Indians As Resources: The Changing Relationship between Indians and Anthropologists

Abstract

M onday, September 9, 1985 eight Indian women, all prominent in their communities, walked into the Museum of Anthropology and occupied one of our classrooms. Occupations were not a new phenomena, but the purpose of this one was because it challenged the way we usually think about Indians. Anthropologists and museum people have long used North American Indians as resources, to be studied, collected from, and placed on public display. They are not the only people who have mined Indian communities, nor perhaps have they been so thorough in their penetration as some other professions and institutions. I focus on anthropologists and museums of history and anthropology, however, simply because I know something about them. The Indian women who came on September 9 have returned to the same classroom every Monday since, because they had come to request a special seminar we agreed to give. They had looked over the university curriculum and noticed a few interesting courses here and there -English 100, Indians and Inuit of Canada -but they wanted something else as well: their own course that dealt