Decolonizing Archaeology: Learning from Indigenous Land and Water Epistemology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Congress: Multivocal Conversations Furthering the World Archaeological Congress Agenda" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Ongoing colonization of the environment and natural resources has negatively impacted environmental heritage rights in many parts of the world, particularly Indigenous environmental rights and their relationships with the environment. For many Indigenous communities, the history of colonialism became a history of dispossession for Indigenous peoples, their land, water, traditional knowledge, and practice. This paper addresses the ongoing environmental heritage conflict between the Cree First Nation communities’ traditional environmental heritage practices and developmental energy projects in Saskatchewan, Canada. Drawing from a relational research framework, I shared my learning reflections from Cree First Nation Communities on how energy projects (particularly pipeline leaks) have negatively impacted Indigenous land, water, and traditional heritage and practices. In this paper, I focus my learnings from the Cree First Nation communities on the following questions: Why and how do developmental projects neglect Indigenous heritage rights, particularly environmental heritage rights? What can be or should be done about it? What are our responsibilities as researchers and educators? In this study, I learned about traditional knowledge-based consultation and solutions to the ongoing challenges of incorporating Indigenous interests into environmental heritage to foster Indigenous environmental heritage rights.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeological Congress: Multivocal Conversations Furthering the World Archaeological Congress Agenda   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36416.0