Indigenous Archaeology, Memory, and Ethnoarchaeology: A Multivocal Research in Collaboration with the Guarani for Land Repatriation in Brazil

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Food, Land, and Communities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This presentation explores my ethnoarchaeological research on a long-term interdisciplinary project in collaboration with Guarani communities toward Indigenous land repatriation in Brazil and offers a case study of a collaboration designed within the framework of Indigenous archaeological approaches. The project’s planning and fieldwork were carried out with the participation of the Guarani, and during the research, their memory, oral traditions, perspectives, and interpretations were incorporated into the reports produced in support of a legal claim to their territory occupied throughout the past 1,000 years. Guarani resilience is presented here through a discussion of their sociopolitical struggle for land and indigenous rights. During fieldwork, the Guarani identified examples of plants (including for medicine), animals, deities, and other cosmological beings, demonstrating their strong relationships with these sacred landscapes, which are essential to the continuity and maintenance of their Ñandé Rekó (the way of being Guarani). Decolonization is a fundamental aspect of Indigenous archaeology, and I argue that archaeologists can play a socially responsible role at the community level by engaging with descendant communities, by reshaping archaeological theory and practice as scholarly activism, and by recognizing that archaeology speaks not only about the past but also for those people who now embody it.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Cultivating Food, Land, and Communities

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38384.0