Unacknowledged Tribes, Dangerous Knowledge: The Muwekma Ohlone and How Indian Identities Are "Known"

Abstract

i n this article, I will outline the analysis I have been developing to investigate a very specific case study: the history of the Ohlone peoples of the San Francisco Bay Area and their petition for federal recognition as the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. Because I am a cultural anthropologist and I work as tribal ethnologist for the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, the approach I have taken in much of my work has been to show the role played by anthropologists and anthropological knowledge in Ohlone history. Early in the twentieth century, the work of anthropologists helped to legitimate the disenfranchisement of Ohlone peoples; in the early twenty-first century, I use anthropology instead to support the Muwekma Ohlones' current acknowledgment petition. Consequently, my treatment of these histories is directed toward both Ohlones and anthropologists, their past and present intersections, and their future trajectory. 0 In the post-World War II era, it is a commonplace that anthropology has been and remains the child of imperialism. Most anthropolo3 79 gists have acknowledged that anthropological knowledge production about indigenous peoples (in particular) has been historically linked to the bureaucratic systems nation-states developed and deployed in order to at least control and sometimes destroy indigenous cultures and societies. Many times, however, such linkages have been asserted more than substantiated, and in my work I am increasingly concerned