Paper short abstract:

The long-term presence of anthropological and archaeological projects, faculty, and students in coastal Ecuador has profoundly affected the local self-definition or self-creation of the native as a continuous trajectory from prehistory to the present. This ethnogenesis has been forged as a strategic political utility by the people themselves in their struggles against powerful outside landholders and government authorities, from the regional to the national.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the process of ethnogenesis in a coastal Ecuador village. The long-term presence of anthropological and archaeological projects, faculty, and students has profoundly affected the local self-definition or self-creation of the native as a continuous trajectory from prehistory to the present. This ethnogenesis has been forged as a strategic political utility by the people themselves in their struggles against powerful outside landholders and government authorities from the regional to the national. The choices that anthropologists make, in research and in practical matters, and the consequences such choices engender, are examined for this local context.