Anthropology: Weaving Our Discipline with Community

Anthropology: Weaving Our Discipline with Community presents examples of anthropologists working with Native communities to preserve and protect cultural heritage.Ray Fogelson provides a glimpse of his work with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Linguist Hartwell Francis shares his work on language preservation in the community today. Jim Sarbaugh and Lisa Lefler focus on traditional knowledge and health among the Cherokee. Trey Adcock explores the reasons that American Indians are strikingly underrepresented among both the student bodies and faculty of institutions of higher education. Brandon Lundy and his colleagues discuss the co-production of knowledge in ethnographic interviews with business, NGO, and government representatives in Guinea-Bissau.These papers were presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society (SAS) in Cherokee, North Carolina.

Lisa J. Lefler is director of Western Carolina University’s Culturally Based Native Health Programs, a collaborative program with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and WCU’s Colleges of Health and Human Sciences. The Native Health Certificate reflects a postcolonial model, involving Native communities from the ground up to educate health professionals regarding Native cultures in order to improve health care delivery for Native people. Lefler’s other interests include Indian youth and addiction, diabetes, and health-related issues concerning stress, Native fatherhood, historic grief and trauma, and applying Native science to contemporary issues.