Harold C. Conklin

Harold Colyer Conklin (born April 27, 1926) is an American anthropologist who has conducted extensive ethnoecological and linguistic field research in Southeast Asia (particularly the Philippines) and is a pioneer of ethnoscience, documenting indigenous ways of understanding and knowing the world.

Early life and education

Conklin was born in Easton, Pennsylvania but moved before the age of one to his father's hometown of Patchogue, New York. Interested in Native American culture from an early age, he was adopted by the St. Regis Mohawk tribe of the Akwesasne (Mohawk) Nation in 1939, when he was in eighth grade. While in high school, he pursued his interest in anthropology by serving as a volunteer at the American Museum of Natural History under anthropology curator Clark Wissler.

Conklin entered the University of California, Berkeley as an undergraduate in 1943, studying with anthropologists Robert Lowie, Alfred L. Kroeber, and Edward W. Gifford, as well as geographer Carl O. Sauer. He attended Berkeley for one year before being inducted into the United States Army in July 1944. After serving briefly in New Guinea and Leyte, he served with the 158th Infantry Regiment on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.