Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Descendant Communities Perspectives with Patrick Cruz - S1E5
269 Plays3 years ago
In the final episode of Season 1, we wrap up our series on Chaco and Southwest archaeology through a conversation with our fellow graduate student, Patrick Cruz. Patrick is a citizen of the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo in New Mexico and he impresses upon us the importance of Indigenous perspectives in archaeological research and interpretations. Patrick reflects on his experiences visiting ancestral sites and being both an Indigenous person and an archaeologist.
Links
- Begay, Richard M.
- 2004 Tsé Bíyah ‘Anii’áhí: Chaco Canyon and Its Place in Navajo History. In In Search of Chaco: New Approaches to an Archaeological Enigma, edited by Noble Grant, David, pp. 54–60. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe.
- Cruz, Patrick
- 2018 Landscape Memory and Authority: How Perceptions of Landscape Played a Part in Pueblo Migrations in the Northern Rio Grande. M.A. Thesis, University of Colorado Boulder. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
- Gover, Carlton
- 2019 Dating Apps in Archaeology: Matching the Archaeological Record with Indigenous Oral Traditions through Glottochronology, Summed Probability Distributions, and Bayesian Statistical Analysis. M.A. Thesis, University of Wyoming. Proquest Dissertations Publishing.
- Ortiz, Simon
- 1992 What We See: A Perspective on Chaco Canyon and Its Ancestry. In Chaco Canyon: A Center and Its World, edited by Peck, Mary, pp. 65–72. Museum of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque
- Ortman, Scott G.
- 2012 Winds from the North : Tewa Origins and Historical Anthropology, University of Utah Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucb/detail.action?docID=3443859.
- Samuel Duwe and Patrick J .Cruz
- 2019 Tewa Origins and Middle Places. In The Continuous Path: Pueblo Movement and the Archaeology of Becoming, edited by Samuel Duwe and Robert W. Preucel, pp. 96-123. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
- Swentzell, Rina
- 2004. A Pueblo Woman’s Perspective on Chaco Canyon. In In Search of Chaco: New Approaches to an Archaeological Enigma, edited by David Noble Grant, pp. 48-53. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe.
- Weiner, Robert S.
- 2018 Sociopolitical, Ceremonial, and Economic Aspects of Gambling in Ancient North America: A Case Study of Chaco Canyon. American Antiquity 83(1), 34–53.
- Contact For Guest:
- Patrick Cruz
- Email: [email protected]
Carlton Shield Chief Gover
- Email: [email protected]
- instagram: @pawnee_archaeologist
- Twitter: @PaniArchaeology
- Website: https://www.colorado.edu/anthropology/carlton-gover
Robert Weiner
- [email protected]
- Instagram: @chacoroadsproject
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Site Bites Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to season one, episode five, the final episode of the site bites podcast for season one, Canyon of contention, where we go in depth on prominent archeological landscapes. I'm your host Carlton Gover. And I am joined by this season's featured co-host Robert Weiner for the topic of this episode, descendant communities perspectives. We have the pleasure of having Patrick Cruz from the village of the strong people. Okay.
Guest Introduction: Patrick Cruz
00:00:37
Speaker
A wing gay with us as our guests, Patrick. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. How are you doing?
00:00:42
Speaker
I'm doing great. Thanks for inviting me, guys. Of course. Did I pronounce Okewinge correctly, or did I butcher it? You did it perfectly, yep. Excellent. Excellent. Well, I'm very glad to hear that. So we wanted to, for our audience, why we have Patrick on, one, he's one of our fellow colleagues at the University of Colorado Boulder. Also,
Archaeology & Indigenous Identity
00:01:02
Speaker
he is Pueblo. He comes from one of these descendant populations of the Southwest, specifically, as we said, a specific Pueblo, Okewinge.
00:01:12
Speaker
And so, I mean, just just to start off, Patrick, what is what's your professional and personal relationship to Chaco Canyon or even greater than that with Southwest archaeology? Well, I kind of wear two different hats. I wear an archaeologist hat and then I have my own indigenous hat, if you want to say that.
00:01:32
Speaker
I grew up learning about traditions and whatnot okay we get my family you know so history is important ancestral sites are important that's all important to our understanding the culture and where the people came from. I mix that up
Chaco Canyon's Cultural Significance
00:01:49
Speaker
a little bit with archaeology because i'm also coming in from a professional background in in that field.
00:01:56
Speaker
So sometimes I jump around between the two and so I apologize if I do that. It may seem a little confusing because I switch hats at random. But yeah, Chaco is really important as a really formative cultural sequence in the southwest that really was... It was formative in producing what I guess it would be the current Pueblo culture, if you want to call it that. And then of course you have to understand Chaco Canyon
00:02:25
Speaker
is so formative for everything else from the archaeological aspect of the Pueblo Southwest. So Chaco is pretty central, if that makes sense. Absolutely.
Pueblo Languages & Cultures
00:02:37
Speaker
Now, how many different Pueblos are there and are they all part of the same language family? Like what do contemporary Puebloans look like today in contemporary American culture and society?
00:02:52
Speaker
Well, there's several different languages and some of them are related and some of them are not related in any way, shape, or form. So you have, you have Karisen.
00:03:02
Speaker
And there's a number of villages that are associated with that language. There's Zuni. There's Hopi, of course. And several villages are, you know, you can think of Hopi for an example. It's actually, you know, it's a tribe, but it's comprised of several villages. And then, of course, there's, there's my group. There's Tewa. There's the Tewa speaking language, which is really spoken only by Hamis. And then there's the Tewa language.
00:03:25
Speaker
There have
Patrick's Academic Journey
00:03:26
Speaker
been other ancestral other languages public languages in the past such as pure that aren't spoken anymore but so some of these languages are related some of them aren't. And everyone's kind of distributed from from the real grand day to arizona to the maces up there.
00:03:43
Speaker
And yeah, that's kind of the situation as it is now. One of the interesting things is for Zuni and for Karisen, they seem to be what are considered linguistic isolates, in that they don't seem to have any other languages that are spoken that are related to them. So that's kind of interesting for them. And then for Hopi, they're Yutohas Tekken, so they're related to a bunch of other indigenous groups throughout the
00:04:11
Speaker
the southwest and into Mexico as well. And then for the Tewa, the Tewa language is related to Tewa and Toa, which are mostly located in and around the Rio Grande. So they are related to each other. So quite a bit of a difference. I mean, some of the languages are just completely, they don't relate. I mean, they're unintelligible with each other. But one common culture.
00:04:37
Speaker
Well, understood. I get your point there. And for our listeners, Patrick, because the population of Indigenous people within the professional field of archaeology is rather small. It's definitely growing. And for our listeners out there, can you go through your, you know,
00:04:56
Speaker
academic and professional journey in archaeology, like what got you inspired to become an archaeologist? Where'd you go to
Career Path to a PhD
00:05:02
Speaker
school, both undergrad, graduate? Where did you work in between? And why are you our colleague here at CU Boulder? Well, I started my journey at Bandelier National Monument and I was a summer student that was looking for a job and I was looking for something in forestry or national parks and I got a job at Bandelier and they
00:05:26
Speaker
They put me in a Pueblo work youth group. I wasn't expecting that. I just went in to see if I could get a job with them. And I started working automatically with a number of other youths from the different Pueblos that were doing trail maintenance and other activities. And so that's kind of where I got it started. And from there,
00:05:48
Speaker
We started working with historic preservation. I started to encounter field schools at Bandelier. So usually it was from the University of Pennsylvania. And so we had a number of field schools come in and they were a mix of archaeology and historic preservation.
00:06:05
Speaker
and I started working alongside archaeologists. First time I had encountered archaeologists and grad students and from there I sort of just took off. We were working on preservation of some of the caveates at Bandelier, documentation of some of those, and documenting some of the ruins at Bandelier. So I started doing that every summer and I guess
00:06:31
Speaker
Working alongside grad students in these different programs and professional archaeologists, that's kind of where I kind of got inspired and interested in what archaeologists do. And from there, I mean, I didn't really think of archaeology as a career for myself. So I went off to Fort Lewis College in Durango.
00:06:51
Speaker
And I was working in biology or studying biology and then I was studying. I had thoughts that maybe at some point I would transition into forestry. And I learned that a lot of the biology was chemistry based and whatnot. And I wasn't as interested in that. I guess I was more interested in the human aspect of it and the relationship between plants and animals and people. And that's not what really, you know, some of the topics I was studying were about.
00:07:20
Speaker
So I realized then that what I was really interested in probably was anthropology. So I transitioned to the anthropology department at Fort Lewis and it was interesting because I was a little hesitant about some of it because I was coming in from the preconceived notions of what little I knew about archaeology was that
00:07:41
Speaker
archaeology was interesting, they told you a lot about the past that otherwise you couldn't learn, but also coming in from an indigenous perspective, it was also my opinion at the time that I was going to Fort Lewis, I thought of it as taboo. It's like no indigenous person would go into archaeology, you know, so I felt like I was treading, I don't know, I was
00:08:02
Speaker
kind of in a place I shouldn't be, but at the same time, I was really interested in it. I've grown more out of, you know, since then, obviously, but that was kind of what I was thinking when I was an undergrad, first putting my feet in the water, so to speak, of archaeology in the field. I was really lucky that one of my colleagues at Fort Lewis, also an undergrad, but at the time, Will Sosie was going there, and he's a Navajo archaeologist,
00:08:30
Speaker
And so he was really inspirational for me and encouraging and showing that it's okay for Native Americans to be involved and interested because they have a lot to actually contribute and we're dealing with the culture that we're a part of, almost like we have a responsibility to do it. And I attribute a lot of that to him for inspiration.
00:08:56
Speaker
for the things I've done. From there, I did the anthropology classes. I graduated. I started working at the Center of Southwest Studies, which is a museum slash library and archives at Fort Lewis College. And I didn't really think much more of archaeology at the time. I was working with archaeology materials
Indigenous Collaboration in Archaeology
00:09:16
Speaker
and collections, but I was doing it more from a museum perspective. And then after that, I moved on to the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe.
00:09:26
Speaker
And there I was doing, again, it was a museum career field. It was collections management and historical objects. And this is where I was like, okay, I like museums. I'm doing museum work. It's interesting. But what was missing for me was that it didn't have anything to do with indigenous groups. It didn't have anything to do with the archaeology.
00:09:50
Speaker
of the Southwest. It was all about colonial era and later materials. So I finally decided that, you know what, if I'm really interested in anthropology and archaeology and I'm really interested in doing a career in basically a studying of the Pueblo Southwest, I should go back to school. So I went back to school at CU Boulder under Scott Ortman.
00:10:13
Speaker
and you know Scott was also really really inspirational because I didn't know I wasn't thinking in terms of going back to school but then I read his book Winds of the North and I read it like you know cover to cover and I was like this is what I want to do this is great you know and then I had the fortune to meet him so we met at the Blue Corn Cafe in Santa Fe and I was just like telling him I was like you know I love the book and you know we talked about the topics and
00:10:43
Speaker
and everything. And then he was encouraging about, like, why don't you think about, you know, grad school? And so I did. And next thing you know, I was at CU Boulder and did my master's there in archaeology. And now I'm working on a PhD. And that's kind of the roundabout way of how I got to where I am. So I didn't mean to get here, but I'm happy I had. Excellent. And how'd you take the news that there was another indigenous student showing up to Boulder and taking up space in your office?
00:11:14
Speaker
No, it was competition, man. Yeah. It's been really nice, I know, for me personally, having you in the department, because I have never been in an Antho department with another Indigenous person. I mean, there might have been some that claimed that their great-great-grandmother was a Cherokee princess, which happened more frequently than it should have, but to have another, you know, real
00:11:43
Speaker
Uh, real Indian working, working together as it has been a great pleasure for me. So we're almost done with this segment, but no,
Challenges in Indigenous Archaeology
00:11:51
Speaker
Patrick, what's you've kind of danced around it a bit, I guess, like in terms of like indigenous perspectives, by and large of archeology, aren't very positive. And like, could you summarize why, why that is?
00:12:09
Speaker
Well, part of it, I think, is that, especially earlier, say in the 80s, 70s, you know, the 60s and so on, and you start to get into earlier forms of anthropology that was more science-based and based on what they call, you know, processual and whatnot. It was very much about the environment, it was very deterministic, it was very much not driven by culture, and everything was basically driven on survival.
00:12:38
Speaker
and how do you and efficiency and all that and that's not really how people work and it was very dismissive of indigenous perspectives and it was dismissive of indigenous cultures and so I think that for a number of native you know descendant communities they almost felt excluded
00:12:59
Speaker
and that their perspective really wasn't respected or wanted. And so, you know, they really didn't work too much, I think, with archaeologists at the time. And I think that archaeologists at the time were fine with that because they wanted to do their own projects without being hindered by indigenous voices coming in and making suggestions or whatnot. Yeah.
00:13:25
Speaker
So it definitely had a little bit of hostility and of course we can go further back and even earlier in anthropology, archaeology, a lot of the native communities throughout the US have been used and have experienced a lot of
00:13:41
Speaker
trauma related to researchers and archaeologists and people essentially mining indigenous people for information. Some of that has just, you know, been very damaging to communities. Hopefully it's gotten better. I mean, it has gotten better, but definitely that's where a lot of that hostility was coming out of. Thanks for sharing that, Patrick. I know that especially recently within the past two or three years, I'd say it's
00:14:08
Speaker
I would say it's getting closer to standard practice in the Southwest to work with some sort of native community or be somehow involved with Pueblo people today for those working in the Northern Southwest. I did an online talk earlier this year with Crow Canyon and almost immediately upon the end of the talk, the questions were rolling in on the Q&A. Who are you collaborating with?
00:14:35
Speaker
current day indigenous people have to say about these roads. So I think I'm optimistic that both the field and the public at large are becoming more aware that the archaeological past is not the purview of just
00:14:52
Speaker
academic predominantly white scholars marching in and learning about the past. But that, you know, there's people for whom these sites mean a lot and have a lot of knowledge about them, some of which can be shared, some can't. But I tend to think we're moving in a positive direction.
00:15:10
Speaker
Definitely. One of the things that was sort of eye-opening for me is that I did go to a small little conference on the subject matter of the NACPRO. And I was coming from this, from the perspective of having worked at Bandolier. And the thing about Bandolier back in the 90s and early 2000s was that it was very collaborative.
00:15:33
Speaker
And so the park service worked quite a bit with the local Pueblos. And so there was actually a pretty good relationship between them and the archaeologists there, the park archaeologists and the field schools. So I was coming in from a perspective of this is how it normally operates. And the relationship is actually fairly, fairly good.
00:15:54
Speaker
And when I went to this NAGPRA conference, I had sort of this eye-opening experience that a lot of communities, indigenous communities from elsewhere in the U.S., outside of the Southwest. I mean, we're talking about places that are more in the North, Northeast and whatnot. And it was almost the perspective that it was still very hostile.
00:16:15
Speaker
And so I was I was actually kind of surprised on that. So I was really sort of eye opening because I was like, huh, so maybe this isn't how it's always operated everywhere. So, yeah, but I totally agree. I think that it is moving in the right direction, certainly in the southwest. I mean, nothing really happens without consulting indigenous communities and
00:16:36
Speaker
And indigenous communities do have a lot to say about the activities that archaeologists do. And actually now, it's more like a partnership in which the communities are working in partner with archaeologists on topics, because oftentimes the topics actually matter to the communities. In fact, the communities might want to know about some of the stuff that archaeologists are finding. So it's almost like they're working in tandem together.
00:17:06
Speaker
So yeah, so definitely a huge improvement. Absolutely. I have to agree. And everyone just stay tuned and we'll be right back after these messages with Patrick Cruz to talk more about indigenous archaeology here in the Chaco region.
00:17:19
Speaker
Welcome back
Enriching Narratives with Indigenous Perspectives
00:17:20
Speaker
to segment two of episode five, season one of the site bites podcast. This is Rob Weiner, co-host with Carlton Gover. And we are here today with Patrick Cruz sharing with us about the experience of being an indigenous archeologist in the US Southwest. Yes, absolutely. So
00:17:40
Speaker
I mean, just what I wanted to ask you, Patrick, you know, what are some some of the ways that you've noticed that archaeological and traditional indigenous perspectives of the past collide? Could you follow up with maybe some of the ways they contribute to one another? Yeah. So can you give me some more examples, maybe real quick? One thing that sticks out to me from visiting sites with with Native colleagues is that
00:18:07
Speaker
It seems oftentimes from the traditional perspective, the specifics of like this happened in 1000 CE or this is a gallop black on white. Like some of the more typological and chronological questions are less important than things like looking up at the surrounding landscape and what mountains are visible or what is seen in the designs on the pottery, not just like, oh, this is a gallop black on white.
00:18:36
Speaker
or, you know, some of the more like, as you said in the earlier segment, like, OK, but what does this have to do with people or what does this have to do with the culture? Yeah, so that's exactly it, too. What's interesting is that that's one of the things that indigenous folks have mentioned about archaeologists is that they spend all this time looking on the ground.
00:18:59
Speaker
looking at objects, looking at features on the ground, looking at a site within the boundaries of that site. And one of the things that a lot of cultural leaders coming in have mentioned is that the sites, those are important. All that stuff, all that cultural material is important. But if you want to put the site within context, you have to look up.
00:19:22
Speaker
You have to look up at the landscape. All of these things are... It's almost like how archaeologists say, you know, you can't remove pottery sherds or whatnot from a site because once it's removed, you've lost the context. And that's how I think of it, is that sites that are not understood within a broader landscape, it's out of context.
00:19:44
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, you know, there's the people that lived in these places, they put their villages there for, yeah, I mean, there might be environmental reasons, maybe dependent on water or food resources or whatever, but there's also cultural reasons why the site might be there.
00:20:01
Speaker
And it has to do with the mountain peaks, certain hills, certain landscape features. There's other reasons for putting a site there than purely like the survival mode decisions. And so that's something that archaeology has been missing and that when you invite cultural leaders in,
00:20:22
Speaker
and
Holistic Archaeological Approaches
00:20:23
Speaker
they can mention those things they can mention what this place is here because you know you can see a gap between these two peaks that looks at another mountain that's further back behind that range or there's some other reason that that site might be there that archaeology might not ever ask the coldest questions they might not have looked broader or outside of those that archaeological site so i think you know things like that is where you started get like this,
00:20:51
Speaker
this partnership in the sense that they are playing off of each other. The archaeologist does bring in a specialty where they do have chronology figured out and they can talk about pottery types and timelines and other diagnostic features of tools and things like that.
00:21:12
Speaker
Indigenous groups can come in with stories related to places, stories that might relate to important events in the past, why maybe some sort of change in the culture happened near or around that place. So they do build off each other. Together, archaeology and the Indigenous perspectives complete sort of a, it's a more holistic look at the past and at those sites.
00:21:42
Speaker
To look at any site with just the archaeology perspective, it's a very incomplete look, honestly.
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
Critique of Environmental Determinism
00:21:51
Speaker
And I know our guests in the previous four episodes have kind of alluded to this and, you know, Dr. Lexan in episode four explicitly stated, you know, like a lot of issues in archaeology in general stem from that new archaeological approach or the processional paradigm in which a bunch of guys just put on lab coats and decided that archaeology was science and basically just did bean counting and came up with these like,
00:22:14
Speaker
prey choice models or environmental determinism that everything can be explained in these grand models of environment to identify human behavior. And what you've just talked about is like there, these are still people and there's ulterior means for making your home somewhere just outside of, you know,
00:22:33
Speaker
environmental practices or the availability of game that there, there are these socio-religious aspects that people still have today in which they say, you know what, this is a good place rather than like, all right, what's the annual rainfall here? Like how many hectares of corn can we procure from this environment? What alternative prey do we have our availability? You know, and so, you know, absolutely. I think, I think that was well put Patrick.
00:22:59
Speaker
Well, and I would also say that those four scientific questions about food production or any resource procurement, that stuff that isn't really as interesting to indigenous communities, they're more interested in the cultural aspects on how a site fit into their oral stories and whatnot.
00:23:21
Speaker
So the archaeology at the time didn't answer anything that was of interest for a lot of the communities, whereas now I think that working hand in hand together, that anthropology or archaeology is asking more pertinent questions that the tribes are interested in now.
00:23:39
Speaker
I think
Connection to Ancestral Sites
00:23:40
Speaker
this conversation relates really nicely to some that we've had on earlier episodes where we talked about the setting of Chaco Canyon in an area that to many of us, we show up and it's like, wow, this is so harsh. There are no trees. And then there's all these debates about how agriculturally productive it was. And the big question of Chaco archaeology, right, is why would they build in this place that was so harsh? And I think what our conversation right now is
00:24:08
Speaker
helping bring to light is that there's a lot of reasons why a place might be chosen, especially for the sort of really extravagant developments like we see in Chaco Canyon that, yeah, like you were saying, Patrick, has to do with the surrounding landforms. So I think this specific topic relates really in an important way to Chaco and archaeology. And on that note, I was curious if you had any reflections from
00:24:36
Speaker
visiting Chaco or other ancestral Pueblo sites in that Four Corners region. Something that's always struck me is that it's, I mean, you know, you know, when you're in the Rio Grande Valley near Okea Wingay and the Teo Pueblos today, there's the beautiful Rio Grande River, big trees, and then you get in the San Juan Basin and it's like,
00:25:02
Speaker
a completely different environment. So I wonder if you have reflections from visiting sites in that more ancestral region of the Four Corners as compared to the Rio Grande and just that environmental difference. Yeah, I mean, well, especially if you're talking about Chaco, I mean, the differences are pretty stark. But when I think of Mesa Verde, and I compare that to what I'm usually thinking of is more of the Pajarito up in the Jemez,
00:25:31
Speaker
I don't see them as being, I mean, they're distinct in some aspects, but in some ways, to me, they're almost continuations. Maybe the people have moved down from some of those higher elevation plateau areas down into the river valley, but still, if you think about the higher elevation locations that people were living at, the top of plateaus and whatnot, I don't think it's as distinct from
00:25:58
Speaker
say Mesa Verde area as you know something like Chaco is a little more distinct just because it's much more arid there certainly is no no river or anything over there to provide any sort of riparian environment but yeah it's just for me I guess I just just think of it as being a continuation of occupation just a different different location but same people I don't know if that makes any sense
00:26:24
Speaker
It absolutely does. Hearing you talk about these reflections of yours at ancestral sites, I've had the privilege and pleasure of being able to
00:26:37
Speaker
go with you to some of these ancestral places. Like one was for the Choppin Mesa renovation project where we got to go down to Durango Cortez. And I think we even drove to like Farmington the first day to meet with descendant communities. And I remember standing there next to you and like a bunch of other of our colleagues and a bunch of descendant communities, Tippos were talking to us about the importance of indigenous knowledge. And I mean, you were just kind of like giggling like, this is not a conversation for us. This is for everybody else.
00:27:05
Speaker
something
Living Spaces & Ancestral Presence
00:27:06
Speaker
that still sticks out to my mind is when we went to Mesa Verde, like we got to go, you know, see the Choppin' Mesa Museum and we got to go see the cliff dwellings. You know, everyone else kind of like ran off and was looking, you know, and talking and like really excited about Mesa Verde. And I remember I just kind of stuck with you and just kind of followed behind you real quiet. And as you looked at Mesa Verde and some of these cliff dwellings were just really quiet. And I can like tell that you were, you were thinking pretty deeply
00:27:35
Speaker
And I just wanted to be like in your presence of that connection. And it was, I dunno, how do I explain it without sounding like a new age hippie? It was power. It was a powerful moment. Cause I'm like, I'm sitting here or standing there with a descendant of the people who, who built Mesa Verde. And just to put that in, in context was, was huge. Cause you know, many people that visit that park don't get that experience. And then of course, recently you mean you got back from a hunting trip.
00:28:05
Speaker
Every morning we woke up in the shadow of Mesa Verde and we were in the Four Corners region. We could see, you know, in Colorado, but we could see New Mexico, we could see Utah, and we could see Arizona from where our camp was set up. And just to be in that place with you was, again, another powerful moment. So, you know, as you reflect on your experiences, I'm reflecting in mind with you, you know, how do you want, you're a father,
00:28:31
Speaker
I want to know how do you want your children to relate to Chaco, Mesa Verde, or these ancestral places there in the Southwest? So I guess one way to think about this is continuity. And so I might digress into, like you were saying, New Agey stuff. Hey, I'm the guy from Santa Fe here.
00:28:54
Speaker
with crystals and all, right? All of these sites that have been occupied in the past, the idea or the understanding that I have from how I grew up, how my folks and uncles and aunts and grandparents talked about, these are all places that are, they were occupied in the past, they are still occupied today.
00:29:20
Speaker
In some way, shape or form, the inhabitants of these sites are still there. They're still doing their thing. They're doing their thing basically the same as they've always done. When we visit these sites, there's this understanding that we are visiting these sites and these people are still there.
00:29:45
Speaker
They're still doing the things that they did in the past and in some ways were just visitors, but they're considered living spaces. So if you were to go to a site, a quote unquote ruin, as a lot of folks would talk about on these sites.
00:30:08
Speaker
we would go there and we would understand things as sort of the, you know, maybe, maybe the site, you don't see the people, you know, the structures aren't really built up anymore. They're mounds now, but they're the people in some way, shape or form are still there. And even when you visit, say some of the rooms, I remember one elder telling me that you should
00:30:34
Speaker
enter a room in a certain direction because that's probably where the doorway more or less had been and it would be more or less impolite to come in from an eric direction that a door obviously would not have been. I remember having discussions with my aunt and my grandma where they were talking about going into caveates at Vandelier
00:30:56
Speaker
And every time you walk into one of these places, you say good morning, and you explain that you're there, and that you have respect for them, and then you go about your business. It's almost like this idea of a Pueblo feast day that you're visiting, you're a guest, and then you leave. So when you're visiting places like Mesa Verde or Chaco, it's not an empty landscape.
00:31:22
Speaker
It's rather than an empty landscape, it's a landscape that's full of people, full of life. There's elders, there's people in mid-age, there's kids running around in some way, shape, or form that you may not see, but they're there. And you're there.
00:31:40
Speaker
And so, you know, when people talk about words like ruins and abandoned, those obviously don't apply from a Pueblo perspective when you're thinking about them in this way. So yeah, so when I'm visiting sites like this, like Chaco and Mesa Verde, I'm certainly coming from visiting them with this perspective, that I'm just someone that happens to be there amongst many. And even though you can't see them, they're there.
00:32:09
Speaker
And so yeah, I guess that may be a different way of looking at it than, say, most visitors who come in and see mounds and rock walls that have fallen that have all this weeds and things on it that have grown in. And yeah, I mean, to me, they're living places. And when you were talking about hunting, I thought it was fantastic to be out there. I've never hunted out there. And for me, it was
00:32:39
Speaker
kind of a connection to the past because I was hunting the same landscape that, you know, our ancestors once, you know, dwelt on and probably were walking more or less in the same areas and, you know, so doing the same things. And that was really special to me to do that within sight of places like Mesa Verde. So yeah, again, it's continuity to me. Absolutely. And I think, you
Community Collaboration in Archaeology
00:33:06
Speaker
know, your ancestors knew you were there because you
00:33:08
Speaker
bagged your elk pretty soon after arriving. Yeah, I feel bad about that. I mean, I'm happy about it. I'm really happy about it. But at the same time, I'm trying not to gloat because I showed up and within an hour and a half I got something and you guys have been there for what, two days? We've been there for three days at that point.
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah. So stay tuned. We're going to finish up this conversation with Patrick Cruz right after these messages. Welcome back to site bites podcast. Here we are with the final segment of the final episode of season one. We're here with Patrick Cruz. I'm joined by my co-host Rob Weiner.
00:33:42
Speaker
And I think what's really important, as we've alluded to and talked about through the course of these five episodes, is the need for Indigenous perspectives. And I think this would be like a good place, as me and Patrick have talked about, these Indigenous perspectives. But Rob actually collaborates with the Navajo Nation in his research. So, I mean, Rob, could you provide our listeners with that perspective and why you needed to do that?
00:34:06
Speaker
Absolutely. So one of the interesting facts about Chacoan archaeology is that we've talked about the outlier great houses in earlier episodes, these settlements related to the central canyon with this characteristic, you know, monumental architecture and roads. The majority of those sites are located on the Navajo Nation.
00:34:28
Speaker
in New Mexico and Arizona and others up into Utah. So if we want to learn about this larger Chaco world, it's not going to happen without working together with the Navajo tribe. It could be a long discussion because I'd say a predominant view is that, oh, these sites are not connected to the Navajo people. They came into the Southwest later. There's a variety of issues with that perspective.
00:34:57
Speaker
I think the simplest way to say it from what I've learned working with the tribe is that not all Navajo people are descendants of the ancient Chacoans and others who lived in the four corners, but some are, and it really depends on a person's clan affiliation.
00:35:14
Speaker
So
Integrating Oral Traditions into Research
00:35:15
Speaker
I think the misunderstandings that we're, you know, we can just slap on this label of these people are Navajo and these ancient people were not. And there can be a lot of confusion and miscommunications, which has led to a lack of collaboration and, and archeological research on the Chacoan sites on the Navajo nation. So I was.
00:35:39
Speaker
fortunate, you know, I reached out and talked to the people in Navajo Nation historic preservation office that, you know, be interested in working on specifically on some of the roads and the outliers on the tribal lands and things have moved along smoothly.
00:35:56
Speaker
You know, I'd say one of the interesting things about collaborating, you know, I think collaboration with indigenous peoples happens in a lot of different ways. You can both attest to this much better than I am sure. But, you know, part of what's been interesting for me is that sometimes it's just a very low key process. It's not sort of like,
00:36:17
Speaker
You have to do this. And often there's less said than more. When I feel like I'm doing things right, actually there's less said. And I think that probably takes a lot of getting used to for many of us non-native people that we can be so programmed to talk, talk, talk, and ask questions. And sometimes sharing what I do is I share the mapping and the research I've done.
00:36:46
Speaker
And oftentimes there's not a lot of conversation and usually that means, okay, keep going. An additional aspect of my work has been learning from the, some of the oral traditions that the Navajo people have about the Chacoan sites.
00:37:04
Speaker
Some of these, of course, are not to be shared publicly. Others have been written in print. Most notably, what my master's thesis was on was the Navajo stories about a figure called the Great Gambler, who was said to be a very powerful figure who ruled over Chaco. And the stories talk about a lot of gambling happening there and actually people becoming enslaved through gambling.
00:37:29
Speaker
Interestingly, we talked about captives in the past with Professor Cameron and some possible archaeological evidence for that at Chaco. So I think the more we open up to the stories that are available to be shared publicly, the more it's going to enrich our archaeological investigations. I mean, just briefly, my
00:37:51
Speaker
M.A. thesis looked at these stories, oral traditions about gambling at Chaco and asked very simply, well, what's the archaeological evidence of gambling like? And it turned out there were hundreds and hundreds of dice and kick sticks and shinny sticks and all other kinds of implements used in gaming practices historically in both Pueblo and Navajo cultures in the buildings at Chaco. And this was a line of
00:38:19
Speaker
of understanding the past that had gone totally overlooked because people weren't engaging with the oral histories. So that's just one small example from my research of how by taking
Cultural Fluidity & Colonial Impact
00:38:32
Speaker
these stories seriously, you know, entirely new insights about the past can open up and that I think all too often
00:38:42
Speaker
The tendence, you know, in the past, especially has been that oral traditions are unreliable people just making or especially with the Navajo, right? Oh, they came in late and they're just making up stories. But really seeing that, you know, of course, native people know their own histories. They're from what I've learned. There's extremely
00:39:00
Speaker
Type protocols for ensuring oral traditions being passed on are passed on with great fidelity and if you you know making mistake in a recitation is not a is not a good thing and it's Just at like there can be really an overprivileged of writing so
00:39:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's part of what I've learned is that as we were talking about with Patrick, looking up, looking at the surrounding landscape, opening to the oral histories and knowing what can be shared and what needs to stay private. And then also just the importance of that sometimes it's not going to be a big happy fest where everybody's saying how great the archaeological work is and a lot of
00:39:48
Speaker
talky talk and more sometimes that less being said might mean more. Yeah, absolutely, Robin. Thank you for sharing about the importance of these things and the complexity and indigenous nations' views of the past and how these things are all interrelated and how they provide greater, as Patrick said, you get more holistic interpretations by incorporating indigenous knowledge.
00:40:13
Speaker
Yeah, so Rob, you're exactly right. Something that I think that a lot of people don't recognize. People that are not familiar with archaeology, people that are oftentimes are part of archaeology, and even indigenous communities sometimes think of this, you know, fall into this idea that
00:40:33
Speaker
a group is bounded and it's been that way and it's always been that way and you can track a group into the past with no problem because it's all about the continuity of the community and that's not always the case. Basically, people are people, people move, people intermarry with other folks and when a new community shows up that maybe
00:40:58
Speaker
speak a little bit different language or have a little bit different cultural ways. They still interact and oftentimes marry in and so it's more fluid and certainly I think in the past it was more fluid where people moved across cultural boundaries with no problem.
00:41:17
Speaker
And so it makes it a little more difficult for identifying specific cultural groups oftentimes with specific tribes, I guess, trying to relate to them to the past. They definitely do relate and they're all part of that cultural group in the past, but oftentimes the communities themselves
00:41:39
Speaker
They're just different. They're a different nature. The community may not have existed in the way that we understand it to be. Yeah, you know, people are people. People just move around a lot. And cultures are not as bounded. Or certainly at the time, they weren't not as bounded as I think that we oftentimes assume they were.
00:42:00
Speaker
A lot of the boundedness, I think, actually comes from the colonial experience when you have the arrival of European powers that essentially colonized the landscape. In doing so, they formalized communities. They set boundaries on who's a community member. They fixed communities and space in a place.
00:42:25
Speaker
And i think that a lot of that founded this that we see today that we think of as the tribes today oftentimes is really imposed from historical circumstances.
00:42:35
Speaker
Yeah,
Dissertation on Ancestral Tewa Community
00:42:36
Speaker
one example of a story that was shared with me that I think sums this up really nicely is from out in Navajo land. One of my colleagues was out mapping Chacoan roads and was talking to the family that lived near one of these roads and they of course knew about it and said, oh yeah, there's an ancient road here that went back to Chaco and
00:42:56
Speaker
My grandparents always told us, don't herd the sheep down the road because that's a bad place. That's where we don't go. And then a couple of weeks later, this person was at another Chacoan road, just a short distance away. And the people living there said, oh, yeah, our grandparents always told us to herd the sheep down the Chacoan road because that's where they'd be safe. Because that's a good place. And of course, it was. But they're both Navajo. How could they?
00:43:23
Speaker
Again, that idea of bounded identities, but it turns out these people were from different clans. One of those clans tied its origins back to Chaco and the ancient Four Corners times and the other person's clan did not have that ancestry. And yet so commonly in our discourse, especially both, you know, I'd say in academia and outside of academia, it's all lumped together with these ethnic labels like Navajo, Pueblo. And so that example really drove that home.
00:43:51
Speaker
for me. Yeah, absolutely. And we experienced kind of those same things on the plains, which I won't get into. But, you know, Patrick, what are you working on now, man? Like, what's the future for Patrick Cruz? What's your dissertation about? So my dissertation right now is looking at a ancestral table community called Pioge. And Pioge means basically it's a place of the red flicker bird. And it's on the Rio Grande. It's north of Okewinge, north of Santa Fe.
00:44:18
Speaker
And so I'm looking at the site. The site is now owned by the tribe of Okewenge. Before then, it was privately owned. And it's ancestral to Okewenge. So that's one of the things is that Okewenge is interested in the archaeology of the site, what information can come out of the site itself. There certainly is oral history to it, but they're interested in what the archaeology can fill in some of the gaps, I guess.
00:44:44
Speaker
And so I'm looking at the site, I'm looking at the agricultural aspects of the site since it's along the Rio Grande. One of the questions I'm working with right now is how far back does irrigation go? So one of the things is a lot of folks have suggested in the past that it depends on the nuances of what you call irrigation. If you're talking about it as canals, if you're talking about it as
00:45:09
Speaker
as an actual irrigation system with headgates and whatnot off the river, or are you just talking about something that diverts rainwater off the hilltop? But I was wondering if some of the irrigation in that specific area might actually be pre-contact.
00:45:25
Speaker
And so that's something I'm looking at because the assumption has oftentimes been that the arrival of the Spanish is when you get the irrigation systems there. And that may be the case, but right now I'm just looking at it to see if there may be a pre-contact stage to these ditches. The other thing that's interesting about the site
00:45:45
Speaker
is that, you know, right now there are six table communities in New Mexico, but there's also one in Arizona, one that is on First Mesa up in the Hopi area. And the community of Fiulge that I'm looking at, there's oral history that suggests that the community, when the people moved from that community, some of them moved to Okewenge itself, which is the village that claims ancestry,
00:46:13
Speaker
But some of the folks actually moved all the way to Arizona and were part of that founding group that created the Hopi Taewas or Arizona Taewas on the Hopi Maces.
00:46:24
Speaker
And so I'm looking into that. What's interesting about that, too, is that, you know, when scholarship talks about the Arizona Tewa, usually it's this idea that they came from the Galastayo Basin or groups from the Galastayo Basin, which, you know, is south of Santa Fe. And there were Tewa communities down that way. But there's usually not an assumption in scholarly areas of a northern Tewa component to that.
00:46:54
Speaker
And here we have the story of Fiogue, which is actually talking about a northern component and a northern component that might actually be one of the founding component to that Arizona Tewa population. So yeah, so that's that's
Future Plans & Tribal Engagement
00:47:09
Speaker
what I'm working on right now for by dissertation. Excellent, man. I'm really looking forward to what you find out. That sounds, you know,
00:47:16
Speaker
Pretty, pretty important if your conclusions upend these long held beliefs over some of these life ways during the, you know, pre and post colonization period. What's your goal after you get your dissertation? What's, what are you planning on doing next? Well, it's, uh, like everyone else is to get employment in this post COVID era. So I, well, once, once things in COVID like settle down and whatnot,
00:47:44
Speaker
Yeah, so basically, I'm interested in working with the communities, with the tribes. The thing with yoga is that Okewenge is obviously, I mean, they're the ownership of the site and it's ancestral to them. And so they're obviously an interested party, but they're interested in the connection that the site provides to Arizona.
00:48:05
Speaker
So it's not just a research aspect that, you know, the yoga is important, but the tribe itself is interested in what that means for them on that connection to Arizona. So it's actually a question that is somewhat driven by the community itself and not necessarily as much by the archaeology too.
00:48:30
Speaker
So I mean, archaeology definitely is interested, but it's heavily driven by what the tribe is interested in, which I think is actually an interesting perspective. We were talking at the start of this podcast about the differences between archaeology and the communities and how they sometimes have been in the past opposed to each other and what does partnership look like. And I think that this is one of the things that has developed as the field
00:48:58
Speaker
has matured in a sense. And then you throw in indigenous archaeology and all that other stuff too. So yeah, I'm interested in those kind of questions, helping the communities with questions that they have about the past and looking for ways that I can contribute to that.
00:49:15
Speaker
It reminds me of something my former advisor, Bob Purcell, always said about he's worked with Cochiti Pueblo for a long time. And as I was preparing to do this work on Navajo Nation, he always taught me to ask, you know, what, what is the community interested in? What can we do to, to help? Not just what can we take? What can we map? So thanks for, you know.
00:49:40
Speaker
Underscoring that for our listeners too, that it's about, yeah, what's the community interested in? And those questions end up being, I think more meaningful for, for everybody. So with that, we've wrapped up episode five. We've just interviewed Patrick Cruz about the ongoing meaning of Chaco for descendant indigenous communities, as well as other archeological sites throughout the Southwest.
00:50:08
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Site Bites episode 5 of season 1. We hope you enjoyed this season learning about Chaco Canyon and Southwestern archaeology. You can email me, Carlton, or Rob with your suggestions for which site we should explore in season 2. You can find our contact information in the episode notes.
00:50:38
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.