#title Alfred Kroeber, the Yuroks, and Me (Preview)
#subtitle A Letter to My Daughter
#author Dana Lloyd
Villanova University
#authors Dana Lloyd
#date 2024-07-03
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-04-16T00:44:43
#topics religion, anthropology
#source Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, [[https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/issue/view/2646][Vol. 18, No. 4 (2024), Special Issue - Publicly Engaged Scholarship]], pp. 535–547. <[[https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.25268][doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.25268]]>
#rights Equinox Publishing Ltd.
#notes For information regarding the Journal's Open Access policy, [[https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/Full%20details%20of%20our%20conditions%20related%20to%20copyright%20can%20be%20found%20by%20clicking%20here.][click here]].
How to Cite: Lloyd, D. (2024). Alfred Kroeber, the Yuroks, and Me: A Letter to My Daughter. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 18(4), 535–547. <[[https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.25268][doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.25268]]>
Keywords:
Yurok, law, religion, voice, positionality, Kroeber
Abstract
I explore my positionality as a non-Indigenous scholar writing about Indigenous peoples in California. As I think about my relationship with the Yurok people I write about, I also think about my relationship with my father, who did not raise me, and about my relationship with my own daughter. Searching for my own voice, as an academic, as a daughter, and as a mother, I wonder about the similarities between the infamous anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and me. I ask whether there is an ethical way for me to write about the Yurok, or whether I am doomed to replicate Kroeber’s sins. I conclude that greater reflexivity about my own positionality is valuable and even essential to my academic work, in relation to my interlocutors, with integrity, and indeed, in solidarity.
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