Anthropologists Quotes
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When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours.
Vine Deloria, Jr.
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As a journalist, or an anthropologist, the convention is that people are there for you to study, and they are your objects.
Annia Ciezadlo
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I was surprised by the level of sophistication of the Special Operation forces. Among them were anthropologists and PhD candidates. I felt because I understand the patterns of nineteenth-century jihad in West Africa that I was definitely going to be more advanced than they were in comprehending what the militant rallying cry was.
Eliza Griswold
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Anthropologists visit the temple sites and read the inscriptions and make up stories about the Maya, but they do not read the signs correctly. Its just their imagination. Other people write about prophecy in the name of the Maya. They say that the world will end in December 2012. The Mayan elders are angry with this. The world will not end. It will be transformed.
Carlos Barrios
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Some people today claim that cultures rooted in oral tradition are far more careful to make certain that traditions that are told and retold are not changed significantly. This turns out to be a modern myth, however. Anthropologists who have studied oral cultures show that just the opposite is the case. Only literary cultures have a concern for exact replication of the facts “as they really are.” And this is because in literary cultures, it is possible to check the sources to see whether someone has changed a story. In oral cultures, it is widely expected that stories will indeed change—they change anytime a storyteller is telling a story in a new context. New contexts require new ways of telling stories. Thus, oral cultures historically have seen no problem with altering accounts as they were told and retold.
Bart Ehrman
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The joke used to be that in every Indian home, there is the mother, father, children, grandparents, and the anthropologist.
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn