Thread by @IndigArchs

THREAD: An #Archaeology of Redress and Restorative Justice.

Panelists: Dr. Margaret Bruchac (Abenaki) @MargaretBruchac, Dr. Kisha Supernant (Métis Nation of Alberta) @ArchaeoMapper, Dr. Sada Mire @SomaliHeritage, Curator Mary Elliott, and Dr. Mike Wilcox (Yuman/Quechan descent)

This webinar is part of the From the Margins to the Mainstream: Black and Indigenous Futures in Archaeology
sponsored by @SbaArch, @IndigArchs, @WennerGrenOrg,
@SAPIENS_org, @CIAMS_Cornell and hosted by @brownarchaeolog.

Webinar will be starting shortly!
sapiens.org/archaeology/bl…

We invite all attendees to to investigate the #Indigenous histories and living communities connected to the places that you occupy. @IndigArchs is committed to creating space for Indigenous peoples through our mentorship, teaching, research, and service. #Archaeology #IndigArch

We're live in 8 mins!

Unfortunately we just got news that Dr. Sada Mire @SomaliHeritage is experiencing an internet outage. We're hoping she'll be able to join via phone 🤞🤞🤞

Adam Smith of @CIAMS_Cornell welcomes everyone to An #Archaeology of Redress & Restorative Justice.

.@MargaretBruchac introduces herself in Abenaki and thanks all for joining us in this conversation. #archaeology # IndigArch.

Mary Elliott, Curator of Slavery at the National Museum of African American History & Culture, introduces herseld and welcomes all to the discussion

.@ArchaeoMapper (Métis Nation of Alberta) welcomes all in Cree from Treaty 6 territory in Alberta, CA.

Dr. Mike Wilcox (Yuman/Quechan descent) introduces himself from Muwekeme Ohlone ancestral territories.

.@MargaretBruchac: In the past, the politics and practice of archaeology have been almost inextricably entangled with colonial domination, historical erasure, dispossession, and misrepresentation, especially with regards to the collecting of materials, sites, and bodies...

... belonging to Indigenous, African-American, and other marginalized communities. Given this history, is it possible to be objective?

Mary Elliott: Came to my job through family history research, which opened up opportunities to work with larger histories. This informs how I bring the voices of marginalized communities forward.

Elliott: Often there are collections disregarded as being insignificant, but they speak to lived experience. I know from working with communities that these belongings can be used to tell stories about the American experience.

Elliott: You can be objective, but sometimes that objectivity is used as a way to dismiss some history that adds to our understanding of the American experience. People dismiss African American genealogy and family histories, but they need to be part of our Am. story.

Mike Wilcox: I work in New Mexico and part of that story is violence. As an archaeologist, there is no neutral ground. In the telling of colonial narratives there is no neutral ground. Our failure to confront colonial violence has led to a blank space where misinformation lives.

Wilcox: In CA and SW, disease and epidemic is framed as a neutral event. It obscures conversations about ongoing colonial violence. We need to tell these stories and acknowledge their full context.

.@MargaretBruchac: Transitions to question from Dr. George Nicholas.

In the wake of continuing heritage destruction, how can we more effectively make policy makers, corporations (like Rio Tinto) and the public understand that we not just dealing with violence against history (largely an academic argument) but violence against people?

Elliott: When I think about this violence, I think about gentrification and the ongoing destruction and erasure of African American communities.

Elliott: Rarely are representatives from these communities are at the decision-making table to have a say in the protection or preservation of their communities, cemeteries, buildings, etc.

.@ArchaeoMapper: Destruction of heritage places is a human rights violation. It also speaks to something broader--who determines what is being violated and how.

.@ArchaeoMapper: As a woman of Métis descent, this is an important question. We often don't have the power to make the decision because of our history. The ideas that all pasts need to be preserved in the same ways is also a colonial understanding. We need all these voices.

.@ArchaeoMapper: Descendants and Indigenous nations and African American communities need to be at the table and need to be made *in community*.

Wilcox: As a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Muwekme Ohlone see directly how these decisions are made in the San Francisco Bay.

Wilcox: in one case in downtown San Jose where 60 ancestors were excavated from, the disturbance was significant and difficult for tribal members to witness.

Wilcox: Current set up of cultural resource management and historic preservation is that #Indigenous nations and individuals are forced to bear witness to the removal of their ancestors. How has this come to be?

Elliott: The notion of restorative justice, in curatorial work community-engagement is vital. As is showing your support in helping community think through how to navigate these systems of historic preservation and representation.

Elliott: We have ability to help leverage these histories to be of benefit to community. This is part of restorative justice--creating an ethical approach to how we deal with ancestral sites.

.@MargaretBruchac: ? from Tsim Schneider--many #Indigenous communities view #archaeology as antithetical to community needs and concerns. Does an archaeology of redress acknowledge archaeology’s role in this violence? Is it still valid as a practice?

Elliott: I think so. I don't do archaeological work, but I rely upon on. In African Am. history, if I can get at this history that has been erased and covered over, there is value there as a means of bringing the truth forward.

.@ArchaeoMapper: If I didn't think @archaeology is useful, I would have broken up with it. I am still here for a couple reasons. 1) We're finding new ways of making sense of the past with less violence/destruction of #Indigenous heritage.

...At the same time, it is very important that First Nations and Métis don't *need* #Archaeology to know their pasts. There can be value in reconnecting with these histories through engaging with ancestral sites and ancestors' belongings.

2) Have to draw on methods from community to tell these histories.

3) Can't do this work without accounting for the violent history of our discipline. We need to acknowledge complicity in settler colonial violence.

Wilcox: I'm thinking about archaeological methods and how they are flawed. In telling stories of sites, we often fall into trap of explaining an absence. We see lots of narratives of collapse, over-exploitation, environmental change.

Wilcox: What we need more of is highlighting new narratives. With Muwekma Ohlone we're finding sites of refuge where #Indigenous peoples continued to live outside the confines of California missions. This is a story that's often hidden.

Wilcox: It's important for us to focus on these spaces and do what we can to get the public to acknowledge these histories and prompt them to connect these histories to contemporary communities and their continued persistence.

.@ArchaeoMapper : even if we don't agree that it has value, we need to recognize that #archaeology will continue to happen because of legal and economic systems. So then how can we ensure it does the positive work it can do within these constraints?

Elliott: How do African Americans understand archaeology and are familiar with what it can do. Also, how many Af. Am are in the field. For me, there's a lot of value in educating communities about archaeology and to communicate why sites are important.

Elliott: What is the role of archaeology so that more African Americans can become involved in the field and to be at the table when doing #archaeology or #HistoricPreservation.

Justin Dunnavant: @SomaliHeritage has left us with some words about how she brings in marginalized communities to the conversation within Somalia.

.@MargaretBruchac: .@ArchaeoMapper has raised this issue of using geophysical tools to be able to recovery First Nations history.

.@ArchaeoMapper: Work I am doing is in response to Canada's Truth and reconciliation Commission that was modeled after those created in South Africa. it was created in response to residential boarding schools, which lasted through 1966.

Purpose of this commission was to witness these histories and highlight the legacy of this system. One of the set of recommendations were around children who went "missing" or who died at residential schools. Thousands dropped off the records and their graves are unknown.

In the summer of 2018 was involved in a survey around Muskowgan residential school (spelling?). With ground penetrating radar we could say with confidence that burials were located on the property.

Question of what reconciliation means. Part of it is finding children and to support them as they heal from the loss of their children. This is difficult work--it is emotional, it is sad, nd in community it can be re-traumatizing. We try to do the work as carefully as possible.

.@ArchaeoMapper: For me this is an example of how we can create some redress by reconnecting children to their communities and families.

.@MargaretBruchac: Much of my own work began as an answer to a desperate question--why are there more dead Native people on the campus of UMass Amherst than living ones? Began to reach into the archives and collections to understand how this came to be.

Bruchac: how did the Connecticut Rivery Valley became a center of collecting expeditions where families went collecting on weekends to take Native bones and hang them over their fireplace?

Bruchac: For generations Native peoples protested these actions. Narragansett individuals, for example, tried to stop prolific collectors.

Bruchac: What I saw in looking at the archives and collections is the lack of communication among the various institutions and individuals who controlled these collections and archives. This has led to a scattering of not only ancestors, but information relating to them.

Bruchac: Seeing the violence inherent in this practice of using Native peoples as objects of study, as disembodied people prompted a dramatic turn. I founded the Five College repatriation consortium to archaeologize archaeologists. To track archaeologists and their movements...

To understand these histories in detail and to bring ancestors home.

Wilcox: Repatriation is where the rubber meets in the road. In California, human remains have not been repatriated to communities who remain unrecognized. At UC Berkeley there are still 18,000 ancestors remains that remain to go home.

Wilcox: In response to this we have to ask, what do tribes need? What can we do to meet their needs? This is how can we confront the violence done to Indigenous and Black bodies. This doesn't mean becoming archaeologists-as-heroes.

Wilcox: We need to interrupt this violence by asking what we can do right now and right here in this moment to create redress?

.@MargaretBruchac: As we consider these questions, we have to be aware of the multiple communities of people who are involved in archaeology--as researchers, as avocationalists, as people who collect or take from places with no oversight.

Elliott: At a personal level, belongings that have been stolen should be restored. There are always opportunities to borrow items from museums, reposities, and even communities. At the NMAAHC, we routinely borrow objects to exhibit and tell stories with.

Elliott: There are ways to ensure communities have control over their material culture, but still be able to learn from them.

.@MargaretBruchac: ? from @potatokitty about how we can acknowledge Indigenous data sovereignty in relation to creating redress.

.@ArchaeoMapper: Data sovereignty is key to creating redress. Communities need control over their heritage. IN Alberta, heritage legislation is at the level of the province. Currently, it makes it illegal for First Nations to have ownership over heritage except on reserves...

On reserves, which are federal lands, because there's no federal law, they have control. But this is only a fraction of total lands. The default for ownership lies with our museums and provinces.

.@ArchaeoMapper:Been discussing with my community how we create ways for us to access info about archaeological and ethnographic objects in museum collections. Can we imagine databases that provide access, but don't reproduce the systems for how these items are stored?

How can we create a framework that reproduces our own ways of knowing in these databases?

Elliott: It can be tricky to create meaningful and trusting relationships between museums and communities. But when we can do this, we can help people think through these questions of access and creating training and experience for people to be able to think through these issues.

Elliott: Need to ensure that members of communities have the knowledge and experience necessary to know what's possible with conservation and curation and storage.

Wilcox: In recent years, we have seen Indigenous PhDs in archaeology double, but this isn't even moving the needle. What is it about archaeology that it remains unattractive to people of color? What is happening internally with promotion, tenure, mentoring, teaching?

Wilcox: In relation to data sovereignty, I work with a tribe who is involved in genomic research in CA. An issue for the tribe: what does it mean to allow an archaeologist access to genetic data? what responsibilities do they have in human subject protocols?

Wilcox: Archaeology falls into an odd space in regards to human subjects. Often fly under the radar with institutional review boards. This is a problem for addressing the concerns of communities, especially if they are unrecognized.

Wilcox: related, when considering repatriation, what does it mean to undertake repatriation of 20,000 remains to a tribe with no land base? Where will those remains go?

Wilcox: What responsibility does the institution have to ensure the process addresses the injustices that led to the acquisitions of Indigenous bodies? What is their ethical responsibility here?

Elliott: Going back to issue of how we teach people what it means to do archaeology and to involve community members in *doing* the archaeology.

Elliott: Learning is a give and take. Students and teachers alike need to learn from one another. We cannot dismiss students or community member's insights--we need to learn from them as archaeologists, as trainers.

Elliot: Slavewrecks project we are working on through NMAAHC is creating curriculum for middle school and high school students to take them along this journey of learning with us.

Elliott: Slave Wrecks Project is an international network. Intent is to take students from Alabama and have them work with our teams in South Africa, Mozambique, Senegal, Cuba, Brazil, Saint Croix (U.S. Virgin Islands), and other sites in the U.S.

Wilcox: What does success look like around these issues? Do we wan more BIPOC in archaeology? Do we want to involve community members directly in archaeology? These are some metrics to outline what it means to decolonize the field.

.@ArchaeoMapper: ? from Ann Kakaliourias-I’d like to hear the panelists engage with the challenges and opportunities of bringing together Indigenous and African-American experiences and perspectives on these issues.

...So, for example, what intersections do the panelists see between ongoing colonial violence and ongoing anti-Blackness?

Elliott: What's imperative is to bring together people into these conversations. Our histories intersect, but we can focus on key times and sites to explore these questions. When we discuss marginalized communities, for example, the Dismal Swamp...

Elliott: We see layers of histories for Indigenous and Black communities. But we can also pull into poor white communities. We need to paint a full picture of the stories that have been dismissed.

Elliott: In our exhibits on colonial North America we address these intersecting histories.

.@MargaretBruchac: Thanks for bearing with me, we have a big storm here. Question I want us to address is to think about what redress and restorative justice looks like from a global perspective.

Bruchac: Who decides which marginalized communities get attention? How can we do so without further marginalizing certain communities?

.@ArchaeoMapper: For me it's about the system of settler colonialism. There is a hierarchy in the ways in which histories are understood and retold.

How can we turn our gaze to these structures so we don't reproduce their inequities? For example, how can we acknowledge the differences in anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racisms, as well as their intersections?

.@ArchaeoMapper: Wearing a red dress pin in honor of #MMIWG2S. The violence we see against Indigenous women is part of the same violence that is enacted against Black bodies. How can we acknowledge this system that perpetuates violence?

Wilcox: I think about my own training and how until later I wasn't versed in African American Studies. We have to be educated in these traditions of Black philosophy in order to really grapple with racism and understand its manifestations across time.

Wilcox: We can't have slavery with 12 million people being brought to America without the people who brought them here. We have to retrain ourselves and engage with one another.

.@MargaretBruchac: At UPenn, discussion of the Morton collection. Museum is working to repatriating the Indigenous crania in that collection, and yet for the non-Indigenous crania who have had this violence perpetuated on them, there is no redress.

.@MargaretBruchac: ? from Marco Meniketti: The very concept of Heritage Resources is part of the problem. Resources is a term frieghted by capitlaism. Resources are exploitable justifying commodification of heritage. I believe we must change our language in order to begin...

...changing mindsets surrounding heritage. Heritage Inheritance or some other terminology may be necessary to shift archaeology and museums away from thinking people's past based on an economic paradigm.

Elliott: I think about heritage tourism in response to this question. The notion of how much we can profit connects to this.

Bruchac: is stewardship the primary ethical principle, or should redress be the primary ethical framework?

Elliott: The stewardship element is important--communities might have a desire to preserve but don't know how to achieve it.

.@ArchaeoMapper: Two pieces here--heritage as resource and its connection to capitalist consumption, and then the stewardship piece. Archaeology is an extractive industry and these items become commodified. We might be against selling them, but they're commodified through owning

We need to change our language around it. There is also an arbitrary divide between intangible and tangible heritage. Songs, stories, belongings--all of these are part of the same whole of heritage.

This related to stewardship--cases where communities want to preserve and protect them. But in other cases, for example totem poles in the northwest, these are not meant to preserved.

.@ArchaeoMapper: Right now it's the default that archaeologists are the stewards and preservers on the past. Who made this so? We ned to step back to put these roles back into community.

Bruchac: Massachusetts were proactive in repatriating ancestors' remains, but in case of funerary objects and items of cultural patrimony, the state maintained ownership over and right to preserve.

Bruchac: This is a problem that results from the categorization and organization of these objects that do not align with the intentions of communities.

Wilcox: Terrible argument I've heard institutions and archaeologists make is, this group doesn't want repatriation, but in the future they *might*

Wilcox: I've seen tribes be required to perform rituals to satisfy requirements set by institutions in order for them to repatriate.

Wilcox: When we are discussing repatriation, it's about something more than objects. It's about practice and the wider landscapes and how these tings relate.

.@ArchaeoMapper: My research uses the idea of a kinscape to bring things back into their web of relations. This is a key part of redress because these items and aspects of heritage have been disrupted and removed from these relations.

.@ArchaeoMapper: We need to make space what this looks like by allowing the survivors of this violence get to determine what putting these things back into relation means and looks like.

Bruchac: What role do you see a heart-centered approach playing in cultural resource management and restorative justice archaeology?

Elliott: Through Slave Wrecks Project working with Africa Town in Mobile, AL and with descendants of this community to recover and raise belongings from the Clotilde slave wreck.

Elliott: Press conference announcing the discovery of the ship and immediately after we had a descendants festival program. Space for conducting rituals, to provide education for the larger community. Intention here to ensure community is at center of the work.

Elliott: In this case, the community is driving whether artifacts will stay in Africa Town or be moved to downtown Mobile or if they'll come to the NMAAHC. Appreciate that the folks in Mobile are sensitive to holding the community at the center and ensuring they have a say.

Elliott: In tandem also working with the community to grapple with environmental racism, which stems from the history of racism and marginalization of the Africa Town community.

.@ArchaeoMapper: Edited volume on Archaeology from the Heart emphasizes the spiritual impacts of archaeology. As humans we are affected by archaeology in various ways. Proceeding from here, we can begin to appreciate the variety of these histories and experiences.

.@ArchaeoMapper: From this place, we can begin to value these different approaches and experiences of heritage. This framework isn't impossible in cultural resource management contexts, but it's certainly more difficult because of its constraints.

Wilcox: in reference to an archaeology of listening--this works against archaeological impulses and drives. Within this framing we are no longer at the heart of things.

Bruchac: What might this look like for compliance archaeologists and in the academy?

Wilcox: if you work with tribes, as an archaeologist the base values are very distinct from those of a tribe.

Wilcox: As an academic, I have a responsibility to discuss these issues and histories openly. In a tribal context, however, this isn't feasible. Same with deadlines--we work at different schedules and tempos.

Wilcox: How can we recognize the parallel obligations we have to both discipline and community? We need to acknowledge these for us to occupy both spaces succesfully.

Bruchac: I feel the same. In the museum I am often working for one community and find things related to another community. In decolonial museology, see myself as a liaison between institutions and the communities we work for and are committed to.

Bruchac: We have deep responsibilities to these communities because of the nature of the work in creating redress.

Bruchac: See these conflicts as well in teaching where we instruct students to go out and do. Always counsel students to ensure before you do, you discuss and form a relationship to ensure it's ok to do so.

Elliott: When we acquired the slave cabin from Edistall, South Carolina, we worked with descendants of the enslaved and enslavers on its exhibition. Having these voices inform how we interpreted, when we discussed gardens stories of conjuring, nutrition, medicine came up.

Elliott: In listening to the descendants' notion of values of this cabin and place, it directly informed how we were able to interpret it. We only have so many words we can put in a label or digital record. Have to be clear about these values.

.@MargaretBruchac: Thank you all for joining us!

Peter van Dommeln from @brownarchaeolog thanks panelists and audience for attending the discussion today, which underscores importance of redress and restorative justice that are at the center of #archaeology today.

van Dommeln: From questions asked, listening as we've been doing is critical for moving forward. Where do we go from here? First, educating ourselves and second taking up these ideas in our research and classroom and daily work.

van Dommeln: @SbaArch and @Indigarchs have played a big role in moving these discussions forward. Supporting them is a way to move things forward.

van Dommelen: Please join @SbaArch, @IndigArchs and their partners for the next webinar on Nov. 11 at 4pm EDT on new Stories & Storytellers, hosted by the @UCLACotsen.

You can learn more about the event series by checking out the permalink for the event series: sapiens.org/archaeology/bl…

From @IndigArchs Ka molis! Yawi! Miigwech! Achema! Ahé’héé! Qe’ci’yew’yew! Thank you to our esteemed panelists and for our audience joining us for An #Archaeology of Redress and Restorative Justice! #IndigArch #Indigenous

Thread for An #Archaeology of Redress and Restorative Justice. #Indigenous #IndigArch threadreaderapp.com/thread/1313927…

Correction: Justin Dunnavant: @SomaliHeritage has left us with some words about how she brings in marginalized communities to the conversation within Somaliland.