Positive racism is still racism - all Asians are good at math, all black people are good at sports, all native american cultures were noble and didn't have crime. At the very least a canadian anthropologist in 1934, while they may not have been actively perpetuating the cultural genocide, would still have been describing cultures in the midst of being genocided.

This noble savage stuff sounds great, but native americans not culturally monolithic so these sweeping generalizations just aren't accurate.