Decolonization and the History of Anthropology: The Implications of New Deal Anthropology from the 1930s to the 1950s

Abstract

With a focus on the activities of Native Americans and anthropologists involved in the Indian New Deal between the 1930s and the 1950s, I show that Native Americans have long attended to and contributed to a global conversation about decolonization and that North American anthropologists have long worked to decolonize Native American peoples. The Indian New Deal engaged the language of decolonization and instituted policy reforms in service of self-determination for Native Americans. But the Indian New Deal exhibited the characteristic ambivalences of the global decolonization movement, representing an impulse toward self-determination, on the one hand, and neocolonialism, on the other. Anthropologists’ involvement in decolonization is thus complex, liberatory at times, paternalistic at others. To explore such important issues realistically, the history of anthropology needs to develop historiography to better situate practices of North American anthropologists within global history, including notably the global history of decolonization.