So much about the anti-Indigenous rights book is shocking, but this cherry picking of "inaccurate" oral historical accounts, together with the mocking tone, is absurd, in bad faith, and unscholarly. (1/n) https://twitter.com/DrKillgrove/status/1343594698242465793

I cannot imagine an anthropologist hearing an oral historical account of thunder gods and noting down, "oh very interesting, that's factually where guns must have come from, we've had it all wrong!"

But oral history *has* taught about ancient climates, relationships with nonhumans, subsistence strategies, extinction events, migration, trade, etc... Not by taking accounts literally word for word but, like any text, in context and in combo with other evidence

I found this bit of the authors' self defense particularly ridiculous because of what a bad example it is of science. It ignores decades of research on and with oral history, offers three examples to "prove" a larger (wrong) concept. It's out of date and a logical fallacy.

But of course the underlying ethical point that knowledge and truth (or one version of it) must be pursued by any means necessary is indefensible.

If knowing how horses got to N America entails violating a group's national sovereignty, bodily autonomy, relationships to their ancestors, and religious/spiritual practice (especially after centuries of doing so), then let's find another, better research question.