Final answer:
Anthropologists worked for/with colonial powers to study the societies in the colonies and provide information to support their interests. However, this practice was often marred by biases and distorted representations of the cultures studied. Anthropology has been criticized for participating in colonization and disempowering Indigenous societies.
Step-by-step explanation:
When anthropologists worked for/with colonial powers, their role was to study the societies in the colonies and provide information to support the interests of the colonial powers. However, earlier anthropologists often did not recognize the racialized power dynamics and biases that shaped their research, leading to distorted representations of the peoples they studied. In the 1960s, anthropologists started to think more critically about these issues and the need for an insider's perspective. They realized that cultural anthropologists could be complicit in colonialism by gathering knowledge from Indigenous peoples for their own purposes, disempowering them and contributing to the colonization of Indigenous societies.