THREAD: "Archaeology in the Time of #BlackLivesMatter" event, sponsored by @SbaArch, TAG North America, and the Columbia Center for Archaeology. Starting momentarily! 
Facilitators: Maria Franklin & Justin Dunnavant. Panelists: Alexandra Jones (@AITC_DC), @AliciaOdewale, and Tsione Wolde-Michael. Chair: @aflewellen. (livetweets by @lauraheathstout)
There are more than 2600 people registered for this event!
Folks are saying hello in the Q&A box from all over North America and the UK.
There are 1400 participants at the moment and the list is still growing.
Now getting started! @aflewellen welcomes us, introduces herself, and thanking the cosponsors (Columbia Archaeology Center, Theoretical Archaeology Group of North America @StanfordTAG2020, and @SbaArch).
.@aflewellen: we are invited to recognize and honor the indigenous stewards of our lands, recognizing how anti-racist archaeology began with indigenous archaeologists, as well as the long history of Black archaeologists.
.@aflewellen: Anti-Black racism is currently hypervisible due to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others.
.@aflewellen Archaeologists (especially Black archaeologists) are leaving our disciplinary silos to work together for justice.
Dr. @aflewellen introduces moderators Dr. Maria Franklin (@UTAustin) and Dr. Justin Dunnavant (@VanderbiltU and soon @UCLA) and panelists Tsione Wolde-Michael (@amhistorymuseum), Dr. @AliciaOdewale (@utulsa), and Dr. Alexandra Jones (@AITC_DC).
.@aflewellen invites us to use the zoom Q&A feature to ask questions and to promote each others' good questions.
Dr. Franklin asks first question: #blacklivesmatter has been ongoing, but what makes this moment different?
Dr. Jones: We're fed up. After watching the life seep out of George Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, it's time to change.
Dr. Odewale: Even the term #blacklivesmatter has become less radical as more people jump on the bandwagon. It's hard to tell who's just giving lip service and who really believes in the movement.
Dr. Franklin: has been at this longer than most of the panelists, and it's depressing to still be having this conversation. There have never been so many solidarity statements! Are they even worth reading? Are we optimistic?
Ms. Wolde-Michael: The movement is getting stronger and more inclusive and coalitional. #covid is also an important circumstance: people are literally risking their lives to protest the "dual pandemics" of covid and systemic racism.
Wolde-Michael: "COVID made white people realize who does the service work they rely on." This moment feels ripe with possibility for systemic change.
Dr. Dunnavant: A lot of orgs that have been building up over the past decade, so this time we had an infrastructure, even the @SbaArch that has grown so much. Hypocritical statements from governments fan the flames!
Dr. Jones: "There's a light at the end of the tunnel. We can make change." But the same people are being asked to do the work: the grad students or the only Black faculty member are being tapped to write the statements, rather than a group commitment.
Dr. Jones: Organizations are putting out statements, with no real change or institutional commitment behind them. "We've been hearing lip service for years and we're no longer accepting it."
Dr. @aflewellen: I don't want "change," I want concrete action items. "If it feels easy, then you're not doing enough. Statements are easy." Don't get the wording right, and then relax: you haven't even started.
Dr. Franklin: Question 2: What does an antiracist #archaeology look like to you?
Dr. Jones has a list!
1. implicit bias: be self-reflexive. Don't ask "is it racist? y/n" ask "how much racism was involved?" What are your own stereotypes
1. implicit bias: be self-reflexive. Don't ask "is it racist? y/n" ask "how much racism was involved?" What are your own stereotypes
2. reduce opportunity segregation - predominantly white universities with opportunities for their own students will be predominantly white! Partner with an HBCU!
3. Decolonize your bookshelves and your syllabi!
Include Black authors. Include Black sites that aren't just about slavery.
4. Diversify your department. Check in on your students and their well-being. If you have one BIPOC student, they are isolated, and you must support them.
5. Be an accomplice, not an ally. Allies can jump out at any time. Accomplices are implicated. Have the back of your Black colleagues and students.
Believe your students and your colleagues when they say they have been mistreated.
Wolde-Michael: public history and heritage work: there's a lot of public pushback about the colonialism of museums.
Wolde-Michael: archaeology and heritage are NOT just intellectual exercises. You MUST engage with communities that bear the results of your work in the present. We must reimagine our institutions, policies, disciplines, work.
Wolde-Michael: Communities are real intellectual partners, not just a "consultation" box to check. In order to do this, you must think about redressing inequities.
Wolde-Michael: "decolonization" means different things in different contexts, but we must wrestle with that complexity and engage in this radical process.
Dr. Dunnavant: We want STRUCTURAL change: we have to engage with the deepest structures. If your mission statement hasn't changed in 20 years, why not? We must be intersectional and change over time.
Dr. Dunnavant: The discipline should reflect the diversity of the sites we excavate!
Dr. Dunnavant: If Elon Musk can put people in space, we can diversify archaeology!
Dr. Dunnavant: We must change public perceptions of the field - not just Indiana Jones! We must diversify the public perception in order to recruit more diverse students.
Dr. Franklin: Archaeology isn't perceived as a field that can contribute to folks' home communities, when they get themselves to college.
Dr. Franklin: We need restorative justice, and to have a collective conversation of what's gone wrong. Solidarity statements are not enough.
Dr. Jones: To the youth of @AITC_DC, I'm the face of archaeology. But the archaeology kids' books I read in story times are SO white! It continues into college textbooks: what is the image we are putting out?
Dr. Dunnavant: What expectations do we have for our non-Black colleagues?
Dr. @AliciaOdewale also has a list!
1. Acknowledge racist foundations of anthropology and archaeology, decolonize anthropological definition of race. There are too many anthropologists saying the same things about how race is a social construct.
1. Acknowledge racist foundations of anthropology and archaeology, decolonize anthropological definition of race. There are too many anthropologists saying the same things about how race is a social construct.
"Race is a social construct, I'm a member of the human race" is the "All Lives Matter" of archaeology.
Dr. @aflewellen: "We want to do this work with you, not for you" says a colleague (whose name I didn't catch). White colleagues are realizing things POC have known since starting archaeology. Who does the labor?
Dr. @aflewellen: Since the end of May, @SbaArch has been receiving a ton of emails asking for help. Non-Black colleagues must realize that this work is YOURS. Look through your own syllabus. Look at who gets into your grad programs. Look at what partnerships you have.
Dr. @aflewellen: You don't need a Black scholar to tell you what to do. There are established orgs that have been around for decades that do this work. Find them. The resources are out there for you.
Dr. @aflewellen: We will do this work with you, but not for you.
Dr. Franklin: If you ask us to be on a committee and we say no, it's not because we don't care, it's because we are already stretched thin. It's time for folks to take responsibility for this work.
Dr. Jones: If you recognize that you are an agent of systemic racism, intentionally or unintentionally, it's never too late to change what you are doing.
Dr. Jones: Apologize to the student or colleague you harmed, then move forward. Get over the guilt. Just like we tell kids: if you do something wrong, apologize, then do better.
Dr. @AliciaOdewale: People say "we offered a scholarship but we're not getting a lot of POC coming" - you must also examined whether the environment is actually safe for students. No one wants a scholarship to a field school with a known racist supervisor.
Wolde-Michael: Think about when you can take a risk to support a Black colleague or student. The uncomfortable situation is where growth happens.
Wolde-Michael: Academia is full of brilliant minds, yet we're still struggling with the same problems, so it must be because we are refusing to know.
Wolde-Michael: mentoring Black students in a historically colonialist field is a political act. They bring new knowledge to the field.
Wolde-Michael: Community engagement MUST be rewarded, as should teaching, not just publications and grants.
Dr. Franklin: People in leadership in academia (chairs, deans, etc.) should be arguing to value community engagement in hiring, promotion, etc. We should only hire folks in those positions if they have a commitment to antiracism, and an accountability structure.
Dr. @aflewellen: In professional orgs with non-Black leadership also need mentorship in order to diversify that leadership. You must do the work to welcome and mentor Black members so that they can do that work. So much of this is networking - must be broken down!
Dr. @aflewellen: So much of this problem is training. If you want to diversify who writes for a publication, train people, as the @SbaArch and @SAPIENS_org partnership did, to create a pathway of access.
Dr. Franklin: Professional orgs should be doing racial climate surveys. We have anecdotes and personal experience: need data.
Dr. Dunnavant: We should all be examining what power we hold, and stop underestimating it. Non-black colleagues should realize that despite being students or low in institutional power structures, whiteness brings power.
Dr. Dunnavant: When I enter a room full of men, I have to ask why and work to change that. We should also explicitly ask each other what support we need and give it.
Dr. Dunnavant: "My goal is to become irrelevant and find my replacement."
Dr. Dunnavant: Black Archaeology is not just Black people doing archaeology, or archaeology about Black people in the past, but a complete reconceptualization of how archaeology is done (just as indigenous archaeology is!)
Dr. Dunnavant: #Blacklivesmatter has become a global movement (statues coming down, protests in the streets): what impacts does this movement have on arch and heritage on an international scale?
Dr. Jones: Communities are being very vocal with their demands. We should be following them.
Dr. Jones: WAC has good guidelines for proactively dealing with communities, especially indigenous communities, around the world. We have been working in a neocolonialist mindset, and we must stop.
Wolde-Michael: We are seeing a huge reckoning around heritage and commemoration around the world. Usually heritage folks frown on destruction, but now we can celebrate it! It's an exciting time to do public history work!
Wolde-Michael: This is an opening to community knowledge and decision-making. This goes beyond a check-box approach to community engagement, but actually seeing communities as knowledge producers and partners.
Wolde-Michael: Capacity-building goes both ways. Universities can build capacity in communities, yes, but communities also build up universities.
Dr. Dunnavant: This also goes with repatriation. If there's no capacity to take care of artifacts, demand both the artifacts and the resources to preserve them!
Dr. @AliciaOdewale: Black feminist archaeology is changing the field (shoutout to Dr. Franklin and @WBattleBaptiste). It's going to be very clear who is on the side of the revolution and who is against it.
Dr. Franklin: What does Black Feminism bring to archaeology?
Dr. Jones: citing WEB DuBois's double consciousness - we must innovate and create a whole new space outside the norms of the field.
Dr. Jones: The field doesn't see us coming, but we are fixing the problems they refuse to fix.
Dr. @aflewellen: Black Feminism is steeped in Black queer women's experiences. The experience that I bring to my research is intersectional. The foundation of the work requires that I can't look at JUST race, gender, class, sexuality - all of these happen at the same time.
Dr. @aflewellen: This is coming out in syllabi! We must read work by Audre Lorde and Gloria Anzaldúa to understand how we write about people's lives in the past.
Dr. Franklin: Black Feminist scholarship is germane to rethinking institutional practices. It scares people off if they aren't Black women, but that politics is about human rights more generally. Once you emancipate Black people, then everyone is free.
Dr. Franklin: Black people includes women, queer people, immigrants, indigenous people, disabled people - so freeing Black people is freeing all people.
Dr. @aflewellen: The Combahee River Collective told us that every person walks with identity politics. Whiteness is also identity politics. Everyone comes into every space with their social positionalities.
Dr. @aflewellen: Difference is not a space of distance, but of opening. Our identity politics can bring us together.
Dr. Dunnavant: Black Feminism is practical, and requires us to dream beyond just existence, to think about what we can become. #citeblackwomen reminds us to bring in non-anthropology scholars into our work, and recenter our goals in the discipline.
Dr. Dunnavant: Archaeology is not about digging up a site, it is about understanding our past in order to bring us to liberation. We must constantly learn about Black feminism and incorporate it into our work, as an act of love.
Dr. @aflewellen: Study is a constant process. We must constantly gather to learn and study together. We must bring in people who are not archaeologists in order to understand people's own understandings of their histories.
Dr. @aflewellen: When I write about Black women, my bibliography is saturated by the work of Black women writers, artists, thinkers, researchers.
Dr. Jones: Folks in education and public history must do the same things. We should be citing education scholars, not just archaeologists, if you're going to do outreach and education work.
Dr. Jones: If you're going to work with children, you must learn about the culture of children. I've never understood why we think it's okay to put things out without doing the research about the community we're serving.
Dr. Jones: Recommendations: @AITC_DC has a children's book list. "Archaeologists Dig for Clues" for ca. 2nd graders - pretty diverse and holistic view. There are a lot of books focused on particular cultural groups - see the list. But you have to actually do the work.
Dr. Jones: Not every archaeologist is an educator. Go take a class in education!
Dr. Dunnavant asks Wolde-Michael: What does it mean to collect and curate the material culture of the #blacklivesmatter movement?
Wolde-Michael: Traditionally, museums have collected ephemera from political movements. For #BLM, we are doing that, but also thinking about policing and also unexpected objects (e.g., paint cans and brushes from Lafayette Square)
Wolde-Michael: The materiality of the movement can look a lot of different ways. The community decides what matters.
Wolde-Michael: Monuments have been an interesting site. One example of a confederate statue: it was remade to place it higher because it was being defaced in the 19th century!
Dr. Franklin: asks @AliciaOdewale about her work in Tulsa on the Tulsa Race Massacre: What are some of the opportunities and challenges of doing archaeology in a place with that history?
Dr. @AliciaOdewale: Challenges: There are a lot of different narratives that have been put out about the Tulsa Race Massacre history, including institutions, scholars, historians. Check out the #tulsasyllabus website to see a wide range of these histories.
Dr. @AliciaOdewale: The current narrative is that Greenwood was destroyed and is gone, but that's not true. One of the challenges is carrying the dual identities of archaeologist and community member. Often asked to speak for one community or the other.
Dr. Franklin: We all face that problem of being asked to represent all Black people.
Dr. @AliciaOdewale: Being the only Black archaeologist in Tulsa is overwhelming!
Dr. @aflewellen: question from the Q&A: Gwendolyn Knight asks for advice for grad students who want to make change with limited power and resources.
Dr. Jones: Talk to alumni/ae of your department to learn the history and ask them to lend their voices. Universities listen to alumni/ae.
Dr. Franklin: Grad students shouldn't be on their own in approaching faculty about racism. Network with other grad students and bring to faculty collectively, to get taken more seriously and protect yourself.
Wolde-Michael: Black professional organizations are essential. If they don't exist, build them, as @SbaArch was built not so long ago! Foundations want to fund this work right now!
Wolde-Michael: Academia ended up isolating me from the communities whose values and activism led me to academia in the first place. That's why I'm in public history! If I had had something like @SbaArch, I might still be in academia.
Dr. Franklin: For the sake of our sanity, we need autonomous Black spaces within PWI - that doesn't mean we're being exclusionary. It's a place where we don't need to explain ourselves.
Dr. Dunnavant: Don't be afraid to network across disciplines. Watch yourself and take care of yourself so you don't burn out!
Dr. @aflewellen: Audience question: How can we decolonize archaeology within the #crm world?
Dr. Franklin: It's very hard to do community archaeology in CRM, due to budgets, liability, etc. See article coauthored with Nedra Lee. CRM is probably even less diverse than academic archaeology!
Dr. Dunnavant: Check out Bill White's work on antiracism in CRM.
Dr. Franklin: We should be PAYING our community collaborators for their expertise, knowledge, time, work.
Dr. Jones: Who gets hired in CRM? Who is writing the site reports? What was their education? Where do their loyalties lie?
Dr. Jones: community work can be state-mandated, which is great, but is it actually being done well by the CRM firm? The CRM employees have a personal responsibility to do their research well.
Dr. Jones: We must decolonize CRM from above and below: state mandates AND education of the next generation.
Dr. @aflewellen wrapping us up: this is just the start of this work! This will be an ongoing conversation - there will be a workshop on July 8 and additional talks going forward.
Dr. Dunnavant: There will be a resource list that is going to come out of this conversation, so we can continue in our own communities.
Dr. Franklin: Thanks everyone for coming. The high attendance affirms the importance of the topic.
Dr. @aflewellen: Recording will be made available on websites of all three sponsors! Thanks, everyone for questions and engagement.
