Arthur Einhorn’s fieldwork, spanning a half-century among Amerindians, has taken him to the Cree and Algonquin of the Sub-Arctic under the aegis of the Canadian National Museum, and all the way to visiting the Carib people of Dominica in the Eastern Caribbean. His major work, however, has been with the Iroquoian peoples of New York and Canada. During the early 1970’s he was a consultant to the New York State Assembly Sub-Committee on Indian Affairs relating to laws for protecting Indian burials from collectors. His ethnohistoric research over the years has uncovered unexpected links during the colonial period between Amerindians of Northeast North America and the Caribbean. Amongst his other research interests has been a devotion to indigenous traditional technology, with the aim of fostering its revival and maintenance. Arthur’s publications have appeared in major journals, including the Encyclopedia of Anthropology, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, the American Indian Art Magazine, and most recently in the Encyclopedia of New York State. He is also cited and acknowledged by many authors for his guidance and assistance.

Originally a native of New York City where he grew up with urban Amerindians, he graduated from the prestigious High School of Music & Art. Later in his career he studied briefly at Syracuse University, and took degrees from SUNY-Plattsburgh and the University of Buffalo. Over the decades his professional contacts have spanned the globe from the Americas to Europe, East Asia and Australia/Oceania. Although officially retired now, he continues research and publishing while occasionally presenting papers at professional conferences. Two years ago he spoke at the convention of the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco in a session devoted to the careers of Native American Scholars. This Spring he will appear at Skidmore College in Saratoga, NY, speaking to the influence of the Iroquois on the careers of 18th and 19th century American artists.

Arthur Einhorn also appears on several pages of Peter Hulme’s recent book, Remnants of Conquest (Oxford 2000). In that book, Hulme outlines the many ways in which Einhorn has been involved with the Caribs of Dominica over the past 30 years. Einhorn was asked by the father of Hilary Frederick (who would later become Chief of the Dominica Carib Council on a number of occasions) to take his son to the U.S. to be educated. Hilary Frederick lived with Einhorn’s family from 1972 to 1977, where he attended secondary school and then the college where Einhorn taught. In an interview I held with Chief Hilary Frederick in 1998, he also mentioned having been adopted by a U.S. anthropologist and having benefited from his time in the U.S. to learn of North American Indian movements and to make contact with them. As Hulme learned, Frederick was able to visit several reservations, including the Onondaga, Seneca, and St. Regis. (In the photo at left we see Arthur Einhorn; to his left is Sylvanie Burton; to his right is Chief Hilary Frederick. The photo was taken circa 1998 in the Dominica Carib Territory.)

Based on these experiences, Frederick came to the conclusion that North American Indians and Dominica Caribs shared many of the same problems, a conclusion also reached by Ricardo Bharath, head of Trinidad’s Carib Community. These are important intellectual landmarks insofar as Caribbean indigenous leaders reposition and reframe their local situations within a wider hemispheric outlook, which is certainly a by product of greater international contacts. In the case of Frederick, energised from his time in the U.S., he helped to introduce ideas inspired by the American Indian Movement into local Carib politics, leading to the development of what has since been called ‘Caribism’ by some (see Gregoire et al. 1996). Hilary Frederick’s own father had maintained relations with Clinton Rickard, a Tuscarora leader in the U.S. Indian Defense League (see photo).

Arthur Einhorn also drafted a 1972 proposal for a Carib Indian Village in the Dominica Carib Territory, a village that, after many variations in planning, has finally come to be constructed. What is also interesting is that the Trinidad Caribs later adopted a similar idea. These model villages, as some call them, are designed as educational tourist attractions. Both communities have complained that when tourists come to visit them, there is actually very little to show them.

Arthur’s connections and the diverse roles he has played with respect to the Dominica Caribs are many and varied, and difficult to summarise. He aided Philip Teuscher in the making of what for a long time has been the only major ethnographic film of the Dominica Carinbs, Last of the Karaphuna. Along with Teuscher, Arthur also helped to spearhead a precursor of what later came to be known as the Gli-Gli Carib Canoe Project (of which a recent film was made), then known as the Cruise of the Ookuwatee. In addition to this, Arthur also provided some research materials for James A. Michener when he wrote his giant novel, Caribbean, and which, of course, made selective and somewhat slanted ‘use’ of Arthur’s inputs (Michener simply reproduces the image of the Carib as a savage cannibal).

In summary, Arthur Einhorn has had an active career (and still has) in educating people about the cultures of diverse indigenous groups. He has fostered the development of various key cultural preservation projects. Judging from his writings, he is guided by an acute rejection of long established racist views of indigenous peoples.

The following is a transcript of a commentary recorded on an audio tape that Arthur sent to me in March. It is also, we hope, a precursor to a more in-depth scholarly paper to appear in Kacike, most likely developing the theme of the internationalization of indigenous organization and consciousness as presented below.

Following the commentary, we also have an alert from Arthur Einhorn concerning the protection of the archaeological heritage of Grenada.

Please do send your comments and questions to myself (mcforte@centrelink.org) and I will make sure that they get posted in the next issue of this newsletter and will be forwarded to Arthur himself.
 

References:

Einhorn, Arthur C. 1999. “Warriors of the Sky: The Iroquois Iron Workers”. European Review of Native American Studies 13 (1): 25-34.

Einhorn, Arthur, and Emil R. Liddell. 1972. “The ‘Romantic Notion’ Theory”. In Jeannette Henry (ed), The American Indian Reader: Book One. The Indian Historian Press, Inc., pps., 157-165.

Gregoire, Crispin, Patrick Henderson, and Natalia Kanem. 1996. “Karifuna: The Caribs of Dominica”. In Ethnic Minorities in Caribbean Society. Reddock, Rhoda, ed. Pp. 107-172. St. Augustine, Trinidad: ISER, University of the West Indies.

Hulme, Peter. 2000. Remnants of Conquest: The Island Caribs and their Visitors, 1877-1998. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 261-261, 297, 299 n. 52, 328.

Teuscher, Philip Thorneycroft. 1990. “The Cruise of the Ookuwatee”. Sea History: Official Journal of the World Ship Trust No. 55, Autumn: 22-23.

From The Watertown Daily Times:

“Local Scholar Aided Michener: Einhorn Added Authenticity to Best-Seller ‘Caribbean’”. Feb. 25, 1990, pages D1-D2.

“Plan Set Afloat in Lowville Could Restore Glory to Mariners”.
 

When I was a young boy I heard Mexicans in New York City, of obvious Native American Indian ancestry, deny any such identity, and strongly declared themselves as “pure Castilians”. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, I met people of some obvious African ancestry declare that they were “pure Native American Indians”. Up in Canada I encountered olive or tawny-skinned people, obviously Indians or Metis, individuals who asserted they were “Scottish-Irish” and “French”. Some 40 years ago, in the West Indies, a Black Carib gentleman told me he hated Blacks, while only a few miles away, some Black people I knew, declared that they hated Red Caribs as “lazy, shiftless drunks”. I also recall a Jamaican woman I knew as a child in New York City, who ignored colour and proudly proclaimed herself a “British subject”. Then there were the very Caucasian looking souls of known Native American ancestry who wouldn’t admit to it even if tortured to death.
 

“…a great masquerade drama was being played out on the racist stage of White theatre, where indigenous denial and the ability to pass acceptance by Whites became the only route to social and economic success and survival”

It was obvious to me from early on that a great masquerade drama was being played out on the racist stage of White theatre, where indigenous denial and the ability to pass acceptance by Whites became the only route to social and economic success and survival. On top of all else, even if one admitted to some Native American genetic ancestry, the dominant society’s history books, and education generally, obliterated the indigenous past so completely that few knew little or anything about their roots, in whole or in part, save for a few myths. If “lucky” to be taught anything at all it was probably to be ashamed of their past and ancestors. One group of indigenous people even created a revised Creation Story, where the Creator fashioned humans from clay and baked them—one was overcooked and turned out black, another about medium that turned out red, and the last was just right, and of course it was white. Thus they have the then extant socio-political and economic system of race ranking preset, as having always been so since time began, and this they taught to their children.

Back in the 1950s, it was not uncommon to see signs in Texas restaurants which read, “No Mexicans allowed”, or signs in South Dakota which read, “No Dogs or Indians allowed”, and in much of South America to be called “Indio” was the same as a Black being called a “Nigger” in the U.S.A. In fact, “Red Nigger” was liberally used for Indians in many regions of the U.S. Some of the present younger generation have no idea what a hell it was to be a person of colour just a few short decades ago. Even Whites who associated with Indians and Blacks were marked as “Indian Lovers” or “Nigger Lovers”. For that matter, even many Jews and Irish, despite their white skin colour, had a cross to bear in surviving in the White establishment, even being called “White Niggers”—sadly, sometimes even they could be bigoted about people of colour.

Although today’s world is greatly changed for the better, the virus of racism still lurks in many pockets around the globe. The West Indies had, and has, its own subtle forms of intra-racism by which people in the various populations of the Caribbean area, and their variable colours, are categorized with refined terms of definition expressly denoting people as, “Black”, “Coffee”, “Peach”, etc., and with attendant implications of social and economic rank, regardless of the individual’s IQ, genetic composition, or cultural affiliation.
 

“…a genealogical-historical limbo that suggested they had no past, and without it, no future”

The problems with identity are obviously all deeply rooted in colonialism, slavery, racism, distorted or erased history, census rolls designed with political agendas, patron-client military alliances of the past, economic dominance designed to keep some people illiterate or to keep others in line as a serving workforce. All these factors, and more, left many in a genealogical-historical limbo that suggested they had no past, and without it, no future. It wasn’t always like that. In traditional and independent indigenous/Amerindian communities, outsiders, black and white, were accepted into the village population, often adopted or inter-married, and became a living part of it. While colour difference had to be obvious, in those days it didn’t make a difference, at least not until slavers came along, or colonial administrators created political boundaries or defined people by grade of colour for administrative purposes. 

But lest we get carried away with heaping all the blame on white Europeans and their New World colonial heirs, it is well to remember that many Amerindian groups did indeed fight among themselves and even enslaved captives. Thus the Americas were no peaceful Eden before or after Columbus. The captives, if they survived, had children who by circumstance lost their parents’ original identity. Then we must also look to expanding indigenous empires in West Africa at the time of European contact. Violent wars of conquest and slave gathering became common, very common, fuelled further by the all too willing European traders, who were newly arrived, to participate in an already ancient traffic in humans still dominated by Arabs to the east. 
 

“They [escaped Africans] all spoke the various Indian languages and culturally lived like the Indians …. another illustration of lost, old identity and found, new identity”

People from many diverse coastal and interior West African cultures and linguistic families were herded together in ships of Babel to be floated west into the New World oblivion. Once there, those fortunate to escape would seek shelter with free Amerindians, and because of their speaking so many mutually unintelligible African languages would adopt the speech of their Amerindian hosts as a lingua franca, ergo the Black Caribs, formerly of St. Vincent, now in Belize, who still speak Island Carib in its near original form, and who cultural identify as Indians, Garifuna. One can only wonder how many diverse African cultures their ancestors derived from, but now it no longer really matters. It was the same with many Blacks in the southern U.S., who lived with the Creeks, Cherokees, Seminoles, Choctaws and Chickasaws, after their forced removal to the Oklahoma Indian Territory, many of the Black population were incorporated into the government Indian census rolls. And why not? They all spoke the various Indian languages and culturally lived like the Indians. Their story is more complicated, but it’s another illustration of lost, old identity and found, new identity. The only exception that comes to mind are the Djukas of Surinam, the old Dutch Guiana, who retained an African culture of sorts by total isolation.
 

“…Indians in North America began to emerge as an exotic ideal in the minds of many Americans and Canadians”

The Euro-American hammer and anvil of Native American suppression reached a high point by circa 1900, and in the U.S. began to slowly relax its grip over the next 50 years. Perhaps for reasons of historical circumstance and the convergence of romance novels, biographies of famous chiefs, adventure stories and individual advocates for Indian rights—perhaps even the influence of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and the Boy Scout movement —Indians in North America began to emerge as an exotic ideal in the minds of many Americans and Canadians. This of course led ever so slowly to little, positive, changes. I’ll briefly mention a few who helped this movement along: highly educated Native Americans such as Dr. Arthur C. Parker (Seneca), Dr. Carlos Montezuma (Apache), and Dr. Charles A. Eastman (Sioux/Lakota), all of whom practiced their different professions but also wrote profusely about Native Americans, and who consequently had an influence on the reading public. The 1930s Depression and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal fostered some significant cultural revival programs via the WPA programs—Work Progress Administration—in many Indian communities across the United States. The broad influence of World War II had a tremendous influence on Indian veterans who served in the proud warrior tradition. This was especially so for the Navajos who served as code talkers using Dine, their native language, which totally thwarted Japanese attempts to decipher it. 

In the first decade after World War II, it was not only the Cold War that reshaped the changing U.S. and Canada, but also an almost bizarre explosion of general interest in American Indian culture. Urban Indians formed groups which staged Pow Wows for the public, while non-Indian hobbyists made a fetish of copying authentic costumes and dances and staging their own Pow Wows. Museums and libraries were inundated with devotees seeking authentic truths and examples of a supposedly dead culture to mimic. Everyone it seems suddenly wanted to be Indian. A remote ancestor of dubious Indian connection might be dragged out of the closet and suddenly the whole family was, “I’m Indian and proud of it”, as proclaimed on bumper stickers and voiced in public. Some individuals even went so far as to dye their hair black and take medications to darken their skin. What had happened?

A specific answer is hard to sort out from a multiplicity of potential influences, certainly Hollywood had some impact with a changed positive image of the Indian in some of its films. Cross-cultural relativism had also impacted the U.S. and Canada. Universities were pushing anthropology courses as a means toward better understanding the world and perhaps achieving peace. At the same time, many people became enchanted with non-Western religions, especially Zen Buddhism and some of the Hindu sects. Then came the Hippy era of the 1960s, and the New Agers of the 1970s and 1980s, seeking Native American spiritual insights via exotic drugs and vision quests. This movement ran parallel to the Black Civil Rights movement and the Native American political push itself followed soon after. (I should add that many of the Black civil rights leaders, interestingly, had West Indian ancestry.)
 

“Unbelievable as it now may seem, most people in the U.S. and Canada never thought about ‘Indians’ south of the United States”

As all of the above events and trends percolated in the U.S. and Canada, even in Europe (which is a separate story and interesting in itself), just what was going on in Mexico, South America, and specifically in the Caribbean? Unbelievable as it now may seem, most people in the U.S. and Canada never thought about “Indians” south of the United States. Even North American Indians, for the most part, had a provincial view of themselves as being the only Indians in the world. One Iroquois, I recall, upon viewing slides of Indians in Venezuela and Dominica, remarked that, “they’re not Indians, they look like Filipinos!”. This uninformed and slightly prejudiced worldview seemed to be widespread among North American Indians, to wit Mexicans weren’t Indians, just “Mexis” or “wetbacks”, Puerto Ricans were “PRs” or “spics” (a very despicable term), etc. Even today, there are of course still Indians who see “Indian” only in a phenotype of olive, tawny-skinned pigment, “red” if you will, long straight black hair, dark brown eyes, with a epicanthic fold, and high cheek bones. This is an ideal mental construct, no different in its way than Hitler’s Aryan Nordic type of blonde hair, blue eyes, white skin, etc. Suddenly, sometime in the 1970s, Akwesasne Notes, a Mohawk newspaper in northern New York, started featuring articles about the plight of Indians in the Amazon, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guyana, etc. 

Hence, recognition of a hemispheric population of Indian people with common problems was suddenly realized. Prior to this, I’m sure there were contacts between individuals, as in the case of Dominica’s Caribs corresponding with the Indian Defense League of America during the 1940s through to the 1960s. But overall there was hardly any acknowledged linkage between Indian peoples of North and South.

Following Vine DeLoria’s successful book in 1969, Custer Died for Your Sins, and a later one, God is Red, among many others, and the emergence of AIM (the American Indian Movement) in the early 1970s, there developed multi-tribal “unity caravans” that rolled across the U.S. and Canada visiting Indian communities, and into Mexico and Guatemala, carrying a message of mutual historical hurts and the need for ecumenical spiritual unity and common political goals. The clarion call even echoed across the Pacific to the Ainu of Japan, a minority there, and the Maori of New Zealand, and even the native Aborigines of Australia. What had started as a North American Indian concern evolved into a crusade for indigenous peoples everywhere, networking on a global scale as well as regionally.

“For many of these people there was a major problem to confront: while they knew they had an Indian identity, via family or community tradition, they lacked a visible and tangible or unique cultural marker...”

By the late 1970s and all through the 1980s, indigenous Mexicans started attending the annual All Indian Pow Wow in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Their dances and costumes, in retrospect, seem slightly contrived for the occasion, but they were welcomed and they participated. By the 1980s, one started to encounter Puerto Ricans and Cubans who identified themselves as Indians first—Taino, Arawak—before adding the island nation of origin. Expatriate Black Caribs from Belize in New York City had organized an association promoting their identity and past, of the Garifunas. Many of these various people started attending Pow Wows staged by the long resident urban North American Indians living in New York City. Clearly a sense of belonging and commonality was emerging for people formerly considered marginal, or non-entities. More important to realize is the fact that a racially and ethnically neutral ambience prevailed within the New York City Native American Indian community that had existed from its organized inception back in the 1950s. In its ranks were represented a wide variety of North American nations, but also Mayan, Yaqui, San Blas/ Kuna, Quechua, and a host of others who came and went over the years, and many blacks and whites who were from misty Indian origins. For many of these people there was a major problem to confront: while they knew they had an Indian identity, via family or community tradition, they lacked a visible and tangible or unique cultural marker, for example language, costumes, dances, etc., thus forcing them to borrow and adopt aspects of the prevailing North American Pan-Indian cultural menu in order to mark themselves with a visible ethnic marker as Indians—for example, long hair in braids or pony tails, ribbon shirts for dances, pierced ears for ethnic style, earrings, etc., and in some cases even entire Pow Wow style costumes.

For some individuals this was and is very serious business, attempting to tell the world, “see I’m an Indian, a Taino, a Lucayan, Carib, Chichimec, Aztec”, etc. Some of us who have been around the circum-Caribbean and its islands over the past years, have encountered pockets of indigenous people who on the surface seem to be part of the general population and whom, as Dr. de Terville points out, have been ignored or written off by post-colonial governments in an attempt to establish an exclusive national identity; one free of moral obligations to the past, possibly burdened by recriminations of land theft, exclusion, mistreatment and the like. His remarks about St. Lucia, therefore, came as no surprise, and I am certain, in fact I know, that similar situations obtain elsewhere. 
 

“Who is legally what nowadays is often determined on criteria established by central governments for specific agendas, but in the end, who is culturally what largely rests with opinion at the community level and in the mind of the individual”

As things hopefully continue to unfold for the better, there will be pitfalls and encounters with the ubiquitous virus of racism. Two years ago Dartmouth College hosted a conference on Indians and Blacks entitled, “Eating out of the Same Pot”. Both Peter Hulme and I attended the sessions, some of them very exciting and rewarding. Although there were many and varied scholars, participants and presenters, there was only one individual on the program with any Caribbean expertise, and really no discussion of the region except in passing. No mention was made of Caribs sold into slavery in Virginia and the Carolinas, or of New England Indians sold into servitude in the West Indies. Sadly, near the end of the conference, a vitriolic squabble erupted between a Black Choctaw woman and a White Cherokee, the argument rooted in whether or not the Five Civilized Tribes, as the southern Indians were collectively once called, were in fact slave owners. The sad demonstration of emotion, accusation and denial was further underscored by the demonstrative need of some individuals to appear at the sessions in full costume, lending an aura of carnival in an academic setting that lacked racially blind camaraderie of a Pan-Indian Pow Wow. Old wounds die hard, and identity will always be in the mind of the individual, never uniformly in the eyes of beholders. Who is legally what nowadays is often determined on criteria established by central governments for specific agendas, but in the end, who is culturally what largely rests with opinion at the community level and in the mind of the individual.

In conclusion, I reflect back again on some 60 plus years, to when some of the first Puerto Ricans settled in New York City. Where others saw jabbering and troublesome new immigrants, I strangely saw some Indians, but at the time even they would have been the first to deny it. Now the closet door is wide open and all proudly say “Taino” or “Arawak” or “Carib”. Then I also reflect on the Spanish treasure galleons called the Manila Fleet, which criss-cross the Pacific from the Philippines to Acapulco, Mexico, every year for 300 years. Undoubtedly they brought indigenous Filipinos to Mexico and the West Indies, as well as Mexican Indians to east Asia. One has only to recall Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, ousted by Castro, who was of mixed Filipino, Amerindian and Spanish origins. Spain achieved a pot pourri of peoples almost everywhere, while at the same time spreading New World plants and agricultural products to both Asia and Africa. But while global gastronomy was enhanced, the very peoples left in their colonial wake were starved of their cultures and identities, a guilt shared by England, France, Holland and Denmark as well.
 

According to the writer’s source, the Americans at first were apprehensive about purchasing the material and later toured the Grenada museum to look for comparable specimens on display; they found none.  On exiting the island one security guard exclaimed they were “cultural treasures”, then shrugged off the material and permitted it to be taken off island.

Several points need to be made about this scenario:

A – the items may well have been “artifakes” created for selling to gullible tourists; a practice very common in other countries where archaeology has a long time depth.

B – the boys in question claimed they found the stones in the rubble created during construction of the new airfield prior to 1982.  The anecdote seems plausible.

C – if that story is correct/true, then construction activity may well have destroyed a previously undiscovered Amerindian habitation or ceremonial site; more likely the latter as so many incised stones may have been in one spot as votive offerings. Whatever, we’ll never know.

D. – given the relatively sparse collections in West Indian museums, it seems criminal that such cultural patrimony is allowed to disperse in detriment to future citizens and generations who will never see examples of the island’s prehistory.

E – some forty years ago another tourist couple left Haiti under very similar circumstances and official indifference, taking with them six perfect Taino ceramic pots, a manatee bone ceremonial instrument, a human-like effigy zemi, and an archaic flint blade.

F – given the current economic depression facing most of the island nations in the Caribbean, it’s understandable the governments have more pressing concerns facing them than the status of a few artifacts. Nonetheless those specimens do represent a part of each islands historical legacy and an effort should be made to preserve them on each island. The solution is simple enough: pass an antiquities law that prohibits export of island artifacts; confiscate such items as baggage is inspected at airport security; turn the material/specimens over to the island historian for preservation if a museum curator is not available; display posters declaring trade in or purchase of antiquities by tourists is a crime punishable by fine; educate children in school about reporting finds to government.

Although such recommendations may create a not entirely foolproof and enforceable situation, its imposition will likely net a better percentage of otherwise lost cultural items.
.

Southwest55: and if you go to Mexico, like I did a couple of weeks ago, you’ll see that in most towns the biggest building is a goddam Catholic Church…because the Church went there to exploit and enslave the Indians, and they still do. They owned huge tracts of land which they stole from the Indians. So don’t tell me about any goddam Taliban, OK? Christians have done worse shit all over the f*cking world!

LadyAsiaUSA: So what Southwest? The missionaries went in there for a good reason: to inject some religion into the savages, just like the Taliban are savages.

Southwest55: LadyAsia, you’re kidding right? Nobody could say such a stupid thing otherwise.

LatchKeyChild: Yeah, the Taliban: those godless Muslim fanatics! ROFLMAO@Lady
[ROFLMAO: “Rolling On Floor, Laughing My Ass Off]

LadyAsiaUSA: No, I mean it: they were practicing cannibalism, and the missionaries went there to stop that. Even *you* should know that. That’s why the Injuns didn’t eat you when you went on your holiday. Read a book and then come back in here for chrissake!

[Not surprisingly, with a wealth of stereotypes as established truths legitimized by under educated teachers, sensationalist journalists and cynical politicians, the Taliban have become the new Caribs of the 21st century. No wonder that the Taliban were such a popular feature of Carnival 2002 in Trinidad, with the long local tradition of expressing resistance by embracing characters symbolising anti-Western savagery. Coincidentally, as one band was sponsored by the local beer, Carib, the band’s name was “Carib Taliban”.]

As students interested in the aboriginal history of the Caribbean and the colonial encounter, many of us have grown a little more than skeptical of ‘reports’ written by European chroniclers, missionaries and adventurers about the supposed ‘cannibalism’ practiced by the natives of the region. As many of us know, these reports were a cornerstone of doctrines that stereotyped aboriginals as utter savages beyond redemption and worthy only of enslavement or death. There is no evidence provided that such cannibalism took place, and, at the very least, that human flesh was ever a staple of the diet of those aboriginals whose name was a cognate of cannibal, the Caribs. In accordance with the unfortunate prominence placed on cannibalism in the historical literature, the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink has maintained a cannibalism page almost since its inception: Depicting and Disputing Cannibals: Colonial Mythology on the Internet. That page has links to sites that both perpetuate these depictions of cannibalism, and sites that challenge those depictions as myths. Much of the history of ascribing cannibalism to Caribbean aboriginals resonates with Professor Einhorn’s observations above that Europeans destroyed and/or distorted Caribbean aboriginal history. To this day in Trinidad there are people who will tell you, "I do not want to say that I am a Carib, because then people make fun of you, calling you a 'cannibal savage'".

Beth Conklin, a professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University, has tackled this contentious issue in a remarkably perceptive, innovative and sensitive way. While Conklin understands the motivations behind the rejection of all claims that any indigenous peoples practiced cannibalism, she brings to light the fact that, at least among some peoples, cannibalism was practiced, but not for that is it ‘evil’ or ‘deplorable’. Instead she challenges classical Eurocentric perspectives on the ‘savagery’ of cannibalism, perspectives shared by both proponents and opponents of assertions of cannibal behaviour, by injecting an exceptionally incisive cultural relativist perspective. Indeed, Beth Conklin rejects the assertion that cannibalism was never practiced and points out examples of the practice from Europe, South America and elsewhere.

Professor Conklin has done extensive fieldwork among the Wari of the Amazon Basin, a group that has practiced ritualistic cannibalism as a part of their mortuary practices. Rather than look at this practice of eating one’s dead according to some absolute moralism, she makes a strong plea for understanding this practice as a compassionate one marking grief. “If we listen to what indigenous people like the Wari say about how they experienced funerary cannibalism”, Conklin argues, “we begin to see the narrowness and ethnocentrism of our own views”. In this respect, Conklin stresses that we need to understand the positive side of cannibalism as practiced by certain peoples, such as the Wari.

In order to examine Conklin’s arguments further, one should consult the various Web links listed here as well as Conklin’s new book, Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society (University of Texas Press, 2001). Speaking about the book to David Salisbury, Conklin says: “I hope that this book will make people think more deeply about the meanings that the body has in human relationships, and to consider that other cultures may have understood those in ways that made the destruction and transformation of the body through cannibalism seem to be the best, most respectful, most loving way to deal with the death of someone you care about”.

Links to Beth Conklin’s work and thoughts:

Giving Cannibalism a Human Face: an interview with Beth Conklin, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University, with David Salisbury (August 15, 2001), in EXPLORATION: The Online Research Journal of Vanderbilt University. This is an excellent page on many counts, in terms of content, the critical intepretation of the myths and anti-myths of cannibalism, rooted in Beth Conklin’s rich and extensive ethnographic fieldwork among the Wari of Amazonia. This particular page also features drawings, a photo slide show, audio clips of music, and video clips from the interview with Beth Conklin. This site truly sets the standard for the presentation of ethnography online. From the text: “The Wari’ are unusual because they practiced two distinct forms of cannibalism in warfare and funerals ,” Conklin says. “However, the two practices were very different and had very different meanings. Eating enemies was an intentional expression of anger and disdain for the enemy. But at funerals, when they consumed members of their own group who died naturally, it was done out of affection and respect for the dead person and as a way to help survivors cope with their grief.”

Brief History of Cannibal Controversies: a second page dealing with Beth Conklin’s critical analysis of cannibalism, also from EXPLORATION: The Online Research Journal of Vanderbilt University. From the text: “Historically, charges of cannibalism were used by European nations to help justify their colonization efforts. As a result, many historical allegations of people eating are undoubtedly false. But the fact that such allegations were made is not sufficient grounds to conclude that all reports of cannibalism are untrustworthy and should be discounted, Conklin says.”

Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society, By Beth A. Conklin: this is the page for Beth Conklin’s book by this title. Donald Pollock, Associate Professor of Anthropology, at SUNY Buffalo wrote about the book saying: “This is probably the most significant ethnography of cannibalism. Period. . . . I expect this book to become a classic, an ethnography of exceptional depth and clarity by an anthropologist whose sensitivity and insight are apparent on every page.”