A Discussion between Quebecois Social Anthropologists and Historians

Bibliographic Data

ID7661678
AuthorsDenis Vorobiev (0000-0002-0401-0295, Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume17
Issue51
Pages113-140
Publication date2021-12-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAntropologicheskij forum (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1815-8870 • E-ISSN: 1815-8889
PublisherPeter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (The Kunstkamera) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.31250/1815-8870-2021-17-51-113-140
OpenAlexW4206040462
LanguageEN
References cited9

The article examines the debate between Quebecois anthropologists and historians around the “disparationist” thesis. According to this thesis, first expressed in several 17th century texts, the Attikamegues and Montagnais peoples had completely disappeared by the end of that century due to epidemics and Iroquois raids, and the territories in which they lived were occupied by alien autochthonous groups. Therefore, the modern Innu and Atikamekw are implied not to be the direct descendants of the people who lived here before the arrival of Europeans. Anthropologists criticize this thesis, stressing intergenerational continuity. They see it as a political notion that denies the indigenous rights of the First Nations. The author examines the critical arguments of the anthropologists and tries to reveal the relationship between the political implications of the problem and its purely scientific component. From his point of view, the “disparationist” thesis does not take into account the mobility and the relatively amorphous social structure of taiga hunters, in which even the replacement of some groups by others does not imply a break in continuity

Alien · Ethnology · Genealogy · Indigenous · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropology · Canadian Identity and History · Education, sociology, and vocational training · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law

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