Thread by @IndigArchs

THREAD: Black and #Indigenous Storytelling as Counter-History with Dian Million (@Bloodizcurrency), Ora Marek-Martinez (@docmarek), Antoinette Jennings (@@AntoinetteJax), Weshoyot Alvitre (@weshoyot) and John Jennings (@JIJennings)

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
@UCLACotsen. sapiens.org/archaeology/bl…

We will begin shortly!

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

Danilyn Rutherford of @WennerGrenOrg welcomes us to the next webinar sponsored by @IndigArchs/@SBAArch/@SAPIENS_org /@CIAMS_Cornell /@WennerGrenOrg

Rutherford introduces each of our panelists:
Dr. Antoinette Jackson @AntoinetteJax, Weshoyot Alvitre (Tongva) @weshoyot, Dr. John Jennings @JIJennings, Dr. Dian Million (Tanana Athabaskan) @bloodizcurrency, Dr. Ora Marek-Martinez (Diné, Nimiipuu, Hopi) @ docmarek. #Archaeology

Dr. Million (Tanana Athabaskan)
@bloodizcurrency, begins by telling a story to center us and the importance of storytelling.

Million: Today we are hearing from people for whom storying is something more than just telling a story. Stepping back to listen to great people.

Dr. Marek-Martinez @docmarek (Diné, Nimiipuu, Hopi) introduces herself in her language.

Dr. Jackson @AntoinetteJax (@Usfanthropology) introduces herself as a child of Louisiana and provides background for who she is and who she comes from.

Please note: The Vimeo Live-treaming is not working, but the panel is being recorded and will be available later. We apologize for it not being available for guests.

Dr. Jennings @JIJennings introduces himself and acknowledges the Indigenous peoples on whose land he works and live. Born in Mississippi and southern heritage informs the stories he tells and makes.

Weshoyot Alvitre (Tongva) @weshoyot introduces herself as Tongva living on Chumash lands. From a young age had to answer questions about who were and are as people. This has influenced my work--didn't engage in Native-based artwork because of lack of space to share appropriately.

Million @BloodIzCurrecy: With settler colonialism and gentrification, it can lead to an erasure of heritage. How can storytelling act resist these forms of erasure?

.@DocMarek: As an Indigenous women, my presence here is a challenge to this erasure. Hearing the stories as a Diné woman and now working with the stories created about us that erase us from our homelands has showed me the importance of bringing our stories to be heard. #IndigArch

.@DocMarek: In Navajo culture, our stories breathe life into people and places. Within archaeology, we don't realize the sacred knowledge of our stories and our ancestral knowledge, and we erase these links when we ignore these aspects.

.@DocMarek:When we divorce it from what it is meant to be and what it is meant to do, #Archaeology participates in a form of destruction. The act of retelling the stories of my elders and knowledge holders has given me the ability to retell stories to our youth.

@DocMarek: as a scholar coming from a marginalized community, I hold the power to tell our stories to the next generation. This is resistance. It's what keeps us going for generations to come. #Archaeology #IndigArch

.@AntoinetteJax: Agree wholeheartedly with with. Work started by being drawn into the stories of enslaved Africans in plantation spaces.

.@AntoinetteJax: When I learned of the Gullah Geechee community and began to spend time with these communities learning about rice agriculture and the role enslaved Africans on these plantations, these

.@AntoinetteJax: Descendants tell stories and pass on the history and heritage of their communities. When you encounter stories in plantation places, they're static. Enslaved Africans are seen as fixed in time; no movement allowed.

.@AntoinetteJax: Impetus was to bring descendants knowledge to these storiesHow do you discuss home and cooking and foodways and labor and traditions, not as enslaved people, but as people who faced this situation?

.@AntoinetteJax: Point was to dehumanize people. What I do not is putting that humanity back in place. This is the most dynamic and important part of this work is to carry these stories forward.

@AntoinetteJax: Most archaeologists think of things and places, but not the stories that connect us. It's the people themselves that have informed me and their stories and knowledge.

@Million: The brilliance of imagining yourself as a people again when stripped from your history and places is amazing. When I encountered an account from Gullah Geechee, this brilliance stood out.

@JIJennings: As my illustration behind me illustrates--I'm in the present but looking to the past and present at the same time.

@JIJennings: What happens your shadow has its own songs? Histories? Ideologies? What tensions happen when the shadow starts speaking? Return to this theme in my work of imagining different futures and possibilities.

@JIJennings: The very creation of an idea is a disrution. In one of my students they have to create liberation technologies to fight oppression. There is a freedom here to get away from the rules. Stories are tricks; they're technologies of resistance.

.@BloodIzCurrency: Colleague Chris Teuton @UW_AIS has a book Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars' Club that fits this idea of stories as tricks and as resistance.

.@BloodIzCurrency: we have stories that connect as people. This is an important thing that we are doing together right now, to bring these stories together.

@JIJennings: A lot of what we're trying to do is excavate the future. To reclaim the history of the future is to put ourselves into places where we have been erased. Covering up things is easy, but digging them up is more difficult work.

.@weshoyot: The work I did for my tribe, I kept it personal. Didn't engage in this storytelling until I was invited to Indigenous Comic Con. Was asked what my dream project would be.

.@weshoyot: At the time I was working on other peoples stories. I said I'd love to do a graphic novel about a story from my own people and tell the story of Toypurina. Hearing about a Tongva tribal member from a non-tribal member and not my own community was a powerful thing.

.@weshoyot: The person who asked me this said he had the transcripts from her trial and handed them to me. In using these documented records and tying them with the knowledge I was raised with allowed me to uncover personal things I didn't expect.

.@Million: What you have brought up is important. So many of us are not in homes. It's not just about us being in cities, but being forced from home. In California, this is a big thing.

.@bloodizcurrency: We are making different histories together. My own family background shows this. Making art around this is a new way to connect with these histories. It helps reteach you how those connections are complex.

.@bloodizcurrency: There is a re-kinshipping of our relations through these stories.

.@weshoyot: In my father's generation it was almost a shameful thing to bring up these histories. A lot don't want to deal with them or aren't capable of working with these stories.

.@bloodizcurrency: Storytelling comes in different forms. What are some of the most or more effective ways you've seen storytelling deployed in the communities you live and work in?

.@DocMarek: Two responses. First, the employment of our creation stories. They form a foundation for us to build our lives. Going to the places where these stories came to be made me connect with my ancestors.

.@DocMarek: My father, who has passed, always told us to remember our ancestors when we visited those places and to take pride in it. This was a reminder that my people come from the earth; they came from it. They sang and prayed and died for me and my children to be here.

.@DocMarek: Land is connected to who we are. Archaeology using and looking at the land, to me, it was a way to connect to our ancestors in a different way. It rooted me as a Nimiipuu and Diné woman.

.@DocMarek: In Navajo there is a story that says if we tell a story in the same way and in the same language, it is the end of our people. There is a strength in diversity and having many stories, told differently.

.@DocMarek: On the other side of this, scary stories are effective mediums. I know my Dad, Larry Marek, was a renowned storyteller. He would tell us the scariest stories. Thinking on them, they were ways to correct us, as kids.

.@DocMarek: Embodied in these stories are protocol for how to carry ourselves. For me, these scary stories are protocols being enacted and also in helping us develop our character and responsibilities. We have the responsibility to fight for these things.

.@DocMarek: Anytime I would go to my dad about protecting ancestors and our places, he would tell me stories how my ancestors fought these battles too. It was his way of telling me that I had the knowledge to know what to do.

.@BloodIzCurrency: I didn't know your dad, but I know of him. Went to Oregon when I was 14 and we started a NW Writers group and one of the people, Liz Woody was from Warm Spring and Dinétah, and Ed Edmo, and from them I heard of him.

.@BloodIzCurrency: It's not just our formal stories that tell us things, that give us instructions for living well. It's in our funny stories and scary stories that are important.

.@AntoinetteJax: We lose the idea of speaking from the heart. When I go back and work with communities like Gullah Geechee and even where my grandparents were from in LA, oral religion is the language we spoke.

.@AntoinetteJax: I remember being in my grandparents' church, and people would burst into song and not follow the program. But everyone would know what they were singing or saying and join in.

.@AntoinetteJax: Naming is also a storytelling. It tells you the story that you are adding to. The family names and peoples; names teach me about people, their families, and communities.

.@AntoinetteJax: Cooking and recipes and their stories are another important realm. It's not just cooking you're learning about, you're learning about patience. People judge you if you don't get the rice right--you learn it's importance, but how to prepare it, how to serve...

.@AntoinetteJax: There's also "testing" stories. People have this ability to give testing stories. As a researcher, I always get this--the "even in death" story. These tell of individuals who get too close to others and they'd be buried in their cemetery.

.@BloodIzCurrency: We call these stories gossip!

Glad you brought up cooking--they're traditions of women's stories.

.@AntoinetteJax: In Nicodemus, Kansas, the stories were all about catfish. There's such a range here--stories about all of the foods.

.@JIJennings: As a young kid, I was very interested in the oral stories that my grandmother would tell me and also mythology. Especially with Greek mythology, the idea that constellations were connected to stories was exciting.

.@JIJennings: My mom got me my first comic books from Marvel comics. When I started to see the parallels, I became obsessed with comics and illustrated stories. I see this resonate with today's youth and is one of the reasons I've partnered on comic events...

.@JIJennings: Creating and designing spaces for people of color to come together to tell stories that are their own stories. With the Harlem piece, 60k Black kids have come through to meet Black comic writers and get to see how they can do this too.

.@JIJennings: Opportunity to not be a subject of a story, but to write these stories.

When Black panther came out there was a meme with these young men who were reacting to seeing themselves in the storytelling universe.

.@bloodizcurrency: Importance of building these spaces so that we own them, as well as having students and youth creating these stories themselves.

.@weshoyot: With Tongva, because we lost so much in such a short amount of time, there's a process of re-discovery we are working on. Relying on, for example, the writings of people invested in removing and destroying us to recover this knowledge.

.@weshoyot: Most of the writings I looked to growing up were written from a colonial viewpoint. Accounts of the lone woman of San Nicholas Island, for example, no one around her could understand her, but there's a recording my JP Harrington.

.@weshoyot: The idea of food and storytelling was brought up. One of our traditional foods is acorn. There's so many stories about acorns that help connect us to specific places.

.@Weshoyot: knowing when planting and harvesting seasons are--we used to have stories about these things but we've lost them because our connection to the land was interrupted. Same with taste--you can remember so much from a bite of food from your grandma.

.@weshoyot: I didn't have the use of language growing up. I was emotional the first two weeks taking a Cahuilla class--it put me in an emotional place to have those words and sentence structure roll off my tongue.

. @weshoyot: To be able to hear our stories is so important.

.@BloodIzCurrency: Get a copy of Bad Indian by Deborah Miranda. Sometimes we have to glean things from those who had no idea about us.

.@Weshoyot: I recently red the Marrow Thieve by Cherie Dimaline--and it brought this home to me. The importance and loss of language.

.@bloodizcurrency: If you go to the land, even if it is under concrete; go to the stream that emerging or where the land has power and touch her. Even if we lose the knowledge, the earth will give it to us again.

.@BloodIzCurrency: I think this applies to Black communities. You can try to destroy these connections, but they never go away if you remember the land.

.@weshoyot: I would ask that archaeologists or anthropologists learn proper protocol and to learn the stories of people on whose land they are working on.

.@weshoyot: It's very important to be very respectful that we have so much history on these lands and it is important to carry these stories with respect and care. #archaeology

.@weshoyot: there are people related to the things and individuals you are working with, whether they are known or not. #archaeology

.@JIJennings: I think of stories so much as a creator and editor. Focusing on the things that are similar--all I see are the glaring similarities of the stories we want to tell. We've been socialized to think of our difference.

.@JIJennings: Octavia Butler said that Mankind always creates hierarchies and mankind always wants to be at the top of these hierarchies. What I have been doing with the work is to challenge the negative stories--the stereotypes--the fixed stories.

.@JIJennings: I encourage people to find the humanity, but also the commonality of how our stories go together. We need one another to survive this world and we need to figure out how to survive together.

.@JIJennings: Our ancestors already knew. We need to unplug and listen and find the commonality. Building coalitions and building stories together is the best way to move forward.

.@AntoinetteJax: Questions in the audience about how Black and Indigenous storytellers can work together. I've never seen these divides--our challenge is shared, to create a bigger story. It's our job to work together...

.@AntoinetteJax: ...to critique the processes that leave us out and to support putting us back in so we can transform stories.

.@AntoinetteJax: John's work speaks to how we create these bigger visions.

.@DocMarek: A few questions about conflict and how to integrate stories into heritage work. I want to ask people to take a step back in #archaeology. #Archaeology has been a tool of colonialism. The stories we've shared exemplify that.

.@docmarek: When we focus on issues of truth or ownership, we're going to have conflict. If we move away from these colonial questions of who was here first or who owns this land and move to look at the humanity of our pasts and acknowledge there isn't a singular...

.@docmarek: ...discoverable truth. Truth is shaded in many colors. Our focus should not be on Truth, but looking at those connections. Those we maintain with one another, to our landscape, to other people, other tribes and other communities.

.@docmarek: Storytelling allows us to see a reality we have never experienced before. It makes my heart happy to hear the people we've heard today but it speaks to bringing these stories to the fore.

.@docmarek: I travelled to Australia a couple years ago and I listened to Tasmanians discuss and share with us. They told us they saw their language and culture was buried. They did so to protect it so that in the future it would bloom and grow.

.@docmarek: This has stayed with me because it speaks to our language and our culture and our stories. These are our liberation strategies. They are the vehicles we can use to think about and bring about our own future. #Indigenous

.@docmarek: As a researcher it is ok for us to acknowledge there are multiple stories. It is critical and necessary in the Academy to recognize this.

My mind is blown away by the work you are engaged in and I can't wait to see what the future holds.

Willeke Wendrich @UCLACotsen thanks us for the discussion today. By telling stories from the heart they bring emotions to understanding and understanding to emotions. This working together of narratives is more than just a story.

Wendrich: Everyone is invited to the next webinar, "For the Welfare of the Whole People”: Heritage Stewardship in Indigenous and Black Communities which will be sponsored by @ARF_UCB and be Dec. 2 4-6 pm EST and moderated by @reno_keoni. sapiens.org/archaeology/bl…

And here's the collated tweets: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1326627…

On behalf of the #Indigenous #Archaeology Collective, thank you all for joining us!

Ka molis! Yawi! Miigwech! Achema! Ahé’héé! Qe’ci’yew’yew!