Part 4 Summary and Analysis

"Anthropologists and Other Friends"

In a return to the heavily ironic style of "Indians Today..." the author describes the influence of anthropologists on Indian culture and its evolution, essentially mocking them for their well-intentioned but misguided and ultimately pointless efforts at understanding Indian people and their circumstances. The author describes how Indians themselves have both manipulated and been manipulated by anthropologists, and suggests that young Indians in particular have come to accept anthropological perceptions as truths and therefore absorbed them into their understanding of themselves as individual Indians and of Indians as a group. The author points out that other ethnic (e.g., Irish) and racial (e.g., Black) groups would never be expected to behave, in contemporary society, according to anthropological understanding of who they were in the past, and adds that anthropologists are like government in their efforts at...