Examples Of Decolonial Perspectives On Native American Civilizations

YuBin Park
ANTH 0225A
Professor Marybeth Nevins
05 April 2023
Decolonial Perspectives on Native American Civilizations Native Americans are a group with various dimensions to their identity and history, making it difficult for outsiders to completely comprehend how to “categorize” and “label” the individuals. In The People Named the Chippewa by Gerald Vizenor, the central focus is on the Chippewa people, also called Ojibwe or Anishinaabe), and the ways the group has been portrayed and referred to by people (usually colonists) who did not have a full understanding of their identity. In The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, instead of focusing specifically on a group of Native Americans, they choose to speak on how small-scale

The build up of these colonial stances and its subsequent mistreatments led to increased political, economic, and social challenges towards Indigenous communities, such as poverty and loss of land, that overall puts the Native Americans in a bad spot with less to no advantages at rebuilding these descriptions from European-centered writers. Unlike his derogatory language, James criticized “friend of the Indian” philanthropy for efforts attempting to “civilize” Native Americans and suggested listening and learning from the Indigenous communities instead. In the same line, Vizenor speaks on how the Federal Indian Policy should be created upon a foundation of respect to Native Americans’ histories and cultures molded by the insider experiences, eventually helping to provide an alternative approach that honors the Native American identity, unlike archival writings such as Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner (Vizenor,

Edwin James, despite using inaccurate descriptors towards Native Americans, argues to treat them with respect to their own culture and identity. Graeber and Wengrow, even more broadly, speaks on how small-scale communities, in this case, Chippewa, are viewed as a product of minor development in a linear sequence compared to bigger communities, which are indeed untrue, all while suggesting that these small civilizations may have prospered through tight connections to other small communities around them. These three perspectives all provide a different understanding and translation of the piece of Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, an archival piece that allows a glimpse at what European-centered writers in the past have collected upon observations and experiences regarding the Native