Toward an Indigenous anthropology

This article introduces a special section that features four Indigenous anthropologists from two different world regions—Africa and Latin America. This section is unique in that the contributions of these anthropologists are being published in the scholars' Native languages—IsiZulu, Kichwa, Nahua, and Wolof—and in English. There are a number of reasons we felt it important to bring together the work of these scholars in one journal. First, we felt that it was important to highlight the work that non‐Western scholars are contributing to a field that is overwhelmingly dominated by Euro‐American and European scholars. Second, as Indigenous scholars ourselves, we are committed to the project of decentering anthropology by facilitating direct conversations between Indigenous scholars in different parts of the world—in this case, Africa and Latin America—that are not mediated by non‐Indigenous voices. By doing this, we are hoping to promote the emergence of a truly Indigenous Anthropology. Our decision to foreground the authors' Native languages draws attention to the problem of linguistic imperialism within anthropology—a problem that has marginalized Indigenous languages. This special section is a modest step towards addressing this problem.