| Summary: | The idea that indigenous people of the New World were children of nature - or in darker imaginings, unevolved beasts - has a long ancestry of critique in the human sciences. A tradition of psychologically based research into white attitudes in the settler societies of British empire has chronicled the diverse forms of prejudice against indigenous people, including those who, in moving to cities, were seen as detribalized misfits, dislocated from their natural habitats in the open spaces of country. More recently, concepts of ‘the primitive’ have been critically deconstructed to reveal the discursive practices out of which social relations were configured in colonial societies. In that critique, the contribution made by various legitimizing agents to the racialized representation of indigenous peoples has been carefully documented, including that by scientists who, in their various ‘mismeasures of man’ in the nineteenth century, left an indelible stamp on public beliefs.
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