Two Bitter Rivals Try to Resolve Differences : Culture: Missionaries and anthropologists share growing concerns about human rights and indigenous peoples in undeveloped countries.

Ask an anthropologist about missionaries and the image that may come to mind is of self-righteous individuals traipsing through villages, covering women’s breasts and otherwise seeking to impose their cultural values on tribal peoples.

Ask a missionary about anthropologists and the image may be of amoral observers more concerned with putting native peoples under a microscope than lifting a finger to stop gang rapes and other atrocities.

But a new group of anthropologists and missionaries is seeking to put aside old enmities and find common ground in a shared concern for the human rights of people in the least developed areas of the world.

The effort got its start when the American Anthropological Assn. sponsored a two-day seminar titled “Missionaries and Human Rights” at its recent meeting in Atlanta, featuring several speakers who urged anthropologists and missionaries to work together in the interests of indigenous populations.

“Given the gravity of the human rights situation . . . it’s time to develop a constructive dialogue rather than stabbing each other in the back,” said Leslie Sponsel, chair of the association’s Commission on Human Rights.

For more than 25 years, anthropologists and missionaries have been at odds, trading charges that each group has abused native populations for its own ends. In 1971, a group of anthropologists signed a declaration calling for all missionaries to leave Latin America.

What has helped bring about the current effort at dialogue is a more self-critical approach adopted by both anthropologists and missionaries, some say.

Frank Salamone, an anthropology professor at Iona College, said some of his colleagues have been stingy in giving credit to missionaries for opening doors to tribal peoples and providing anthropologists with shelter and medical care.

The Atlanta seminar was organized by Thomas Headland, who teaches anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington and is a Bible translator for the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Dallas.

Headland--who is a missionary and an anthropologist--said missionaries have gone too far in some cases in trying to impose a foreign culture on native people.

Using anthropology to understand the broader political and economic structures affecting native societies could also help missionaries better serve the poor in the developing world, Headland said.

While the two sides may never come to theological terms, they have increasingly worked together to promote human rights and protect indigenous populations.

Missionaries and anthropologists are working together in a development project to help the Yuqui population in Bolivia.