Transforming Archaeological Institutions: The Path toward Tribal Collaboration

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology: How Native American Knowledge Enhances Our Collective Understanding of the Past" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeology Southwest has elevated “Collaboration with Tribes” to the highest priority in our strategic plan. That is easy to do on paper, but we have found that multiple transformations at the organizational and staff levels are needed to implement this goal. It’s a process that Archaeology Southwest has embarked upon, but the path toward this goal is neither simple nor straightforward. We provide a historical overview of our trajectory over our 35 years as an institution. Our primary focus is on the past decade, where research, advocacy, landscape-scale preservation, public outreach, and even fundraising are part of this strategic imperative. A key step in our process has been diversifying our staff and board—an effort that is ongoing. Another step is the development of a Tribal Collaboration Model, by a team led by two Indigenous staff members and now accessible on our website. We have begun to implement the model using a simple form that compels staff to carefully consider four Indigenous kinship values (relationship, responsibility, reciprocity, and redistribution) at the outset of a new project to define specific collaborative elements and actions. The goal of this paper is to provide practical approaches to this important process of institutional transformation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Collaborative Archaeology: How Native American Knowledge Enhances Our Collective Understanding of the Past   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38716.0