facebookpixel
Select Page

Epistemic Colonialism: Indigenous Communities, Archaeology, and Evidence in the Americas

Chaired by Katherine Howlett Hayes and Tsim D. Schneider

November 14 – 16, 2017

Epistemic Colonialism: Indigenous Communities, Archaeology, and Evidence in the Americas

Archaeologies of colonialism increasingly seek to counteract traditional views of the plight of Indigenous populations and the systematic erasure of peoples, sites, and cultures from the land, from public memory, and from within the conventional writing of history. For archaeologists, countering narratives of indigenous loss often requires gathering evidence to demonstrate resiliency, even as many present-day Indigenous communities doubt the very premise of that loss. Building on a successful two-part session held at the 2016 American Anthropological Association conference, seminar co-chairs Katherine Howlett Hayes and Tsim D. Schneider organized the gathering at SAR to continue the conversation about evidence in the archaeology of colonialism, and the colonial nature of evidence (epistemology) in archaeology. As part of this ongoing work, the seminar more fully explored how both settler colonial studies and critical indigenous theory changes perspectives on epistemology.

One core theme seminarians sought to explore addresses archaeological interest in exposing “hidden histories” or “absent narratives” through the excavation (in the soil and archives) and study of evidence, even while many Indigenous communities object to the very premise that their histories and cultures are missing or obscured.  As Hayes and Schneider reported:

“Indeed, our intervention (a) addresses the forms of colonialism we see persisting in the practice and theory of archaeology – what we call “epistemic colonialism” – and (b) seeks to overcome this thinking by engaging and applying scholarship on decolonization and critical indigenous theory. We also felt that the obstacles to genuine redress of epistemic colonialism extend beyond the individual projects or collaboration into the structures of both academic and compliance-driven work. As suggested by Chris Anderson, the very structures of institutions like universities (and, perhaps, heritage preservation law) are antithetical to much of the project of critical Indigenous studies. This led us to the questions of whether the discipline can be decolonized, or even un-disciplined.”

As the seminar drew to a close, the group brainstormed core concepts that emerged from the week’s discussions to explore and answer the question, “What is our key intervention, and who is our audience?” Though no answer was readily available, participants decided to carry on with their work and to collect their papers for publication in a themed issue of a peer-reviewed journal (to be determined). To do so, they identified a road map for reworking draft papers to better connect to other papers discussed during the seminar and to elaborate on important concepts introduced in the week’s readings. Seminarians anticipate that the collected articles will be highly impactful and offer a critical update to conversations centering on decolonizing approaches in archaeology—a theme introduced by Sonya Atalay in her groundbreaking thematic issue of American Indian Quarterly in 2006.

Participants

Katherine Howlett Hayes, Co-chair
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Tsim D. Schneider, Co-chair
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz

Kathryn Sampeck
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Illinois State University

Lindsay M. Montgomery
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona

Michelle Lelievre
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, College of William and Mary

Jun Sunseri
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley

Amélie Allard
SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology, Royal Ontario Museum

Peter A. Nelson
Assistant Professor, Department of American Indian Studies, San Diego State University

Kaila Akina
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota , Twin Cities

Generous support provided by the Mill Foundation.