Studying primitive tribes

A few years ago National Geographic carried an article about native American culture, lamenting the losses, especially of their religion. One of the letters they got in reply explained that while there had been many problems, the one thing he and his family were grateful for was that their family had been introduced to Jesus a century before.

It's a curious reversal of attitudes. There was a time when it was thought progress if aborigines picked up civilized paraphernalia and attitudes, but now there always seems to be a little groan in the reports about South American Indians explaining why the photos show t-shirts.

People just don't want to sit still for us to study them. Some little prejudice about having their own lives to lead...

The ordinary anthropologist is one who spends six weeks or six months (or even sometimes six years) among, say, the Boreyu tribe at their settlement on the Upper Teedyas River, Darndreeryland. He then returns to civilization with his photographs, tape recorders, and notebooks, eager to write his book about sex life and superstition. For tribes such as the Boreyu, life is made intolerable by all this peering and prying. They often become converts to Presbyterianism in the belief that they will thereupon cease to be of interest to anthropologists; nor in fact has this device been known to fail.

AVI noted the bitterness of disputes in anthropology. The only one I heard much about was the Margaret Mead vs Freeman feud: were Mead's informants pulling her leg? Or was Freeman following the lead of his mentor's mentor who was Mead's rejected lover? I thought I knew a little about it--when I looked it up for this post I found it was weirder than I suspected.

Maybe somebody should study the behavior of this strange tribe called anthropologists. They have taboos, rites of passage, totems and feuds--should be lots of material.