This essay examines Marius Barbeau's early-twentieth-century Huron-Wyandot ethnography as a case study in the history of Canadian anthropology and in Canadian cultural history. It examines how Barbeau's ethnographic research became part of a broader, inherently political process, through which an Amerindian identity was remade as part of the ethnographic project. Barbeau, a noted Canadian anthropologist, studied and collected Huron-Wyandot culture from 1911 until 1914. Working within the salvage paradigm, he rejected the idea that historic-era cultural adaptions could constitute part of an“authentic” Huron-Wyandot culture. For Barbeau cultural adaptations or developments signified only cultural decay. By representing Huron-Wyandot culture in this fashion, Barbeau not only challenged Huron and Wyandot conceptions of their culture but created a standard of cultural authenticity to which the existing Huron and Wyandot cultures could not conform. This led Barbeau to conclude that the Huron had been assimilated into white society: the Huron nation, in effect, no longer existed. The Canadian state readily agreed with this conclusion, using Barbeau's research to bolster its own plan to disestablish a Huron reserve and forcibly enfranchise its population, thereby unilaterally abolishing their Amerindian status. Barbeau's Huron-Wyandot ethnography illustrates, this essay concludes, how anthropology became a point of intercultural contact and conflict and a component of aboriginal-white relations in Canada in the first decades of the twentieth century.
The professionalization of Canadian anthropology in the first half of the twentieth century was tied closely to the matrix of the federal state, first though the Anthropology Division of the Geological Survey of Canada and then the National Museum. State anthropologists occupied an ambiguous professional status as both civil servants and anthropologists committed to the methodological and disciplinary imperatives of modern social science but bounded and guided by the operation of the civil service. Their position within the state served to both advance disciplinary development but also compromised disciplinary autonomy. To address the boundaries the state imposed on its support for anthropology, state anthropologists cultivated cultural, intellectual, and commercially-oriented networks that served to sustain new developments in their field, particularly in folklore. This essay examines these dynamics and suggests that anthropology's disciplinary development did not create a disjunctive between professionalized scholarship and civil society.La professionnalisation de l’anthropologie canadienne dans la première moitié du 20e siècle fut étroitement liée à la matrice de l’État fédéral, tout d’abord par l’entremise de la division anthropologique de la Comission géologique du Canada, et ensuite par le biais du Musée national. Les anthropologues de l’État possèdent alors un statut professionnel ambigu à la fois comme fonctionnaires et comme anthropologues dévoués aux impératifs méthodologiques et disciplinaires de la science sociale moderne, mais limités et guidés par les exigences du service civil. Leur position au sein de l’État a favorisé le développement de la discipline, mais a également compromis l’autonomie disciplinaire. Pour faire face aux limites imposées par l’État au soutien de leur discipline, les anthropologues de la fonction publique ont entretenu différents réseaux culturels, intellectuels, et comercialement-orientés qui ont servi à soutenir les nouveaux développements de leur champ, particulièrement dans l’étude du folklore. Le présent essai examine ces dynamiques et suggère que le développement disciplinaire de l’anthropologie ne crée pas de dislocations entre la recherche professionnelle et la société civile
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