Clovis Comet Debate - The Archaeological Conservancy

george nicHolaS
Values and Scientific Practice, called “one of the first salvos
from American Indian groups for control of their own
history and their cultural artifacts.” Two years later, Native
Americans disrupted excavations in Welch, Minnesota, and
another group occupied the Southwest Museum in Los
Angeles to protest the display of sacred artifacts.
These and other conflicts over the control of artifacts
continued in subsequent decades. Among the most contentious
was the fight over a 9,400-year-old skeleton that
washed out of an eroded riverbank along the Columbia
River in 1996. The Army Corps of Engineers assumed control
of the skeleton, named Kennewick Man, and announced its
intention to repatriate the bones to five local tribes. Eight
non-native scientists filed a lawsuit to stop this, marking the
first in a series of suits, findings, and plans for the disposition
of the site and the remains.
The divide between native and non-native claims over
artifacts has long deterred many young Native Americans
from entering the field of archaeology. But that began to
change in the 1980s and 1990s—more indigenous students
entered the field, in part to become gatekeepers to their own
heritage. For 16 years, George Nicholas directed an archaeological
program on a small satellite campus that Simon
Fraser University opened on the Kamloops reserve in British
Columbia. “What I saw emerge beginning in the 1990s was
that more First Nations or Native Americans were seeking the
tools by which they could start to do archaeology,” Nicholas
said. “My philosophy was: here are the tools of archaeology,
but it’s not my expectation that you use these tools in the
same way I use them.”
Watkins defines indigenous archaeology as “archaeology
that takes into account indigenous perspectives on the past
and discussing the relationships between the past and contemporary
society.” He doesn’t believe that traditional and
indigenous archaeology need be mutually exclusive. “I think
they can be bridged as long as neither one presumes the
other to be wrong,” he said. ”I think a problem arises when
we dismiss traditional knowledge out of hand at the beginning
rather than wondering if there’s some way the two of
them can work together.”
What indigenous archaeology is not may be easier to
grasp than what it is. Nicholas’ encyclopedia entry defining
indigenous archaeology now runs more than 5,000 words.
“Indigenous archaeology is an expression of archaeological
theory and practice,” the entry begins, “in which the
discipline intersects with indigenous values, knowledge,
practices, ethics, and sensibilities, and through collaborative
and community-originated or -directed projects, and related
critical perspectives.”
“It’s a really slippery thing,” Nicholas admitted. ”But you
know it when you see it.”
rob e rt mcghe e, t h e f o r m e r cu r at o r o f
Arctic Archaeology at the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa,
Field school students at Simon Fraser University’s Kamloops Indigenous Archaeology Program review the day’s excavation results.
american archaeology 39