Paper short abstract:

Anthropology has focused on "the other", including indigenous peoples, since the beginning. It was and is our raison d'être. Except that we used other terms to refer to them for the longest time. We objectivized them. But a slow and steady move is taking place to change this.

Paper long abstract:

Social/cultural anthropology has a long and complex history of engaging with other cultures, specifically indigenous peoples. This contact and interaction take place for different purposes and with different outputs: (a) Undergraduate training in anthropology departments, (b) Fieldwork written up in theses, scholarly papers, and monographs, and (c) Applied work to impact and change societies.

The paper addresses how to understand the indigenous world and its relationship with anthropology. It aims to contribute to tracing how anthropology has viewed indigenous peoples and how they are viewed today, and vice versa. Over the years, a number of interdisciplinary approaches have contributed to this.

In the post-World War II period things began to change. There were initiatives and processes at macro levels and local levels, initially largely external to anthropology, which often were at the receiving end of these developments. These changes became reflected in basic ideas in anthropology, including the two dichotomies of ethnocentrism-cultural relativism and etic-emic.

A key question is how, and to what extent, the presence of the indigenous cause at a global level may or should impact fieldwork, undergraduate training, and applied work. Own examples of successful work at interacting with indigenous peoples, in the context of training and in applied development work, will be presented.