The antiscience trend in anthropology in recent years has, and continues to have, devastating effects on the lives of indigenous peoples…Indeed some current anthropological schools of thought have completely abandoned the idea that truth exists at all, and instead insist that each version of history is equally valid. This “postmodernist” perspective has been widely adopted by both academic anthropologists and some human rights agencies. Although we sympathize with a perspective that much of history that is actually propaganda that serves the interests of those who write it, the denial that any truth can be discovered or documented must be rejected as both naive and dangerous. Indeed, nothing could be more devastating to native peoples than a perspective that logically maintains that indigenous suffering can simply be considered another “version of history.”…An antiscience trend in recent anthropology is robbing indigenous peoples of this basic human right.
–Hill and Hurtado 1996, Ache Life History
Many thanks to my friend and colleague, Dr. David Samson, for this.
Violent metaphors 