Essay On Native American Ethnocentrism

During this era of time, white society seems to have a preference when it comes to the binary of scientific data and ethnic studies. This isn’t always a bad thing as science has helped shape our society and given us options that we have never had before, but, sometimes, the ethnic reasoning behind concepts in modern day societies are just as important. Science, however, isn’t an apolitical field in any way. In fact, many scientists, especially those in more developed countries and locations, happen to be extremely ethnocentrist in their own white understanding of the world. There are many concepts and values that members of society look through with an ethnocentrist lens science isn’t immune to ethnocentrist thinking. A major field of study that ethnocentrism comes into play

Indeed, plants are incredibly useful to the Native American way of life as noted in Daniel Moerman’s primary source Native American Ethnobotany. Doctor Moerman, a Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and creator of the Native American Ethnobotany Database, writes in Native American Ethnobotany that Native Americans “found useful purpose for 3923 kinds of vascular plants”; the book itself also holds information on 106 nonvascular plants that Native American cultures used to suit a variety of different purposes (2). In total, Moerman separates plants into five types of categories determined by how they were used: “Drug, Food, Fiber, Dye, and Other” (2). Of course, even if Moerman’s book contains information on all of these different types of plants, it is important to note that the information that he has is likely incomplete because of the lack of writing directly created by Native American tribes on the subject of their practices, rituals, and medicine among other concepts typically recorded in Anglo-centric