The Way Forward: Native and Non-Native Collaboration as well as Multi-disciplinary Research Strategies

Summary

As Native peoples assert their sovereignty over intellectual property as well as land and water, relationships between them and anthropologists are entering a new era characterized by collaboration as well as conflict. Ethical anthropologists in North America recognize that they need to secure tribal/First Nations permission for their research. Sometimes permission is granted only for projects of interest to the tribes themselves. And sometimes publication of that research for a wider audience may be restricted or denied. But the benefits of collaboration result in a much richer understanding of Native and non-Native relations, one informed and shaped by the perspectives of Native people themselves.

The Hopi Tribe of Arizona has been insisting on such collaboration for decades now. Nonetheless, some scholars working on the Hopi people continue to ignore such ethical guidelines and understandings. We argue that Southwestern archaeology, cultural anthropology, and ethnohistory will never progress beyond the limitations of Western epistemologies and lines of evidence biased by Western ethnocentrism and silences until collaboration is embraced and institutionalized as the only ethical and productive way to understand our shared pasts and presents. We discuss Moquis and Kastiilam: The Hopi History Project as one example of such collaboration.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20386