Article ID: CBB001201587

“Rooted in Demographic Reality”: The Contribution of New World Censuses to Indigenous Survival (2014)

unapi

Rowse, Tim (Author)


History and Anthropology
Volume: 25
Pages: 246--262


Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Part of the special issue: “Anthropology, Collecting and Colonial Governmentalities”.
Language: English

One of the most powerful narratives deployed by colonists in the nineteenth century was that the colonized natives were inherently too weak to survive contact with those who were colonizing them---the Dying Native story. I argue that to understand the history of this story, we should differentiate between three senses in which it could be taken as true or false: physical destruction, genetic adulteration and loss of distinct culture. The physical destruction version of the Dying Native was contested by some settler-colonial governments as they developed the capacity to manage and measure the numbers of those whom they classified as Indian or M ori or Aboriginal. However, the Dying Native story persisted as a narrative of these peoples' loss of genetic and/or cultural distinction. One strategy of Indigenous intellectuals has been to assert that they have survived as populations by adapting as peoples. In this paper, I show how an authoritative demography of colonized Indigenous populations in North America and New Zealand afforded discursive opportunities to some Indigenous intellectuals.

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Article Bennett, Tony; Dibley, Ben; Harrison, Rodney (2014) Introduction: Anthropology, Collecting and Colonial Governmentalities. History and Anthropology (p. 137). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001201587/

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Authors & Contributors
McCarthy, Conal
E. Bennett Jones
Karen Fisher
Calandra McCool
Rockey, Robbins
Nair, Aparna
Concepts
Indigenous peoples; indigeneity
Colonialism
Science and culture
Native American civilization and culture
Demography; population research
Maori (New Zealand people)
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
Early modern
Modern
Renaissance
Places
New Zealand
North America
Australia
Islands of the Pacific
Latin America
Great Britain
Institutions
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
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