https://www.city-journal.org/article/anthropology-in-retreat
Many anthropologists place social-justice ideology over verifiable facts, from denying the sex binary to spinning false narratives of mass child graves in Indian schools to recasting “indigenous knowledge” as a source of scientific evidence. To this list add acceptance of Native American oral myths and creation stories. Arising from an ideology that divides humanity into oppressors and oppressed and rejects the concept of objective truth, such myth acceptance increasingly factors into questions of repatriation and reburial—whether, say, to give ancient skeletal and artifact collections to modern tribes whose connection to the remains may be obscure. The result: woke anthropologists and tribal activists exploit government rules to derail science, all in the name of social justice.
The long, complex history of Indian tribes has been one of change and contradiction. Once at war with American settlers and later subject to assimilation policies, Indian tribes today possess legal powers comparable with those of no other group. Activist elements within tribes wield this power to suppress research on the anthropology of American Indians that contradicts traditional religious beliefs.
Some of the research on Paleoindians, for example, reveals that these earliest Americans were genetically distinct from later arrivals. Yet these findings have come under attack from Indian activists who cite oral myths declaring that they have been in North America since time immemorial. Research that portrays past North American Indians unfavorably, meantime, also faces censorship pressures. Any paper marshaling evidence on intertribal warfare, cannibalism, slavery in pre-contact America, or environmentally devastating land-use practices will face numerous challenges, as tribes push for research on topics “relevant to tribal interests.”
