Return: Becoming Indigenous in the 21st Century

There is never one single perspective that can tell the whole story.

In 1911, "wild man" Ishi appeared in a settler town in California. He was the sole survivor of his tribe, regarded as "the last wild Indian in America." Anthropologist Alfred Kroeber named him Ishi, provided him with work and lodging at a museum, where Ishi demonstrated the Yahi people's arrow and bow-making skills to visitors. Facing the modern world of San Francisco, this Yahi man's attitude was a mixture of curiosity and reservation. The fears he experienced were largely kept to himself. In 1961, Ishi in Two Worlds was published and became a bestseller. Amidst discussions of decolonization after World War II and the Native American revitalization movement of the 1960s, Ishi once again became a focal point. In the late 1990s, Ishi made headlines again, this time because California Indians demanded the return and reburial of Ishi's remains, a process that also reopened a violent history of settler colonialism. Ishi's experience is mysterious and rich, and his life and death hold different meanings for many different people in many different ways.

Ishi was once seen as a symbol of the disappearance of California's indigenous people, but today he represents their survival.

For a long time, tribal societies or indigenous societies were thought to be doomed to disappear under the violent encroachment of Western culture and economic development. Many once believed that this historical mission would be accomplished through (tragic) "genocide" and (inevitable) "assimilation." But by the end of the 20th century, something different was clearly happening. Many indigenous people were indeed killed, many languages did disappear, and many societies did disintegrate. However, a significant number of indigenous people persisted, adapting and reassembling the remnants of their disrupted ways of life. They selectively drew upon deeply rooted adaptive traditions, forging new paths in a complex postmodern world.

Culture is a process of becoming.

The Return explores this process: how pragmatic means are used to contend with global forces, various forms of capitalism, and specific national hegemonies.