ABSTRACT
To say that anthropological representations of indigenous knowledge are haunted by the political legacies and human tragedies of the colonial encounter, is a truism brought to new significance by the various contributions to this book. The different regional and disciplinary perspectives of the papers collected here show that questions of epistemology are inextricably and necessarily intertwined with issues of responsibility, reparation and renewal. In this regard, scientific methods and claims made in the course of anthropology’s emergent institutional formation and early expeditions have become central to the critiques made of the discipline by indigenous scholars and by anthropology of itself. What then is the contemporary role of collaborations between disciplinary fields of science and anthropology as a means of inquiry into the ways of knowing and being in the world that are particular to original communities struggling with present colonial occupiers of their land?
