Overcoming Hindrances to Our Enduring Responsibility to the Ancestors: Protecting Traditional Cultural Places

As first voiced by activists in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s and then sustained by other Native American leaders throughout the rest of the twentieth century, many Native American communities object to archaeological excavations and the wanton destruction of their traditional cultural places.¹ These objections attempted to alleviate one symptom of the larger illness that was plaguing the United States, an illness that silenced the Indigenous histories that contradicted the national story.² The national narrative distorted the Indigenous role by describing Native American peoples as helpless characters facing extinction during U.S. nation-building, when in reality, they were active and assertive participants.³ Not surprisingly, Native Americans have felt unwelcome in national museums that replicated this misleading history. National museums seek to identify commonalties among groups so that they can see themselves as a unified whole. However, Native American communities did not feel a part of the "unified" history trying to engulf them. Instead, as one Native American artist told anthropologist Michael Ames:

We don't feel at home in your museums—any of them—because they don't tell our story. When you talk about origins you refer to archaeology and the Bering Straits, and the "origin myths," "legends" and "prehistory." We don't know anything about the Bering Straits or about myths and legends. We know who we are and where we come from. Our Elders tell us that. They speak in truths, not in myths.⁴

Backed by postcolonial theories that investigate the censure of alternative histories and reject the imperialist production of "the past," Native Americans demanded that they no longer be excluded from these stories.⁵

Native Americans and Archaeology

In recognition of archaeology as a colonial and imperialistic tool, a small segment of the archaeological community, with Indigenous collaborators, have begun the self-reflexive task of redefining archaeological methods and theories to include multiple voices in the interpretation of the past.⁶ These voices include Indigenous descendent communities as well as other marginalized populations within the United States, Canada, and Australia.⁷ Decolonized research agendas acknowledge issues such as power, control, and authority in archaeological interpretation and recognize that Native people must have a seat at the research table because their participation creates a more inclusive and nuanced depiction of the past.⁸

For the past fifteen years, archaeologists and their Native American collaborators have described, in numerous conference papers and articles, their experiences using a postcolonial framework and have reported "silver linings" or positive "insights" gained. For example, many have found that communication is hindered by the continued use of colonial language, words used to describe cultural phenomena that do not reflect or acknowledge Indigenous perspectives.⁹ These reports go on to state that by incorporating their "insights" into future interactions, conflicts can be avoided. However, the observations provided are solely anecdotal, personal experiences used as examples on how to create mutually beneficial relationships. Although these observations are considered pivotal to successful communication, other unidentified factors may in fact be more significant, thus limiting the applicability of these "insights" to other situations.¹⁰

The Problem

Although postcolonial theories have exposed the biases of Western-oriented research designs, resulting in the creation of new Indigenous-oriented frameworks, no work currently exists that describes in detail how one creates a foundation on which to build these collaborative projects.¹¹ In other words, we know the goals that need to be accomplished (e.g., the incorporation of Indigenous ways of knowing) and have identified the characteristics of successful collaborations (e.g., acknowledgment of and reacting accordingly to Native American communication patterns); however, we have not identified the process used to accomplish these outcomes.¹²

After reviewing data collected from two groups, Wana Pa Koot Koot and Payos Kuus C'uukwe, comprising Native American tribal representatives, federal archaeologists, federal cultural resources managers, and other federal employees, I found that theories and terms from social and cognitive psychology provide archaeologists with a way to explain and understand the processes occurring during successful interactions that previously had not been identified...