Transformation of the Discipline

As a private, not-for-profit research and educational organization, Crow Canyon is in a unique position to influence transformation in the field. With the resources, expertise, and partnerships to design and execute large, multivocal research projects, educational programs, and Indigenous partnerships, we can establish new values and standards of practice for our work that are consistent with Indigenous efforts toward decolonization. Critical among such standards is a commitment to authentic reciprocity with Indigenous partners and communities. In this transformation, our values and practices would not only reflect integration of Indigenous and Western approaches to precolonial history and collaboration with Native scholars but also dictate that our work explicitly benefit Indigenous people and communities. A frequently asked question in our webinar lecture series at Crow Canyon is: “Why are you telling this story instead of a Native person?” The answer to this question, which is often uncomfortable to presenters, is privilege. Colonialism spawned the study of Native people by non-Native people, and that legacy continues to this day. A thoughtful consideration of this fact begs the questions: Is there ever a noncolonialist way to study the histories of other cultures? Does advancing knowledge of the human past only benefit the dominant culture? Does it ever benefit Indigenous people to have non-Native people involved in this practice? The transformation we seek involves facing these questions and incorporating them into practices that (1) commit to reciprocating the contributions of Indigenous people to the discipline and careers of non-Natives; (2) actively acknowledge our privilege and the atrocities of colonialism that gave rise to our field of study; (3) seek to achieve social justice outcomes in our work; and (4) recognize the high social and cultural costs of excavation to descendant communities.

Crow Canyon’s Mission and Social Justice

As noted by Ryan (this volume) in the introductory chapter 1, the mission of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center is to empower present and future generations by making the human past accessible and relevant through archaeological research, experiential education, and American Indian knowledge. The essence of Crow Canyon’s mission is to draw on knowledge of the past as a vehicle for empowerment, on the premise that for history to be empowering people must be able to access it and it must be relevant to the challenges of the present and the future. This guiding philosophy reflects our belief that the study of the human past is intrinsically worthwhile, contributes to an informed and sustainable world, and produces leaders who engage in critical thinking. Our mission statement is the launching point for action. What measurably beneficial results can be achieved by making the human past accessible and relevant for Indigenous people and communities?

It matters who is making the past accessible to students and the public. While Crow Canyon has invited Native people to participate in our mission work since our inception, and created the Native American Advisory Group in 1995, there have been only a handful of full-time Indigenous employees and trustees in the last forty years. There are few contributions from Native scholars in this volume. Transformation in the practice of archaeology requires authentic Indigenous representation, without putting the onus on Native people to fix our problems. It is up to us to change our approach to mission delivery in a way that creates desirable opportunities for Native people that are compatible with individual commitments to community and culture. Theresa Pasqual, a longtime advisor to Crow Canyon from the Pueblo of Acoma, has explained to us that the movement to seek and train Indigenous Archaeologists to counter non-Native influence in writing history and managing archaeological sites didn’t entirely solve the problem. Balancing the actions required of people in their home communities against their work in Western academic, government, and business settings is tremendously challenging. There are at least three ways that Crow Canyon can take action to ameliorate these challenges.

First is a commitment to work with Native candidates for our staff and board to craft culturally suitable expectations for participation in projects and programs. Organizations regularly make accommodations to recruit and retain non-Native experts on their staff. Shifting workplan models can create opportunities for Native staff to succeed without making extraordinary sacrifices to family and community. Alaska Native Corporations, led by entirely Native Boards, employ both Native and non-Native staff yet adjust typical paid time off policies to accommodate the need for subsistence leave among Native employees. Traditional subsistence practices at different times of the year continue to be important for cultural continuity and providing traditional foods to families and communities. These Native-led organizations don’t force employees to choose between a lucrative and largely “Western” influenced job and participating in important cultural practices.

A second way Crow Canyon can be useful came up during a College Field School class taught by Pasqual. We posed the question: “Is it ever useful to Indigenous people to have non-Natives studying their history?” The question led to the exchange of nervous glances among largely non-Native college students majoring in anthropology. Pasqual explained that a certain form of advocacy by non-Native scholars has the potential to be useful. Tribes in the Southwest have an ongoing need to be heard and taken seriously by federal agencies with respect to matters of cultural affiliation, traditional lands, and repatriation. Non-Native experts in Native precolonial history are often at the table with agency decision makers and Tribal representatives. Using our standing to validate the legitimacy of Native perspectives can be helpful, but it is more helpful to step back and quietly promote the importance of the agency hearing from the Tribal representatives first. Most of Native history taught in schools and universities was not written by Native people; yet there is an abundance of Indigenous scholarship to be cited, supported, and highlighted in any study of Indigenous history—particularly the reevaluation of long-held positions in archaeology by descendant scholars.

Knowing when to step back is a cultural competency. A third way that Crow Canyon can take meaningful action to reciprocate what we have received from Indigenous knowledge is to make Native cultural competency a prerequisite for working at or holding a board position at Crow Canyon and a necessary component of our educational programs that serve students and the public. Native American (Comanche) activist LaDonna Harris founded an organization called Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO) in 1970 that brings Indigenous values to bear on contemporary challenges. Now led by her daughter Laura Harris, AIO teaches Native cultural competencies to non-Native organizations and people. Their mission is to “advance, from an Indigenous worldview, the cultural, political, and economic rights of Indigenous peoples in the United States and around the world (https://aio.org/mission/).” It is our belief that furthering cultural competency and cultural understanding combats racism. Actively modeling and teaching antiracist behavior in the context of teaching Native precolonial history and culture amplify our mission and the potential to have a positive impact on Indigenous rights.

Future Directions at Crow Canyon: Organizational History, Research, Education, and American Indian Initiatives

As Susan Ryan explains in her introductory chapter, “It is our hope that future directions presented here will guide Southwestern archaeology and public education beyond current practices—particularly regarding Indigenous archaeology practices and Indigenous partnerships—and provide strategic directions, to guide Crow Canyon into the mid-twenty-first century and beyond.” The authors in this volume have provided a roadmap pointing us toward the future of impactful work at this unique and “forever” organization.

The organizational history described by Lightfoot and Lipe, in chapter 2, and Kohler, Lightfoot, Varien, and Lipe, in chapter 3, explains the beginnings of large-scale, longitudinal archaeological research involving numerous scholars that persisted and evolved throughout the last forty years, culminating in one of the largest archaeological datasets in North America (Ryan, chapter 1 in this volume). Our vision is to deploy Crow Canyon’s history in service to the future. We have a moral imperative to extend the impact of forty years of data collected from the ancestors and descendants of the Indigenous people of the Southwest. Our database is free and accessible to the public, and many scholars have used it to address relevant research questions and develop educational curricula. We will continue to develop partnerships and associations with external stakeholders who draw on our database to expand knowledge of the history of this landscape, while we continue to mine this rich dataset internally with the goal of reciprocity. As Suina notes in chapter 7, “Modern-day Pueblo interest in the scientific explanation of their ancestors is greater than ever before.” While not all Pueblos share this interest, Crow Canyon is uniquely positioned to provide support.

The chapters in the community and regional research and human-environment relationship studies sections of this volume explore topics that are relevant in our discipline and world affairs and have potential to contribute meaningfully to current priorities of many Indigenous communities and interest groups. Research into how social cohesion was achieved among diverse migrants by ancestral people (Schleher, Diederichs, Hughes, and Lyle, chapter 10) and into the long and deliberate process of integration into regional systems (Throgmorton, Wilshusen, and Coffey, chapter 11) contributes ancient perspectives to modern challenges. Such research also demonstrates the extraordinary ingenuity, creativity, and nuance of the direct ancestors of contemporary Pueblo people who have continuously drawn on such qualities to maintain cultural continuity in the face of deliberate attempts by non-Natives to eradicate Indigenous people and cultures. The long-term research described by Glowacki, Coffey, and Varien (chapter 12) on community center organization and change expands understanding of the sophistication and geographic reach of the ancestral Pueblo villages in the central Mesa Verde region “and the important social, religious, economic, and political roles they played in Pueblo life and history in the region.” There is a tremendous amount of research in this volume that shines light on the complex combinations of social, political, environmental, and demographic factors, including significant fear and violence, that influenced the critical decision making and strategy development of ancestral Pueblo people (Potter, Varien, Coffey, and Bocinsky, chapter 13; Schleher, Linford, Coffey, Kuckelman, Ortman, Till, Varien, and Merewether, chapter 14; Arakawa, Merewether, and Hughes, chapter 15; Adler and Hegmon, chapter 16; Lekson, chapter 17; Bellorado and Windes, chapter 18; Kuckelman, chapter 19; Badenhorst, Driver, and Wolverton, chapter 20; Schollmeyer and Driver, chapter 21; Oas and Adams, chapter 22).

These authors are aware of the tremendous ingenuity, resilience, complexity, and value of Pueblo communities and culture in the past, present, and future, and they recognize the unbroken link between precolonial and modern Pueblo people. Regrettably, not all the public shares this recognition. Institutional racism and false representation of Indigenous history that privilege colonial narratives and downplay the significance of precolonial cultures continue to influence public perception. To teach Indigenous history accurately, let alone in equal measure to European history, is to expose the brutality of colonialism and the failed attempts to erase some of the most unique cultures in the world. The same qualities of the ancestral Pueblo described in this volume contribute to the persistence and revitalization of Indigenous culture and current claims for sovereignty and the return of Native lands and resources.

The future direction of research at Crow Canyon will involve evaluating how the data we possess can be used to overcome the obstacles created by colonialism. This points directly to the value and future potential of education and public archaeology. The history of education at Crow Canyon described by Franklin shows the value of engaging research and education simultaneously within one organization. Experiential education, inquiry pedagogy, and situated learning are practiced in the context of active research, drawing students and “citizen scientists” into the process of knowledge creation through the scientific method, multivocal perspectives, and oral traditions of descendant communities. The “affective lens” that Franklin introduced to Crow Canyon will continue to drive the future of our educational programs because of the demonstrated power of emotion to shift perception. The goals expressed by Patterson, Franklin, and Hammond, in chapter 9, to foster a greater understanding of our shared humanity in young learners is critical to teaching antiracist behaviors.

The future direction of American Indian initiatives is about reciprocity. Suina aptly notes in chapter 7 that ancestral Pueblo culture makes up most of our work at Crow Canyon—we would not exist without it. The Pueblo Farming Project—described in chapter 4 by Ermigiotti, Varien, Coffey, Bocinsky, Kuwanwisiwma, and Koyiyumptewa—arose from asking our Pueblo partners what interested them most that Crow Canyon could investigate, and the answer was corn farming. This project and collaborations such as the one between Kuwanwisiwma and Bernardini, in chapter 5, set the stage for future endeavors that are mutually beneficial and characterized by equal partnership—a necessary condition for Indigenous sovereignty (Suina, chapter 7 in this volume). Similarly, Ortman, in chapter 6, suggests starting inquiries into the past with an Indigenous perspective, which will benefit Western scientists who have learned to value Indigenous ways of knowing. At Crow Canyon, we intend to ensure that Indigenous people also benefit from our adoption of their lens. Hypervigilance is warranted to ensure that “adoption” does not become “appropriation” with no tangible benefit to Indigenous goals for equality and sovereignty. Adopting Indigenous perspectives to guide scientific inquiry should have a deliberate goal of legitimizing oral history and Indigenous values such that they are not treated as “less than” in policy making. Ultimately, Crow Canyon will embrace the guidance of Suina “to begin building a trusting relationship that can only come about by sitting together and sharing concerns and dreams.”

Conclusion: Social Relevance Is Not Social Justice

Crow Canyon’s mission is founded on the assumption that if knowledge of our shared human past is accessible and relevant to people, that knowledge is empowering. In our next forty years, our work is to direct that knowledge in ways that contribute meaningfully and measurably to Indigenous social justice. The practice of archaeology originated from colonialism and the oppression of Indigenous people by our European ancestors. If we are to continue to practice this discipline, the next revolution in archaeology must be about reciprocity and reparation. Relevance is not enough—archaeology can be relevant and still reproduce the conditions of injustice. Given the history of the discipline, and the fact that some archaeological scholarship still represents Indigenous cultures as “dead,” we believe we have a moral imperative to use the skills and knowledge we were privileged to obtain to teach and disseminate accurate histories of Native people to reduce ignorance, racism, and the harms that come from misrepresentation.

You don’t need to look far to find academic and popular writing today about how Indigenous values, traditional lifeways, subsistence practices, and sociocultural frameworks hold the solutions to global catastrophes created by non-Native societies. Climate change, food insecurity, immigration, social conflict, and other challenges have all been faced by Indigenous cultures, and their solutions are largely unique and different from Western solutions. The ongoing effects of colonialism constrain traditional solutions in contemporary Native communities, even as we seek to appropriate those solutions for global use. While on the one hand it seems positive that Indigenous lifeways are increasingly valued by the Western world, there is danger in valuing the Native lifeway but not the Native person, just as archaeologists have valued the sites of the ancestors but not their descendants. The future of archaeology at Crow Canyon is recognition of privilege, reparation for the behavior of the founders of our discipline, and reciprocity for the benefits we have received from Indigenous people past and present.