Itom Hiaki Lutu'uria: Validating Archaeology with Our Yaqui Truth

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.

Non-indigenous anthropology and historiography of the Yaqui people has concentrated on two foci: sixteenth-century resistance to Spanish conquest followed by supposed wholehearted acceptance of Jesuit Catholicism in southern Sonora, and late nineteenth- / early twentieth-century migration from Mexico to the United States to escape Porfirian genocide. This has resulted in a narrative of Yaquis as foreign refugees in the United States that ignores Yaqui traditional understandings and significant historic and archaeological evidence. Itom Hiaki Lutu’uria, Our Yaqui Truth, tells of Hiaki ancestors traveling, trading, and living among other communities throughout the Sonoran Desert region and beyond for many centuries before the arrival of European invaders. As part of a Pascua Yaqui Tribe-sponsored effort to expand understanding of Yaqui history, we are documenting oral traditions and reconsidering archaeological data and historic records that illuminate the ancient Yaqui presence across the greater Southwest.

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)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38266.0