Decolonizing the Past and Present of the Western Hemisphere (The Americas)

Abstract

Until very recently, archaeologists argued that the first people to enter the Western Hemisphere walked across the Bering Land Bridge from Siberia after 13,200 calBP, bringing with them fluted Clovis tools. However, there are many problematic areas of this archaeological story: one being that fluted Clovis tools have never been found outside of the Western Hemisphere, another being that in North and South America there are published reports of hundreds of pre-13,200 calBP sites which meet or exceed archaeological standards for dating, stratigraphy, and cultural artifacts. The field of Pleistocene archaeological studies in the Americas has historically been described as a battleground littered with academic causalities. Archaeologists have only recently conceded that Indigenous people were present in the Western Hemisphere a few 1000 years prior to Clovis. This is, however, the same scenario as the Clovis First hypothesis regarding diminishing the time frames of initial migrations; it is just a few 1000 years earlier than Clovis. This scenario reproduces and maintains archaeological power and control over the Indigenous past. Contrary to the traditional discussions of First People in the Western Hemisphere, my research questions are not about where the first people came from and when. I argue that the first people and their descendants are indigenous to the continents of the Western Hemisphere and have been so for thousands of years, this is where they are from. I argue that there is a vast body of evidence for much earlier migrations which is ignored a priori mainly due to embedded “nonfactual” colonially constructed histories which erased an ancient Indigenous presence. I further argue that archaeological discussions which diminish an ancient Indigenous presence in the Western Hemisphere rupture contemporary people’s connections to their ancestral past. I discuss the history of American Anthropology to support my argument that this academic battle is not just about archaeological sites or material remains. The argument reflects an ongoing colonial practice of erasure and denies Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere a place in ancient world history.