Building on Basso: Ndee Place-Making as Cultural Persistence and Survivance

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Persistent Places: Relationships, Atmospheres, and Affects" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Ndee Place-based understandings of the past, present, and future are ageless and enduring. In his book Wisdom sits in Places (1996) Keith Basso explains the moral and social underpinnings of Ndee ties to place through topography and storytelling. However, in reference to present and future intersections with Ndee worldview how do we build on Basso’s seminal work contemporaneously? Are there ongoing forms of Ndee placemaking that are expressed through current cultural preservation and maintenance activities? How do persistent places speak to the contemporary wants and needs of Indigenous communities? How might past and present agricultural practices and exertions of food sovereignty evoke senses of place important to concerns of climate change and overall Ndee identity? Heavily researched and extracted Ancestral Pueblo areas within the Ndee landscape provide ongoing intergenerational connections that speak to broad present-day tribal issues beyond archaeological research goals. This paper attempts to foreground place through the powerful lenses of Ndee place-based realities grounded in a multitude of “persistent relationalities” that speak to essence of Ndee life and what is needed to maintain such connections in perpetuity for overall Ndee well-being.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Rethinking Persistent Places: Relationships, Atmospheres, and Affects   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38375.0