Digging into My Past: Archaeology and Humanism in the Canadian Arctic

Abstract

SUMMARYThe legal battles ensuing from the discovery of the “Kennewick Man” brought mass media attention to a longstanding divide between the science of archaeology and contemporary indigenous peoples. In this essay, I reflect on this divide as experienced from the perspective of a student of archaeology who later became a cultural anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of Inuit/settler relations in Nunavut. Building on the concept of community‐oriented approaches to archaeology, I examine how a humanistic approach to archaeological data can further unite indigenous peoples and professional archaeology.