The ethical, legal, and research-oriented tools of archaeology can encourage Native American self-determination rather than undermine it. IndigenousPeoplesDay
Back in 2003, not long after I started teaching anthropology and archaeology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, a young Lakota student asked me a question: “Why do archaeologists think they have the right to tell me about my own history?” I don’t recall the answer I gave, nor do I suspect that it was at all adequate, but in the intervening years, I have held on to this question.
Sadly, in spite of NAGPRA and more than 25 years of consultation, archaeologists are still widely distrusted in Native American communities. My predecessors’ transgressions are still remembered in many of my students’ homes and communities. The reputation our field has for “grave robbing” and for unrestrained scientific curiosity persists among the descendants of those whose lives we attempt to study through the archaeological record.
Native Americans have rich oral traditions that recount their movement around ancestral homelands. Although historically they produced no written record of these events, as Western society has, they left thousands of archaeological sites all over the Americas. The Hopi call their ancestral sites “footprints.” Such places document Native American history more effectively than any textbook.
When irreplaceable sites are destroyed outside of the consultation process, we need to cultivate the same outrage we felt when we saw extremist groups destroy World Heritage monuments, such as Palmyra in Syria or the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. Although those cases were more overt, the result is no different: oppression by means of the erasure of cultural heritage.
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