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Indigenous Archaeology: Reclaiming Narratives of the Past - Ep 07
158 Plays1 month ago
In this episode of the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast, host Carlton Shield Chief Gover dives into the field of Indigenous Archaeology, exploring its roots, principles, and growing impact on the discipline. Indigenous Archaeology is more than just a methodology; it’s a movement to reclaim and represent the histories of Indigenous communities in ways that honor their perspectives and sovereignty. Carlton unpacks how this approach emerged, shaped by Indigenous scholars, activists, and allies who advocate for a respectful, community-centered archaeology that reflects the voices and values of Native peoples. He discusses how Indigenous Archaeology reshapes research practices, challenges traditional narratives, and fosters collaborations that benefit both Indigenous communities and the field as a whole. Tune in to discover how Indigenous Archaeology offers new paths for understanding the past and why it’s essential for creating a more inclusive archaeological record. Whether you're new to the concept or eager to deepen your understanding, this episode is an enlightening exploration of how archaeology is transforming from within.
Links:
- indigenous archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice by Joe Watkins (2001)
- Collaborating At The Trowel’s Edge: Teaching and Learning in Indigenous Archaeology Edited by Stephen W. Silliman (2008)
- Archaeologies of the Heart Edited by Kisha Supernant, Jane Eva Baxter, Natasha Lyons, & Sonya Atalay (2020)
- Indigenizing Archaeology: Putting Theory into Practice Edited by Emily Van Alst & Carlton Shield Chief Gover (2024)
- The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains by Douglas B. Bamforth (2021)
- Archaeology on the Great Plains Edited by W. Raymond Wood (1998)
- Carlton's KU Anthropology Faculty Bio
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode, go to: https://www.archpodnet.com/great-plains-archaeology/07
Contact:
- Instagram: @pawnee_archaeologist
- Email: [email protected]
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Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Great Plains Archaeology
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. Join me as we uncover the rich histories of North America's Great Plains, exploring the latest archaeological discoveries and past cultures that shaped this storied region. Welcome to the podcast.
Indigenous Archaeology Focus
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to Episode 7 of the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. I'm your host, Professor Carlton Shield, Chief Gover, and I am thrilled to have you join me on this exciting journey through the rich and fascinating histories of North America's great plans regions. So today we're going to take another pause on getting into the archaeological record.
Significance and Origins of Indigenous Archaeology
00:00:44
Speaker
In the last episode, episode six, I talked about being a jagphos, the Japanese American German frontiers of science imposing the Kyoto, Japan, in which I talked about some of the work that I presented and the theme of, you know, I mentioned indigenous archaeology, but I never explained it. And so while I was driving home tonight, and realizing with my new USB cable because Laramy has had chewed through my microphone USB-C so I can record this episode. I was like, we know. I was thinking about talking about your kick. And then like thinking about well at the episode from two weeks ago, episode six,
00:01:20
Speaker
It's like, you know, I don't, I never explained indigenous archeology and why that matters and and its roots in Great Plains archeology. And so I really wanted to take that time today to talk about indigenous archeology in today's episodes and what that meant.
Defining Indigenous Archaeology
00:01:40
Speaker
And so like what, what is indigenous archeology and what makes it separate?
00:01:46
Speaker
Well, there is, I'm sorry if you can hear Laramie, she is not happy about things. And The official definition that a lot of us go with comes from an archaeologist out of Simon Fraser University, Dr. George Nicholas. In an article in 2008, George Nicholas describes indigenous archaeology as an expression of archaeological theory and practice in which the discipline intersects with indigenous values, knowledge, practices, ethics, and sensibilities
00:02:21
Speaker
and through collaborative and community-oriented or directed projects and related critical perspectives. That's a lot to distill. And so there's another ah simplistic, simpler definition that comes from George Nicholas and nicholas and Andrew in 1997. Indigenous archaeology is an archaeology that is with, by, and for Indigenous people.
00:02:44
Speaker
And that more importantly, indigenous archeologies or archeologies or archeology, these are a collaborative community-based approach in archeology. And so how did this show up? Because indigenous archeology really doesn't appear in the literature until the late 90s. And it is because indigenous archeology and archeology that's with, by, and for indigenous people, it is not.
00:03:05
Speaker
the consultation. It is a collaborative project with indigenous peoples. So you don't have to be indigenous to practice indigenous archaeology.
Evolution of Archaeological Paradigms
00:03:15
Speaker
You just have to make sure that indigenous people are present throughout the entire project. They are equal collaborators. They have equal power. It is an equitable relationship. And it culminates here in the United States in two threads. So the first being changes in archaeological praxis. So in the history of archaeological theory and method, there are three primary paradigms within the field. What I mean by that is professional archaeology doesn't
00:03:57
Speaker
really exist until the early 20th century with the cultural historic approach, practiced roughly between 1910 and 1960. And what the cultural historical approach in archaeology was, was that it was archaeologists investigating material culture to define historical societies into distinct cultural and ethnic groups. So this is like a lot of archaeology during this time is done during the Great Depression with WPA projects and CCP projects, Civilian Conservation Course, CCCCCC.
00:04:29
Speaker
and so There's these professional archaeologists at universities and so state institutions that were going out with like armies of farmers to excavate for infrastructure projects during the FDR. A little sniffly, it's getting cold here in Kansas. and They were really doing a top-down approach in which they were trying to tie modern indigenous people back to the archaeological records. Their focus was looking in the archaeological record and trying to tie them to groups.
00:04:54
Speaker
But things change starting in 1958, but it doesn't take hold until the 1960s with archaeology going from this cultural historical approach.
00:05:06
Speaker
into what's called the processional approach, new archaeology, really championed by Lewis Binford and others during this time, in which they really promoted archaeology being a capital S science that is problem-oriented, multidisciplinary, and methodologically innovative. Archaeology was a science, and when that occurred, the archaeological record in the Americas became a case study for understanding human behavior, in which hypotheses were postulated and that they were then tested within the record based on the recovered archaeological material. and so It's still within the realm of anthropology, but archaeology is changing. That's not necessarily connecting modern indigenous people it's two
Cultural and Subjective Interpretations in Archaeology
00:05:51
Speaker
to the record. It was very much in the context of like trying to understand the human behavior and what was happening at sites. It became about understanding human behavior rather than tying
00:06:01
Speaker
indigenous people to their history. And then again, there's this change in the like mid to early 1980s, what's called the post-perceptual approach, personally, I call it a critique. And what folks like Hodder at this time were doing, were saying like, hey, perceptual archaeology is great. However,
00:06:27
Speaker
We need to remember that people aren't numbers and that humans do not belong strictly to best approaches, best practices, and model behavior. There's still culture, and how do we understand culture? We need to remember that archaeology is is that that that archeology iss a of anthropology. Where's the culture? Where are these systems that don't aren't necessarily being talked about?
00:06:52
Speaker
because there's no material component. So it's really emphasizing post-precessual archaeology, that is, emphasizing the subjectivity of archaeological interpretations, then the role of culture, social context, and individual agency in understanding past societies. And this is a spectrum. So, I mean, like, precessual archaeology hasn't been completely negated.
00:07:14
Speaker
I look at post perceptual approach rather than like its own sub-discipline, but as like a critique in that remembering, like hey, we still need to do science. like We can't just be making things up. There needs to be a core to our field, but we need to be answering qualitative questions with quantitative data. That's my personal but approach.
00:07:35
Speaker
so People oftentimes lump indigenous archaeology as an outgrowth of post-percessional approach. It was under the post-percessionalism. That's when you get like gendered archaeology and a bunch of other things where it kind of spreads out. We're looking at humans in different ways. And so even though indigenous archaeology is coming out in the literature and in the 90s and more indigenous folks are being coming involved,
00:07:59
Speaker
It's not really because of the post-percessual ticket.
Legal Frameworks for Indigenous Archaeology
00:08:02
Speaker
It's a big part of it because in the 80s it created an atmosphere in which Indigenous archaeology could exist, but you still need Indigenous people and non-Indigenous academics being accepting of Indigenous people being present in the field. And that's where that second thread of where Indigenous archaeology stems from comes in. And that's more of a legal question.
00:08:28
Speaker
Right? So American Indian religion was outlawed. It was illegal in the United States up until 1978. So America landed a home, a land of the free home of the brave,
00:08:43
Speaker
Indigenous people couldn't practice their religion until 1978 with the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. When that gets passed, partly due to activism on the side of the Red Power movement and AIM, which is the American Indian movement,
00:08:59
Speaker
activists pressuring during a time of social unrest in conjunction with the black power movement, civil rights. You had AIM and Red Power creating social awareness. And on the opposite side of that same thread, you had the lawyers, the Native American Rights Fund. You had the legal folks who were then in the courts of the conquerors, as Walter Echo Hawk calls, you know, refers to it.
00:09:26
Speaker
creating that change institutionally. And you needed both, right? And so this is how we get the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Out of that, because without ARFA, the acknowledgment that Indigenous people have religion and that there's material culture in related to that religion, you don't get Indigenous archaeology because it's because of ARFA that leads to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990.
00:09:55
Speaker
And that's when a law that stipulates, hey, sacred ceremonial objects belonging to indigenous people that are in federal repositories and museums or federally funded repositories, museums, and institutions, they need to go back. And this is, of course, an outgrowth of a big one that happens in the plains, is the Nebraska and Mark burial law of 1989, which comes out of the Pawnee and the Nebraska state archeologists working together to acknowledge at a state level Burials need to be protected just because they don't belong to white folks. They need to go back. So there's already precedent. There's also the Smithsonian Act in 1989. NAGPRA does not apply to the Smithsonian because there's the Smithsonian Act that had already kind of jump started it within the Smithsonian level. So there's this legal atmosphere that is one, acknowledging that indigenous people have the right to practice religion. And then two, they need their serial and ceremonial objects back. And that happens in the nineties.
Post-NAGPRA Collaborations
00:10:50
Speaker
And because of that,
00:10:52
Speaker
While archaeology is going through this critique and this reawakening, of like we need to do anthropology, we have a federal law that's now enacted that is jump-starting institutions to collaborate with indigenous people. So, NARF hires the Native American Rights Fund out of Boulder, Colorado. They hire Roger Echo Hawk, who is Pawnee and Larry Zimmerman out of Indiana University, Purdue University, Indianapolis, IUPUI.
00:11:15
Speaker
to start going through the archaeological record in a Pawnee context in Nebraska and Kansas, start going through oral traditions and ethnographic information to tie archaeological cultures kind of in a modern day cultural historical approach to tie these together to move forward on NAGPRA. This is a time of forced collaboration between archaeologists and museum professionals in which they have to talk to indigenous people. Out of this are these offshoots or where you see more indigenous people becoming involved in museums at a master's level or bachelor's level because they're critically engaged with NAGPRA. We've created this climate in which archaeologists
00:11:53
Speaker
museum professionals, indigenous people are actively working together, that we get indigenous archaeology, we get more indigenous folks into the field. And we're going to talk about that here and and you know, kind of the progress of indigenous archaeology since the 90s, and possibly how it it relates to the work that I do once we come back from break.
00:12:14
Speaker
And we're back with episode seven of the Great Pines Archaeology Podcast. So do you have indigenous folks and archaeologists, museum professionals that are working together in the 90s? Now, it's fortuitous that There's an individual who's chalked out by the name of Joe Watkins who pursued ah anthropology degrees focusing on archaeology in the 70s and 80s. He comes out of a time in his professional career with a PhD at this critical junction. and so He begins writing about but indigenous archaeology. George Nicholas is is involved in this.
00:12:51
Speaker
And so they're just predisposed to being at the right place, right time in the profession to then pioneer this model. And so this isn't to say that anthropologists haven't been involved in, or indigenous people have not been involved in anthropology. Famously, Findaloria Jr's sister was a cultural anthropologist. They're like a lot of cultural and linguistic and indigenous folks, not many archeologists.
00:13:16
Speaker
and so In the 90s is what I refer to as forced collaboration through NAGPRA. It's not until the 2000s where we start seeing Sonia Adelay and a couple others where we start seeing digital archaeology really in the literature and it being talked about in a serious way and advocating for collaboration with Indigenous people and bringing more Indigenous people into the field and getting them tenure-track positions to teach Indigenous archaeology. And in the 2010s and 2019, we have kind of the second wave of Indigenous archaeology with like, you know, Sarah Gonzales, Keisha Supronaut, and they start writing very theoretical
00:13:51
Speaker
literature on Indigenous archaeology. A lot of this is coming from Canada at the time, which, you know, Canada does not have NAGPRA. So anybody listening to this podcast and they ever go to a Canadian museum, be aware there is no NAGPRA or NAGPRA equivalent. I was at the unit of Royal University of Toronto and they had babies moccasins that were beaded at the bottom. And for those of you who know, you know, I didn't sit well with me.
00:14:18
Speaker
And so like in we're getting more Indigenous folks involved in the field. The Society for American Archaeology has the Committee of Native American Relations in this time. It is becoming keenly aware that more Indigenous people are needed, because it's not only just like we should do this because in ACBRA, the field begins to realize collaborative research with Indigenous people in which Indigenous knowledge is utilized to develop hypotheses and test the record changes how you interpret the archaeological record, but also creates more holistic interpretations, you get better results, right rather than just kind of like shooting in the dark based on previous excavations that by and large were very much biased towards previous excavations in 30s and 40s.
00:15:04
Speaker
when you bring in a whole new set of data that creates frameworks for your
Community Building in Archaeology
00:15:10
Speaker
expectations, you get different results. And so we're we're seeing this. And so, you know, I came into archaeology in the early 2010s. I think my community college course was 2011.
00:15:20
Speaker
2012, in which an archaeologist, David Clark, like noticed me and was like, you need to be in this field. and So I went through my upbringing during the 2010 times where it was becoming more acceptable for Indigenous people to be in the field and wanting them, which then culminated in my PhD in the early 2020s. Really, my work is far more quantitative. and we've just I don't know if I talked about it on this podcast. Me and Emily have been alts to co-edited and edited volume on indigenous archaeologies, called indigenous archaeology, putting theory into practice.
00:15:59
Speaker
highlighting a bunch of up and coming indigenous scholars who it basically is ah as a methodological framework for how they did their indigenous archaeology. So we're in this point that I think in this third wave of indigenous archaeology of we have these amazing aunties and uncles who have paved the way for us in this field. A lot of theory exists on why you should do this. And now we're kind of in this methods phase of like, OK, this is the nuts and bolts of indigenous archaeology. How do we take this academic body of literature and get it to tribal historic preservation offices, NAGPRA officers, and tribes so that they can use it in their operations and cultural divisions. Other folks might disagree with that, and that's totally fine, but that's that's my envisioning of or indigenous archaeology. For me,
00:16:50
Speaker
and A lot of this is coming out of, I just gave a talk yesterday at KU to the graduate students for a seminar on what is Indigenous archaeology. This is like fresh in my mind. In understanding one, it's easy for me to be an Indigenous archaeologist. My tribe has 3,500 people.
00:17:07
Speaker
We have a good relationship with anthropology, for the most part. like The Pawnee Nation has been involved for a long time in NAGPRA and in tribal historic preservation. And there's other museum professionals. you know like Matt Reed was the curator at the oklahomama Oklahoma Historical Society.
00:17:25
Speaker
and that they're, so I have this knowledge base and it also helps like, you know, my uncle, my uncle Herb is is the director for the cultural resource division at, the cultural division, sorry, at Pawnee Nation. And like, I am comfortable enough to ask silly questions.
00:17:41
Speaker
and they are comfortable enough to tell me if I'm messing up. so like it it is I'm coming at this from an approach of, like I am fortunate and well-disposed sorry to be able to do this work. As a non-Indigenous person, there's some really good examples of how to do this. George Nicholas is pretty good. But if you're like interested in this body of literature, of course, I recommend Indigenous Archaeology, American Indian Values and Scientific Practice by Joe Watkins from 2001.
00:18:07
Speaker
collaborating at the trials edge, teaching and learning in indigenous archeology, which is an edited volume by Steven W. Silliman in 2008, archeologies of the heart 2020, edited by Keisha Supernaut, Jane Eva Baxter, Natasha Lyons, and Sonia Adelay.
00:18:25
Speaker
big names, huge people, and then like shamelessly promoting Indigenous archaeology, putting theory into practice by me and Emily, have edited by myself, Carlton Shill, Jeff Grover, and Emily Van Alts. And if you are a tribal nation or within a cultural division, Tippo or NAGPRA officer, if you reach out, we have a deal with University Press of Florida who published the book to get you free PDF copies of our book. The reason we were able to do that is because UPF published
00:18:56
Speaker
a book that didn't go so well. It was very anti-NACPA and they realized they messed up by doing that. So they gave us a pretty sweet deal. So that's a lot of me just like talking. And how does this all relate to Great Pinsar archaeology? I've learned as as a Pawnee person,
00:19:12
Speaker
and getting to know more tribes and tribal nations, that a lot of Great Plains tribes are pretty culturally intact. The Pawnee Nation and especially, like culturally, we still have a lot of stuff. yeah you know and Our oral traditions, and especially with the American fetishization of the American West,
00:19:35
Speaker
through time that there's a lot of ethnographic records from the 19th century and early 20th century, like wax cylinder seals. like There's a lot of information that is is available that was recorded.
00:19:49
Speaker
And a lot of those tribal nations are intact, culturally and otherwise, that oral traditions are readily available to be utilized and to be, I want to say utilized, that's a dirty term in this context. There's readily available oral traditions that can be used or asked to be used in guidance to understand the archaeological record. And so, you know, something that I've always wanted to do is develop a central plains indigenous archaeological Center is not the right term, but I want to bring like the Iowas, the Pawnees, the Osages, Omaha's, Ponca's, Sac and Fox, some of the Apaches, like the groups from Kansas and Nebraska, and the Missouri Riverside on the western side together to be like, let's share oral traditions because like we all have a piece of this puzzle, and let's collaborate to understand what was going on here. like
00:20:39
Speaker
I know a very Pawnee perspective of Nebraska and Kansas, and I don't know much what the other tribes think or say because like I am within the Pawnee system. I just want to create that so i mean and train and work with other Indigenous archaeologists from the points. It's very lonely for me, me um not to say that there's not other folks. The IOA have some incredible folks like Lance Foster, master's in archaeology. He's he's fantastic. I call call on him a lot and he has been a fantastic mentor. So, the Plains region, we're very fortunate and a lot of also
00:21:15
Speaker
not all the tribes have the same, especially a lot of tribes in the plains don't have the same like cultural taboos around the dead and the archaeological record that some other tribes do, like looking at the Southwest or in Florida, that we have an environment for it to be fostered. And it's really pushing this narrative like archaeology and anthropology are not the devil science they used to be. And they're very opening and welcome to indigenous people. And having more indigenous folks involved, not only it' isn't just good for the indigenous nations, but when you have more and people present within a group.
00:21:47
Speaker
right You create cohorts of people in communities in which non-Indigenous folks have a friend who is Indigenous, who is in anthropology, that they can ask those silly questions to rather than having like anxiety lock when their professor's like, I have never spoken to an Indigenous person in the field of my life. How do I contact a Tippo or NAGPRA officer? So it's all about community building, not only in the research, but in the education and teaching itself on both sides of the spectrum, teachers and students.
Future of Indigenous Archaeology
00:22:16
Speaker
so like I've gotten success, I believe, here at Kansas. I had a student today say, like I took your class because you're indigenous and you were teaching a class I never would have expected an indigenous person to be involved in. and I wanted to see what this was about. They've really enjoyed the course. and This person, of course, is indigenous. like Do you mean me just being present? like Please, this is not as bad as it can be. and there's I think there's there's a significance to when I look at the record and hold objects. like They mean a lot to me. and I've talked about this before on the on the Ruins podcast, but now that's starting to get dated, and now I'm a professor at a pretty good institution. so There are critics of this approach. you know The game plan though, before I get into the criticisms,
00:23:02
Speaker
Primarily, as joe Joe Watkins talked about, and which we discussed in the Life in Ruins episode where I just interviewed Joe, and it's a fantastic episode. if you I'll link it in the description. The point of Indigenous archaeology is to disappear, and for the practices and approaches that are instrumental in Indigenous archaeology just become North American, US-based archaeology. That's the plan. like We want to get to a point where all North American archaeology is a collaborative approach with, behind four indigenous people, we're all equal partners.
Critiques of Indigenous Archaeology
00:23:32
Speaker
But there's critics. Robert McGee famously wrote aboriginal Aboriginalism and the Problems of Indigenous Archaeology in 2008. I highly recommend you read it. I think he makes some actually pretty good points. I don't think it's as bad as many people think. And this was a good conversation that I had with my PhD advisor, Dr. Douglas Bamforth, where we actually really kind of sat down and it was kind of cool because through that process of going through it,
00:23:55
Speaker
You know, I was clearly heated at that article and it took time where I think Dr. Bamforth got comfortable and like trusted me enough to be like, hey, we should, there's some points he actually makes, we should discuss it. And then through that lens, I was being like, you know, Robert had, had a good point. And one of them being like, I think archeologists are just going to pander to indigenous people and not actually respect the approach. I was like, Oh shit, that was actually kind of a good point. and It's kind of happening.
00:24:19
Speaker
And then second, there's an individual out of California who I don't want to name wrote in a book where, you know, their pictures on the cover holding indigenous remains in front of indigenous boxes, which is just highly unethical. And they did that on purpose. And even the title of their book is just obnoxious. And they've just been problematic. And it's just really sad that they don't want to come to the table and chat.
Transition to Next Episode
00:24:39
Speaker
But yeah, we're going to get into, I promise, next episode, we're going to talk about some archaic, ah the transition from Paleo-Indian to the archaic period. We're going to get into some archaeology. Just want to provide some context to some of the stuff I presented last week. It wasn't like a presentation or not last week in Japan, and it wasn't like a presentation on indigenous archaeology. But I felt like we should probably talk about it because like through this podcast as an indigenous person, I'm going to talk about indigenous perspectives and through this framework of indigenous archaeology.
00:25:06
Speaker
This is a deep, deep crash.
Closing Remarks and Credits
00:25:08
Speaker
So, I appreciate y'all's time, and I'll see you all next time on the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. This has been ah Professor Carlton, Shield Chief Gover, and I'm out.
00:25:19
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Great Plains Archaeology podcast. You can follow me on Instagram at Pawnee underscore archaeologist, and you can also email me at Great Plains Ark Podcast at gmail dot.com. And remember, anybody can love the mountains, but it takes a soul to love the prairie. American author Willa Cather.
00:25:45
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, 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 ww www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.