In the month since the last post, there’s been new developments. A new project all about digging deeper into indigenous culture through the lenses of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of human evolution, culture, society, behaviour, and language. Anthropologists study this using many different methods, such as going into a culture and living with them, while participating in their cultural practices into order to gain a better understanding of that culture. There are 4 branches of anthropology: cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, biological anthropology, and archaeology.
Cultural anthropology is the study of human cultures, beliefs, practices, and structures. This is often employed by observation, participation, and ethnographic field work. Anthropologists can get a sense of cultural understanding and positive social change.
Linguistic anthropology is the study of human language and communication. In this branch, anthropologists look at how language is shaped by social interactions and culture, how language change and evolve, and the diversity of languages across societies.
Biological anthropology is the study of evolution of humans and how this effects or is affected by culture. They often do this by examining fossils, genes, and anatomy and compare it with others of the same time but different culture, or of the same culture but from a different time. This basically looks at human biology and adaptation to environments.
Lastly, archaeology is the study of human societies through the analysis of material remains. Archaeologists will dig out these artifacts and document layers of soil. History, geology, chemistry, and biology are all used to interpret evidence.
Works that are published by anthropologists are called ethnographies. A very important aspect of their work is the idea of ethnocentrism. This is where someone evaluates and judges another culture based on how it compares to one’s own cultural norms. They have the belief or attitude that own culture is better than others, so should serve as the standard frame of reference. It is very important that anthropologists keeps this in mind while studying other cultures and makes sure they are avoiding this as much as possible.
The driving question of this project is “How might we use an anthropological perspective to better understand the history of British Columbia?”
first few weeks were full of definitions and at the end of it, we had a short quiz in which I aced it, of course. Here is is if you want to take a look at it.
The final product of this project was to make an online exhibit of a bunch of different BC indigenous artifacts. We chose an artifact we liked from the Museum of Anthropology’s online collection (MOA). I decided to choose a takamł, a harpoon head from the Nuu-chah-nulth nation. I chose this artifact because I thought it would be interesting to learn about and there would be a lot of information on it. The artifact was in fact very interesting, but there wasn’t that much information on it, so I did have a little trouble collecting info.
During my research, I came across a guy that I found really interesting. His name is Tommy Happynook from the Nuu-chah-nulth nation. He’s an anthropologist working in documenting the reclamation of knowledge, teaching, culture, etc. I found this to be super cool because we were also doing a project on anthropology. I talk more about him in my artifact page in the interactive element.
This project was very info heavy, and a bit more than I would’ve liked, but it was still fun to explore on our own and create a collaborative exhibit with the whole class. The document, titled Digging Deeper: An Artifact Resource, has 24 individual artifacts, and I highly encourage you to check them out.
Before this project, I had no idea what anthropology is, or just how important it is in the world. Using anthropology, we can see how indigenous cultures developed and changed overtime and what effects colonization has had on them. We can also see why colonization happens and we it to explain why events such as residential schools happened.
It can also be used to teach ourselves and other people to be more open minded on indigenous cultures and why Reconciliation is so important and necessary. Anthropology can recover, revitalize, and preserve indigenous culture by examining how the cultures could’ve developed, making predictions of what could’ve been practiced, compared similarities between different indigenous cultures, and find artifacts that might explain the day to day life style of someone in that culture. It is a very cool branch of science and I think it’ll do great for the world.