and Environmental
Relations in New Guinea. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2006.
Smith, Linda T. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples.
London: Zed Books, 1999.
Ari, Chachaki W. Earth Politics: Religion, Decolonization, and Bolivia's Indigenous
Intellectuals, 2014.
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