Bias and Blind Teaching

While attending the University of Washington I took the Environmental Studies series, and during one of the 200 level classes we read a research paper about pre-contact Pacific Northwest Native population. The paper basically said that pre-contact population estimates were skewed because European disease had spread through traditional trade routes ahead of European explorers. So when explorers first arrived what they saw was a population that was already decimated by a wave of disease. It was previously thought that explorers arrived when Natives were inland for the season.

I was really excited to be reading about this subject and thought that our class was discussing it to open our eyes to anthropology and question the conservative/status quo population theories. Then it was time to discuss the paper during our class time with the teaching assistants. Their goal was to have us ask ourselves what our own biases were while reading this paper and their example was to tell us that 'scholars' had rejected or refuted the author's findings because they felt that he held a bias in favor of Pacific Northwest Native people. They claimed that Natives had something to gain by proving that their populations were bigger than previously thought and the author's work couldn't be trusted if he was 'Native friendly'.

I raised my hand and told the teaching assistants that I'm Native and I thought the article was interesting and it's science so why can't we believe it? The T.A. gave me a look and said 'well, you're Native so you have a bias, too. Don't you?'.

I was appalled that we were given this great opportunity to turn the way that pre-contact population was viewed around but instead we were told to be careful to believe what we read because the author might be biased. Why did the example have to involve a Native issue?

(I have a lot of theories and analysis that I could give but I've run out of steam with my thoughts tonight and will have to edit and say more later. I've got more stories of anti-Native teaching at UW to add, too.)