COMMENTARY

Collaborating in Representing: Always Possible? Always Desirable?

Richard O. Clemmer

Reflections are offered on personal participation in two cases in which anthropological actions and expertise were regarded as playing a prominent role in actualizing indigenous rights. Case number one concerned the Navajo-Hopi land dispute. Case number two involved documenting ancestral uses of river resources in response to Shoshone and Paiute assertion of water rights. In each of these cases, tribal stakeholders urged anthropological collaboration with their goals and strategies. Collaboration has become much more prominent in applying anthropological expertise in developing and actualizing human solutions to human problems in the last twenty years. Discussion reflects on the degree to which the collaborative imperative was desirable and possible in these cases.  

The Applied Anthropologist, No. 1, Vol. 32, 2012, pp 33 - 38

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