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Reconciling American Archaeology & Native America Author(s): Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh Source: Daedalus, Vol. 138, No. 2, Emerging Voices (Spring, 2009), pp. 94-104 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40543939 Accessed: 04-01-2020 14:30 UTC

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Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh

Reconciling American archaeology & Native America

Shortly after William Bradford and his fellow pilgrims arrived on the east- ern shores of the New World in the cold

autumn of 1620, a small group of men set out to make a "full discovery" of the snow-covered land.1 After some days of wandering the unknown rivers and hills, they grew hungry. With Providence observing, they thought, the men hap- pened upon a store of corn and grain that Indians had cached underground. The ravenous pilgrims took the food for their own. The next day, Bradford reports that the company wandered into the wilderness deeper still, follow- ing the well-beaten trails of the Indians, in the hope that they would find a town ; they encountered no one. Eventually the company came to a flat area cov- ered with boards. Curious, the men

began to dig. A layering of grass mats and boards

sat just beneath the surface, concealing a few strange bits of bowls, trays, and dishes. Encouraged, they burrowed fur- ther and discovered a prize of two bun- dles. A heavy scent of mildewed earth drifted over them. They unwrapped the first bundle. In their hands they saw a few tools and, as Bradford recalled, "a

© 2009 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

great quantitie of fine and perfect red Powder, and in it the bones and skull

of a man." They opened the second bun- dle. It, too, was packed with the fine red powder, though this time laced with small bones and the skull of a child. The child's remains had been careful-

ly swathed and decorated with brace- lets of pearl-white beads. "We brought sundry of the pretiest things away with vs, and covered the Corps vp againe," Bradford later wrote. "After this, we

digged in sundry like places, but found no more Corne, nor any things els but graues."

Bradford's and his fellow pilgrims' investigations constitute the first known archaeological excavation in North America. Although the disci- pline would not be fully formed for another two-and-a-half centuries, Bradford's group unknowingly set the pattern for how Euro-American explor- ers entered Indian country to satisfy their curiosity, driven by a desire to conquer and control the land, to claim and possess all that made up their new home. Indeed, Bradford and his men put in motion one of the defining nar- ratives of the American self, a self exalt-

ed for exploring and exposing Ameri- can Indian history.

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American Indians weren't just a part of history, though. Settlers soon encoun- tered living Indians who posed an imme- diate political problem for colonization. Villages and farms, hunting grounds and sacred quarters filled the land Eu- ropeans envisioned as their own. Indi- ans, so long as they were alive, could argue and defend against invasion with words and violence. Indians who had

passed long ago were another matter; they could not fight their own plunder- ing. The stories of unconcealed resist- ance - Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Ge- ronimo - now sound America's mythic chords of memory. But the silent taking of graves in the name of nation and sci- ence is a collective remembrance that

has yet to seep into America's histori- cal consciousness.

The story of archaeology in America is coiled with the colonial experiences of Native Americans. The exploration and exposition of American Indian history has often been a means of defining and narrating the American soul. The alter- nating image of the savage and noble Indian has provided a mirror for Ameri- cans to see themselves. Far from an in-

nocuous pursuit, archaeological explo- rations have played a role in the drama of Native American efforts to protect their lands and to dictate their own re-

ligious beliefs, identities, and histories. The archaeology of Native America is not only about the power to shed light on the past, but also the ability of na- tive peoples to shape their own futures.

Many Native American communities now regularly, and vocally, oppose sci- entific practices that they believe violate human rights. As a result of such oppo- sition, as well as new laws sympathetic to Indian civil liberties, archaeology has begun a slow metamorphosis, changing from an agent of colonialism to a vehi- cle of Native American empowerment.

Now, for the first time in the field's his-

tory, substantial numbers of Native Americans are pursuing academic de- grees in archaeology. Scores of tribes have started their own archaeology and heritage management programs. And many Native Americans regularly collaborate with archaeologists on in- novative projects to integrate tradition- al knowledge with scientific inquiry.

Illuminating the tangled history of archaeology and the social context of its present-day practice reveals no easy answers to America's colonialist inheri-

tance. However, by deeply engaging with this difficult chronicle, we may come to a fuller understanding of why Native Americans are insisting that their voices be heard, and why archaeologists are at last listening to them. The recent para- digm shift in archaeology to more in- clusive and collaborative modes is not

a quick solution to an entrenched prob- lem so much as an uneven and negotiat- ed process of coming to terms with the skeletons in America's closets. After all, the remains of the man and child that William Bradford took from the Indian

crypt nearly four centuries ago will like- ly never be found, never reburied. Once unearthed, some things are not easily put back where they came from.

-L/egacies of colonialism in archaeolo- gy were finally confronted in the 1970s, when activists began interrupting ex- cavations, protesting the sale of sacred objects, and demanding the return of human remains. But long before the raging demonstrations in front of mu- seums and the heated words traded on

editorial pages, there were the quiet moments of taking, when Indian bod- ies were transformed from human be-

ings in their final repose into speci- mens for scientific study. The collec- tion of human bodies and funerary

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objects explains the anger that fueled the flames of dissent in Indian country and ultimately turned museums into politi- cal battlefields.

Consider this example. As a bitterly cold winter receded in early 1871, dozens of Apaches surrendered as prisoners of war to the army soldiers at Camp Grant, outside Tucson, and established the be- ginnings of a permanent peace.2 News of the accord quickly spread through- out southern Arizona, and, as flowers

were coming to bloom in the desert, a new hope to the end of war unfold- ed across the land. Apaches from the Pinal and Aravaipa bands gathered in the shadow of Camp Grant, at a tradi- tional farming site used for generations along the gentle waters of Aravaipa Creek. After three months, the Apach- es held a feast to celebrate, for no long- er would they be hunted as animals in their own homeland; no longer would their fields of corn and their homes

of brush be set aflame by soldiers ; no longer would they need to raid in Mex- ico to feed their families. So the people sang and danced and ate, elation mixed with relief.

The feast dwindled and night fell over the sleeping village. Then, sudden- ly, in the stillness of the early morning, a hail of bullets tore into the encampment, killing not just the dream of peace, but scores of Apache men, women, and children. Behind the guns was a vigilan- te group of Tucson men who believed that all Apaches should be killed for the crimes of a few - for the violent raiding that unrelated Chiricahua Apache bands continued throughout the first months of 1871. After emptying their guns, the Tucsonans walked through the village, stripping several girls naked and raping them, hacking bodies apart, and captur- ing nearly thirty children as slaves. In less than an hour, the attackers had com-

pleted their gruesome labor of murder- ing more than one hundred Apaches. After breakfast they returned back to a jubilant Tucson.

The next day the surviving Apaches returned to the ruined village, express- ing their grief "too wild and terrible to be described/' as one witness wrote. A mass grave was dug and the bodies placed within it. But for at least one victim this makeshift sepulcher would not be her final resting place. Close to a year after the massacre, a surgeon with archaeological ambitions visited the site. Dr. Valéry Havard proceeded to unearth the burials and stole the head of a young Apache woman, mailing it to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C. In 1900, the skull was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution, "America's at- tic," for the purpose of scientific study and exhibition ; it has remained there

for more than a century. A small but significant portion of

the bodies that ended up at places like the Smithsonian came from grisly nine- teenth-century massacre and battlefield sites, including those infamous slaugh- ters at Camp Grant, Sand Creek, Washi- ta, and Wounded Knee. Many skulls, scalps, and personal effects served as war booty for American soldiers and pioneer settlers, but others were gath- ered with the express intent to serve science. In 1862, the Army Medical Museum was founded, and Union medical officers in the field were or-

dered to collect "specimens of morbid anatomy . . . together with projectiles and foreign bodies removed."3 Initial- ly the main objects of study were those solders that perished in the Civil War. With Lee's surrender at Appomattox, the museum began looking west, focus- ing on the fresh bounty of the Indian wars. Thousands of bodies and funer-

ary objects were amassed over the de-

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cades, part of a larger national project to gather up the bodies of Indians in the name of scientific progress.

The Army Medical Museum was par- ticularly interested in documenting the effects of war on the human body, but American Indian remains also provided a means to illustrate ideas about human

biology prevailing at the time. Samuel G. Morton published in 1839 his seminal Crania Americana, which employed a sci- entific framework that implicitly proved the inferiority of various races, including Indians. Not only did Morton's book le- gitimize the despoliation of Indian life- ways and lands, but it also inspired gen- erations of Americans to plunder Indi- an sites. With the rise of craniology came the demand for craniums to study : soldiers, Indian agents, traders, settlers, and others were enlisted to gather Indi- an bodies from both ancient and recent

graves. Nineteenth-century anthropolo- gy museums, with their self-appointed mission to understand and document

human evolution, soon became vast re- positories of Indian skeletons.

Some Indian bodies were taken di-

rectly from graves, often in stealth. At times anthropologists expressed con- flicted feelings about their excavations, but felt science demanded it of them.

As the "father" of American anthropol- ogy, Franz Boas, once wrote, "It is most unpleasant work to steal bones from a grave, but what is the use, someone has to do it."4 Such acquiescent sentiments reflected a broader viewpoint in Amer- ica that Indian bodies, like their lands and resources, were for the taking. As recently as 1965, a U.S. court ruled in favor of a man that had removed the

skull from a grave of a Seminole Indian who had died just two years earlier, be- cause unmarked Seminole burial places then did not meet the legal definition of "cemeteries." Several years later, in

Iowa, twenty-seven human bodies were discovered during a road construction project. While twenty-six of the bodies were identified by headstones, one had none and was accompanied by glass beads and brass rings. The twenty-six bodies, presumed to be Anglo-Amer- icans, were immediately reburied in the Glenwood Cemetery, while the one body, presumed to be Indian, was taken to a museum.

The idea that Indian bodies could

serve science and the nation was codi-

fied in laws, which uniquely empow- ered archaeologists to collect and study Indian remains. The 1906 Antiquities Act, for instance, required researchers, among other things, to have a permit to conduct excavations on federal land.

The permit could only be obtained with academic credentials and proof "that the examinations, excavations, and gath- erings are undertaken for the benefit of reputable museums . . . with a view to in- creasing the knowledge of such objects, and that the gatherings shall be made for permanent preservation in public muse- ums."5 Such laws divorced Native Amer-

icans from their own heritage while priv- ileging academic researchers who were to preserve Indian history and culture for all Americans.

By far, most American archaeolo- gists over the twentieth century were not nefarious, but rather were follow-

ing the laws of the land and long-stand- ing Western intellectual traditions. They had a genuine interest in Indian cultures and history, and their studies laid the groundwork for a national heritage that honored America's first inhabitants. In-

deed, archaeologists have been build- ing on the excavations of, for example, Thomas Jefferson, who dug and studied Monticello's ruins, in a genuine effort to know the country's deepest human origins. They have been following in the

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footsteps of Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis, who in the 1840s used systemat- ic archaeological methods to determine that the " mound builders" of the Ameri- can heartland were ancient Indians rath-

er than ancient Greeks, Chinese, or lost

Israelites. Archaeologists trail the work of the Bureau of American Ethnology, which in the late 1800s preserved a mul- titude of objects and studied scores of sites, particularly in the American West, just as Native American communities were reaching their depths of despair and waves of migrants were flooding into America's last open lands.

Millions today visit national parks across the United States - Mesa Verde

National Park, Hopewell Culture Na- tional Park, Washita Battlefield Nation-

al Park - built from archaeological stud- ies and preserved because of archaeolog- ical advocacy. These sites are the foun- dation of America's proud national pat- rimony. Today, when a federal project is developed, such as a new dam to pro- vide electricity or a new highway align- ment to make a road safer, it is archaeol-

ogists who first survey the area. Often with water nearly lapping at their feet or bulldozers roaring behind them, ar- chaeologists excavate sites that would otherwise be obliterated, preserving na- tive histories that would otherwise be

lost to time. The scientists often remove

and study American Indian human re- mains in the path of such destruction.

JLJespite their political disadvantage over much of the last two centuries in

the United States, Native Americans have long resisted the theft and appro- priation of their ancestors' bodies and belongings. In one of the earliest docu- mented examples, in 1883, Apaches de- manded the return of looted heritage objects several cavalrymen had taken from a cave in central Arizona. In 1902,

archaeologists from the American Muse- um of Natural History excavated a buri- al ground on Long Island and were told by the local Shinnecock Indians that the scholars "would lose the friendship of the tribe if [they] dug up any more bod- ies."6

Protests of these kinds were haphaz- ard, variously successful ; it wasn't until the pan-Indian movement gained mo- mentum in the early 1970s that muse- ums, archaeologists, and the public be- gan to take Indian objections serious- ly. In the summer of 1971, members of AIM, the American Indian Movement, vandalized an archaeological excavation in Minnesota. More protests followed in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, resulting in some of the first repatria- tions of human remains. Museums be-

gan removing Indian bodies from pub- lic display. After the controversial twen- ty-seven bodies were discovered in Io- wa, the Iowa State Historical Society was picketed until, by order of the gov- ernor, the lone Indian body was also re- buried, alongside the Anglo-American remains.

By the mid-1980s, the call for return- ing and reburying indigenous bodies had spread around the world. "Our heritage - your playground," poignant- ly phrased by one Australian Aborigi- nal leader, captured the mood of many in native communities across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States.7 Many archaeologists and mu- seum professionals acknowledged the claims of native communities, but were concerned about how to return objects fairly and transparently to tribes. Oth- er museum curators and directors were

conflicted about how repatriation might contradict their duties to care for objects in the public trust. Still others flatly dis- missed the protests as political ploys. Large swaths of the public, however,

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sympathized with archaeology's critics, and so, too, did America's politicians.

On November 16, 1990, Congress passed NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires museums to return hu- man remains and particular kinds of sacred and communal objects to Na- tive American tribes.8 At the time, some observers estimated that anthro-

pology museums in the United States alone held the remains of more than two hundred thousand Native Amer-

ican men, women, and children. The mood in museums and anthropology departments across the country was dark for the first few years after NAGPRA took effect. Detractors predicted that museums would become empty shells - like vast libraries with no books -

and that the legislation signaled the death knell for physical anthropology. Yet with time museum professionals began to acknowledge that their worst fears were misplaced. The law required museums to compile inventories of their collections. Some museums creat-

ed a complete list of their holdings for the first time. The law required muse- ums to determine "cultural affiliations,"

the relationship between past Native American groups and present-day tribes. Physical anthropologists suddenly had more work, rather than less, often con-

ducting research on human remains in collections that had for years sat unno- ticed and untouched. The law required museums to consult with tribal political and religious leaders. For the first time many museums began an open dialogue with American Indians, learning that they shared common concerns and interests.

Controversies still emerged, most no- tably in 1996 after a nine-thousand-year- old skeleton was accidentally discovered near Kennewick, Washington.9 A con-

sortium of tribes wanted the body re- turned and reburied, while a small group of archaeologists sued to study the remains. The battle was waged in federal courtrooms for nearly a decade, and in the court of public opinion the rhetoric dwelt on issues of academic

freedom, religion versus science, and the rights of the dead. Over the last year, the University of California at Berkeley's Phoebe A. Hearst Muse- um of Anthropology was swept up in similar debates when administra-

tors sought to eliminate the museum's NAGPRA Unit, though reportedly some twelve thousand Indian bodies still

sit on storage shelves at the museum. What doesn't make front-page news is the daily burden and obligation - for tribes and museums alike - of repa- triation, a complex negotiation of law, ethics, politics, and economics. Tribes are overwhelmed by inventories listing objects and remains in the hundreds, sometimes thousands that must be

sifted through and responded to expe- diently while honoring traditional be- liefs. Museums continue to struggle balancing their legal duties with their ethical responsibilities as stewards of a public trust : to preserve, celebrate, and honor America's material past.10

A he repatriation crusade that began in earnest in the 1970s and continues to- day is arguably among the most impor- tant human rights campaigns in Ameri- can history, equal to the search for Afri- can American civil rights and equality for women, for it established that Native Americans have the same rights as all Americans, in life and in death. Repatri- ation legislation is also important to ar- chaeology's history and future, shifting the relationship between Native Ameri- cans and archaeologists and altering the flow of objects and remains away from

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museums and back to source communi-

ties.

Some have described this process as "mending the circle" of American Indi- an history and culture, a circle broken apart in the wake of colonialism, out- right war, stolen lands, forced school- ing, and imposed religion.11 Like native- language programs, a return to tradition- al farming and foods, and reclaiming sacred sites, repatriation is a means for Native Americans to salvage their past while moving forward into the future. Repatriation is a kind of restorative justice ; it is focused on the healing of breaches instead of the logic of eye- for-eye retribution. Still, repatriation raises important questions about "who owns the past," about academic free- dom and religious rights, that are far from settled.12

A year before NAGPRA was passed, Congress put into law the National Museum of the American Indian Act,

which not only guided repatriation for the Smithsonian Institution, but also established a museum to honor Native

American culture. In 2004, the Nation- al Museum of the American Indian

(nmai) opened its doors, with pride of place at the foot of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. The express goal of the museum is to work in collabo-

ration with native peoples throughout the western hemisphere to protect cul- ture by sustaining worldviews, cultivat- ing artistic expression, and empower- ing indigenous voices. From its archi- tecture to its cafeteria and exhibits, the

nmai reflects native perspectives and values while bringing wide and critical attention to the history and living tra- ditions of the Americas' first nations.

Praise for the nmai has been abun-

dant, though criticism has been plenti- ful, too. At the heart of many of these debates is an unsettled argument about

whether culture should be presented in essentialist or relativist terms. Should

objects be exhibited objectively (by out- side scholars) and hierarchically, repre- senting timeless aesthetic values - or should objects be presented subjectively (by the communities themselves) and democratically, by which the values of things are considered transitory and contingent?13 In contrast to museums such as France's new Musée du Quai Branly, which features exhibits and art of indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas from the perspective of entrenched Western notions of universal values, the NMAI makes an unambiguous commitment to the relativist presentation and inter- pretation of objects.

Whether deemed successful or not,

the NMAI clearly presents the profound transitions of museum anthropology and archaeology over the last several decades. In particular, the NMAl's col- laborative partnerships with indige- nous communities - in which "com-

munity curators" design exhibits and collection storage areas - and the mu- seum's many community-based out- reach programs represent a radical de- parture from long-held attitudes. Not musty storehouses of dead and dying cultures, museums like the NMAI pro- ject an image of indigenous peoples as vibrant. Although the NMAI has bor- rowed strategies from other institu- tions, such as the Arizona State Muse- um's soulful 1992 "Paths of Life" ex- hibit, the country's new national mu- seum, from its size to its unwavering commitment to inclusion, signifies a real and meaningful change in the pub- lic presentation of American Indians.

Ironically, many Native American tribes have transformed the traditional

tools of colonialism, archaeological sci- ence and museums, and now use them

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for their own ends. More than two hun- dred tribes across the United States have their own museums and cultural centers.

Many of these are tied to casinos, such as the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, which has a mas- sive exhibit hall, two libraries, and live

performances of contemporary art and culture. However, other museums run without casino revenue, such as the Pueblo of Zuni's A:shiwi A:wan

Museum and Heritage Center in west- ern New Mexico ; it has a humble exhib-

it space and is explicitly geared toward serving the Zuni community. In the 1970s, a handful of tribes began con- ducting their own research by develop- ing cultural resource management pro- grams, and now several dozen have active programs. Tribes have been fur- ther empowered by the 1992 amend- ments to the National Historic Preser-

vation Act, which established Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (thpo) that parallel state-level preservation ef- forts. Today, more than sixty-five tribes have gone through the rigorous process of establishing their own THPOs.

Non-native archaeologists have also begun increasingly to work closely with native communities throughout the re- search process.14 The San Pedro Ethno- history Project is one recent example of a collaborative project, conducted in partnership with four Arizona Na- tive American tribes : Hopi, San Carlos Apache, Tohono O'odham, and Zuni.15 Archaeologists have detailed the Pedro Valley's twelve thousand years of hu- man occupation, but never before had researchers systematically sought to document the traditional histories of

the region's native communities. Over the course of three years, this collabora- tion resulted in a better understanding of how descendant communities con-

ceive of their ancestors, the cultural val-

ues of place, and the historical narratives embedded in tribal traditions. Projects of this kind also put more scientifically- based archaeologists in close contact with tribes. Wesley Bernardini, for ex- ample, has used Hopi clan narratives of ancient migrations to create hypothe- ses, which can then be tested against ar- chaeological data. "At multiple points in the research, traditional knowledge raised novel possibilities that turned out to have empirical support once we knew where, and how, to look," Bernar-

dini concluded. "Incorporating Native American knowledge into archaeologi- cal research is not only a way to estab- lish a meaningful dialogue with an im- portant constituency, but a way to im- prove our collective understanding of the past."16

Only recently have Native Americans begun to see archaeology as a practicable occupation. Arthur C. Parker, of Seneca decent, was the first Native American

to become a professional archaeologist, starting his career in 1900 under the tu- telage of Harvard University's Frederic W. Putnam. While Parker was successful

as an individual - becoming a noted mu- seum director, the first president of the Society for American Archaeology, and a member of the National Academy of Sci- ences - it was decades before native peo- ple began following in his footsteps.17 Today, out of several thousand, only fif- teen archaeologists who claim Native American heritage as their primary iden- tity hold a PhD.18

To make intellectual space for na- tive participation, the concept of "indig- enous archaeology" has emerged as a fresh paradigm, encompassing any form of archaeology conducted in collabora- tion with native communities and that

challenges the historical political econ- omy of the discipline.19 Some have ar- gued that indigenous archaeology is not

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intellectually viable because it depends upon fallacies of race by perpetuating a stereotype of Indians as somehow meta- physically different (caught in cyclical thinking, innately connected to the land) from non-Indians.20 However, the special rights of indigenous commu- nities to archaeology need not be found- ed on essentialist imaginings. The lega- cies of colonialism, socio-political con- text of scientific inquiry, and insights of traditional knowledge provide a strong foundation for community-based ar- chaeology projects by, for, and with in- digenous peoples.

Despite such promising trends, the tension between archaeologists and Native Americans is often strained.

NAGPRA and the public archaeology movement have encouraged archaeol- ogists to begin meaningful dialogues with native communities, but conver-

sations on heated topics cannot always end in amity and goodwill. Profession- al archaeologists today are not the pro- genitors of injustice, but they are none- theless its inheritors. More than 32,000 Indian human remains have been repa- triated, but another 118,000 bodies con- tinue to sit on museum shelves across

the United States, as "culturally identi- fiable" remains, unclear to whom, or if, they should be returned. Incalcula- ble numbers of Indian body parts and sacred objects are stored in museums outside the United States, as there is no law to guide their repatriation. Even when objects are returned, sometimes their sudden arrival can reignite old animosities and rivalries within a na-

tive community. Museum exhibits and books continue to be produced without native input, presenting Native Ameri- cans as the timeless noble or savage oth- er. Native Americans continue to repre- sent a fraction of the archaeological pro- fession, despite the fact that most ar-

chaeology in the United States focus- es on Native American history. Native Americans continue to have their sover-

eignty undermined, struggling to protect their sacred places and cherished cultur- al landscapes from looters and develop- ers. Much progress has been made to- ward the reconciliation between Amer-

ican archaeology and Native America, but there is still much work to be done.

Xn recognition of the American As- sociation for the Advancement of Sci-

ence's 150th anniversary in 1998, Bruno Latour, in the journal Science, wrote about the difference between science and research :

Science is certainty; Research is uncer- tainty. Science is supposed to be cold, straight and detached; Research is warm, involving and risky. Science puts an end

to the vagaries of human disputes ; Re- search fuels controversies by more con- troversies. Science produces objectivity by escaping as much as possible from the shackles of ideology, passions and emo- tions ; Research feeds on all of those as

so many handles to render familiar new objects of enquiry.

He distinguishes science as an ideal, an abstract goal of uncorrupted objec- tivity, and research as the messy reality of our projects. As archaeologists have come to recognize the multifaceted so- cial context and historical contingen- cies of their discipline, many have come to see their work as a craft, a dynam- ic process of creation. In the previous model, society was divorced from sci- ence ; in the research model society is inseparable. 'One cliché says it all," Latour explains, "in one palace, Gali- leo deals with the fate of falling bod- ies while, in another palace, princes, cardinals and philosophers deal with the fate of human souls."21

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Nearly since the founding of modern archaeology, its practitioners have de- bated whether the discipline is art or science, in search of a common human- ity or in search of universal laws. At dif- ferent points in the profession's histo- ry, certain sides of this debate have held rein. In the 1970s, "processual archae- ology" drew the field to the natural sci- ences; in the 1980s, "post-processual ar- chaeology" swayed scholars to the hu- manities. Today, many archaeologists work from both traditions, though it is unclear if the field has profitably syn- thesized these different ways of know- ing the past, or if the field suffers from acute schizophrenia.

The history of the relationship be- tween Native Americans and Ameri-

can archaeologists makes plain that the field cannot return to a time of

innocence, or view itself as detached from society and politics. This realiza- tion, however, does not mean that re-

search with the goals and methods of science cannot proceed. Indigenous

archaeology - as well as its cousins fem- inist, collaborative, and community- based archaeologies - provides an ep- ochal path through the wilderness of the discipline's future, a blending of the arts and sciences that will create

more just and accurate understand- ings of the past and the nature of our material world.

In the United States, this change in perspective allows us to move beyond the stereotypes of Indians, so long a source of spectacle in the American imagination. One only has to think of James Fenimore Cooper's last Mo- hican or the University of Illinois' s mascot Chief Illiniwek to trace this

troubling legacy. The collection, study, and display of Indians further objecti- fied Indians, transforming them into things of morbid curiosity and scien- tific inquiry. It is time to move on. Ar- chaeologists must no longer see Indi- ans as mere objects of study; they must no longer see Indians without seeing their humanity.

Reconciling American

archaeology & Native America

ENDNOTES

1 William Bradford, A Relation orjournall of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Planta- tion Setled at Plimoth in New England, by Certaine English Aduenturers both Merchants and Oth- ers (London : John Bellamie, 1622).

2 Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Massacre at Camp Grant: Forgetting and Remembering Apache History (Tucson : University of Arizona Press, 2007) ; Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn : A Bor- derlands Massacre and the Violence of History (New York : Penguin, 2008).

3 Russell Thornton, "Who Owns Our Past? The Repatriation of Native American Human Remains and Cultural Objects," in Studying Native America : Problems and Prospects, ed. Thornton (Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 385 - 415.

4 David Hurst Thomas, Skull Wars : Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native Amer- ican Identity (New York : Basic Books, 2000).

5 Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, "The Incorporation of the Native American Past : Cultural Extermination, Archaeological Protection, and the Antiquities Act of 1906," International Journal of Cultural Property 12 (3) (2005) : 375 - 391 ; David Harmon, Francis P. McManamon, and Dwight T. Pitcaithley, eds., The Antiquities Act : A Century of American Archaeology, His- toric Preservation, and Nature Conservation (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006).

6 "Among the Cottagers of Long Island's Fashionable Colonies," The New York Times, August 31, 1902.

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Chip Colwell- Chantha-

phonh

7 R. F. Langford, "Our Heritage - Your Playground," Australian Archaeology 16 (1983) : 1 - 6.

8 Kathleen S. Fine-Dare, Grave Injustice : The American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002); Greg Johnson, Sacred Claims: Repatriation and Living Tradition (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007) ; Devon A. Mihesuah, ed., Repatriation Reader: Who Owns American Indian Remains ? (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).

9 Susan B. Bruning, "Complex Legal Legacies : The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, Scientific Study, and Kennewick Man," American Antiquity 71 (3) (2006) : 501 - 521 ; Joe Watkins, "Becoming American or Becoming Indian? NAGPRA, Kennewick, and Cultural Affiliation," Journal of Social Archaeology 4(1) (2004) : 60 - 80 ; Larry J. Zim- merman, "Public Heritage, a Desire for a 'White' History of America, and Some Impacts of the Kennewick Man/ Ancient One Decision," International Journal of Cultural Property 12 (2) (2005) : 261 - 270.

10 Karen D. Vitelli and Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, eds., Archaeological Ethics (Lanham, Md. : AltaMira Press, 2006).

11 Barbara Meister, ed., Mending the Circle : A Native American Repatriation Guide (New York : American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation, 1996).

12 Michael F. Brown, Who Owns Native Culture? (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2003).

X3 Richard Handler, "On the Valuing of Museum Objects," Museum Anthropology 16 (1) (1992): 21-28.

14 Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh and T. J. Ferguson, eds., Collaboration in Archaeological Prac- tice: Engaging Descendant Communities (Lanham, Md. : AltaMira Press, 2008) ; Kurt E. Don- goske, Mark Aldenderfer, and Karen Doehner, eds., Working Together : Native Americans and Archaeologists (Washington, D.C. : Society for American Archaeology, 2000) ; Jordan E. Kerber, ed., Cross -Cultural Collaboration : Native Peoples and Archaeology in the Northeastern United States (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006).

15 T. J. Ferguson and Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, History is in the Land: Multivocal Tribal Traditions in Arizona s San Pedro Valley (Tucson : University of Arizona Press, 2006).

16 Wesley Bernardini, Hopi Oral Tradition and the Archaeology of Identity (Tucson : University of Arizona Press, 2005).

17 Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Inheriting the Past : The Making of Arthur C. Parker and Indige- nous Archaeology (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009).

18 Dorothy Lippert, "Building a Bridge to Cross a Thousand Years," American Indian Quarterly 30 (3 - 4) (2006) : 431 - 440 ; Dorothy Lippert, "Not the End, Not the Middle, But the Be- ginning : Repatriation as a Transformative Mechanism for Archaeologists and Indigenous Peoples," in Collaboration in Archaeological Practice, ed. Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Fergu- son, 119-130.

19 Sonya Atalay, "Indigenous Archaeology as Decolonizing Practice," American Indian Quar- terly 30 (3 - 4) (2006) : 280 - 310 ; Stephen W. Silliman, ed., Collaborating at the Trowel's Edge : Teaching and Learning in Indigenous Archaeology (Tucson : University of Arizona Press, 2008) ; Joe Watkins, Indigenous Archaeology : American Indian Values and Scientific Practice (Walnut Creek, Calif. : AltaMira Press, 2000).

20 Robert McGhee, "Aboriginalism and the Problems of Indigenous Archaeology," American Antiquity 73 (4) (2008) : 579 - 597-

21 Bruno Latour, "From the World of Science to that of Research?" Science 280 (5361) (1998) : 208-209.

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