Salvaging the Salvage anthropologists: Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin, Carl Voegelin, and the future of ethnohistory

Abstract

How should Native and non-Native scholars utilize the work of salvage anthropologists? In this study of Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin, Carl Voegelin, and their research among the Shawnee, Stephen Warren and Ben Barnes suggest that Community-Engaged Scholarship (CES) offers a new path forward in examining the difficult legacy of the Boasians and their successors. Collaborative, team-based research can yield important new discoveries as tribal citizens rediscover and use the work of salvage anthropologists. For tribal communities working to recover dormant languages and cultural practices, CES methodologies offer a means of critical and concordant engagement with anthropological texts.