Episode 2: The Word For Man Is Ishi

In 1911, a Native American man, the only member of his community to survive a genocide, encountered the new Anthropology department at the University of California, Berkeley. What happened next helped to define the ethical quandaries of the field and, in a strange turn, the history of science fiction. This episode: That story and the moral stakes of imagining the past and the future.

KEY SOURCES

• Ishi’s Brain by Orin Starn

• Ishi in Two Worlds by Theodora Kroeber

• The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, Memory, and Indigenous California by Andrew Garrett

• Playing Indian by Philip J. Deloria

• “Ishi’s Story,” Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century, by James Clifford.

• Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, directed by Arwen Curry.

• “The Fantastic Ursula K. Le Guin” by Julie Phillips, New Yorker, October 10, 2016

• “Salvage Anthropology ‘A Nasty Business’,” Season 2 Episode 2 of Challenging Colonialism

• “The Legacy of Kroeber, Ishi, & UC Berkeley,” Season 2 Episode 3 of Challenging Colonialism

• “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin. Used by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Copyright © 1973. All Rights reserved.

• The Word For World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

• Ishi by Richard Burrill

• Gold, Greed and Genocide by the International Indian Treaty Council

• The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

• “1973 Talk at Red Bluff High School,” Ad Kessler

• Alfred Kroeber: A Personal Configuration, By Theodora Kroeber

• “The Radical History of the Red Power Movement’s Fight for Native American Sovereignty” by Erin Blakemore, National Geographic, November 25, 2020

• “Native Americans seized Wounded Knee 50 Years Ago. Here’s What 1 Reporter Remembers” by Rachel Treisman, NPR

• “Remembering Vine Deloria, Jr.” by Jennifer Davis, Library of Congress

• “How a UC Berkeley Professor Taught With Remains Suspected To Be Native American” by Mary Hudetz, ProPublica and Graham Lee Brewer, MSNBC & ProPublica

• “Mister Ishi: Analogies of Exile, Deliverance, and Liberty” by Gerald Vizenor, Ishi in Three Centuries, edited by Karl Kroeber and Clifton Kroeber

• “The Power of Names” by Justice Gary Strankman, Ishi in Three Centuries, edited by Karl Kroeber and Clifton Kroeber

• “Ishi and the University” by Karen Biestman, Ishi in Three Centuries, edited by Karl Kroeber and Clifton Kroeber

• “A Personal Remembrance of Ishi” by Fred H. Zumwalt Jr., Ishi in Three Centuries, edited by Karl Kroeber and Clifton Kroeber

• “When the World Was New: Ishi’s Stories” by Jean Perry, Ishi in Three Centuries, edited by Karl Kroeber and Clifton Kroeber

• Vine Deloria on Native Americans (1972)

• Ursula K. Le Guin, Avenali Chair in the Humanities (talk)

• Richard Oakes delivering the Alcatraz Proclamation (1969) - from THE EDUCATION ARCHIVE

• Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940)

• “LAST OF VANISHED TRIBE: Only Survivor of Bloodthirsty Indians Turns Up Starving” Nashville Tennessean and the Nashville American (1910-1920); Aug 31, 1911; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Nashville Tennessean (1812-1922) pg. 3

• “A Live Man from the Stone Age to Tell Us How Stone Age Men Behaved” The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, California) · Sun, Nov 5, 1911

• “Ishi, Glorious In Freedom, Is Most Inglorious In Captivity” Oroville Daily Register (Oroville, California) · Sat, Mar 14, 1914

• “It’s All Too Much For Ishi; Says the Scientist” by A. L. Kroeber, The San Francisco Call (San Francisco, California) · Sun, Oct 8, 1911

• “History of Man Shown In New Museum” The San Fracisco Examiner, 04 Oct 1911, Wed. Page 10

• “Ishi Continues to Draw Crowds” San Francisco Chronicle

• 05 Nov 1911, Sun. Page 47

• “‘The Heaven of the White People,’ Ishi Calls the Orpheum” by Grant Wallace, The San Francisco Call (San Francisco, California) · Sun, Oct 8, 1911. Page 4.

• Interview with Mrs. John Parks Davis (née Elizabeth Pope), Marshall H. Kuhn, February 23, 1973. Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.

• Interview with Saxton Pope, Marshall H. Kuhn, December 9, 1972.

• Archival material used courtesy of University of Oregon | Special Collections and University Archives.

• Ishi, Myth of Wood-duck,” Thomas T. Waterman, September 1911, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology