Abstract

This text is an anthropological self-reflection resulting from the experience of an ethnologist dealing with the Tibetan community and culture, which is experiencing complexities of a political nature associated with this national group. Discussed here is the problem of scientific objectivity, the need to deconstruct the myth of the “innocent native”, and political entanglements in socially sensitive areas – especially in cases in which we are dealing with a country that is non-democratic, occupied, or engulfed in war or ethnic conflict – and the engagement of field anthropologists in humanitarian aid.