

Students: ✍🏻



Me yesterday: Alright, let's talk ethics. Who wants to hear about all the shady shit that Boas did?

Students: 😳😬😮😧 Me in August: Franz Boas was the father of modern American anthropology. He praised ethnography and participant-observation!Students: ✍🏻Me yesterday: Alright, let's talk ethics. Who wants to hear about all the shady shit that Boas did?Students: 😳😬😮😧

If anyone wants a "Boas was shady af" story, you know what to do:



... that time Boas helped some grave robbers steal Native skeletons, and sell others.



... that time Boas imported 6 Inuit, 4 of whom died of TB, and 1 of whom he faked the burial of.

Story the First: Franz Boas and "My Inuit"



Boas was born & educated in Germany, obtaining his PhD in physics in 1881 but then returning to his love of cultural geography w/ a habilitation thesis defended in 1886 on Baffin Land and a book two years later on The Central Eskimo.