Redefining Anthropology Through Place and History | Panel Discussion
Amidst the bluster of his critique of the discipline, Vine Deloria Jr. systematically developed a philosophical analysis that married reverse anthropology with ontography with critical ecology, well before these approaches had entered mainstream anthropological conversations. His texts—notably "God is Red" and "Metaphysics of Modern Existence"—frequently operated on two levels. First, Deloria sought to outline the ontological commitments to place within Native American traditions. In doing so, he leveled the analytical field: Chief Luther Standing Bear was accorded a symmetrical intellectual position to Alfred North Whitehead, for instance, and European communities were evaluated for the degree to which they had evolved toward Native America (rather than the other way around).
Second, Deloria sought to outline the parallel commitments to history within European and Euro-American traditions in a way that made this preoccupation seem foreign and strange. Standing in the position of a native looking back, he targeted the alterity of those who claim to have transcended their indigeneity—who claimed a temporal position rather than a spatial position—as part of an overtly critical project designed to provincialize “the West.” This session has been convened to engage Deloria both as a formative voice in the struggle for what Viveiros de Castro refers to as ontological self-determination, and as a critic of the metaphysical moorings of a Western tradition that includes the anthropological project.
Insofar as Deloria's intervention hinges on the relative priorities of history and place, the panel situates this engagement within existing archaeological debates (archaeology being deeply implicated in the perpetuation of a Western chronological imaginary that transforms sites into eras and places into histories). But the goal is to reposition Deloria's philosophy within anthropology more broadly. As the most influential Native American intellectual of the twentieth century, who lived much of his life in the Denver area, Deloria's work continues to dislodge and defamiliarize anthropological thought in transformational ways.
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