Edward P. Dozier: The Paradox of the American Indian Anthropologist

Edward P. Dozier was the first American Indian to establish a career as an academic anthropologist. In doing so, he faced a double paradox—academic and cultural. The notion of objectivity that governed academic anthropology at the time dictated that researchers be impartial outsiders. Scientific knowledge was considered unbiased, impersonal, and public. In contrast, Dozier’s Pueblo Indian culture regarded knowledge as privileged, personal, and gendered. Ceremonial knowledge was protected by...