The need for a non-militant indigenous historical archaeology in Latin America and beyond. Response to Felix Acuto

List of Illustrations Introduction: What is to be done? Elements for a discussion. Cristobal Gnecco and Patricia Ayala. Entrance (Exit): Indigenous Archaeology and Peasant Power. Alejandro F. Haber. Part I: When Material Culture Matters: the State, Indigenous Peoples, and Archaeologists 1. Ruins and the State: archaeology of a Mexican symbiosis. Federico Navarrete. 2. Native Histories and Archaeologists. Cristobal Gnecco. 3. Indigenous Archaeology... in Peru? Alexander Herrera. 4. Turning Tables in Search of Dialogue: The Making of Indiscrete Spaces in Latin American Contexts. Dante Angelo. 5. The Indigenous Other in Atacameno Archaeology. Patricia Ayala. 6. Building Dialogues across Contradicting Interests in Northern Chile: An Experience and Some Preliminary Thoughts. Diego Salazar. 7. Reflections on Chilean Legislation and the Indigenous Archaeological Heritage: An Archaeologist's Viewpoint. Luis E. Cornejo. 8. Archaeology and Indigenous Communities: A Comparative Study of Argentinean and Brazilian Legislation. Maria Luz Endere, Placido Cali, and Pedro Paulo A. Funari. 9. Indigenous Knowledge and Archaeological Science: The Challenges of Public Archaeology in the Area Indigena do Uaca. Lesley Fordred Green, David R. Green, and Eduardo Goes Neves. Part II: Indigenous Archaeology, Archaeology for Indigenous Peoples 10. Vindications of a Mesoamerican Marginal Group: The Otomies from the Valley of the Mezquital. Fernando Lopez Aguilar. 11. Indigenous Archaeologies or the Fight against the Third Transformation of Faust: Reflections from Colombian and Argentinean Communities. Wilhelm Londono. 12. Archaeology and Identity: The Case of the Guambianos. Luis Guillermo Vasco. 13. Indigenous Representations of the Archaeological Record: Spectral Reflections of Postmodernity in Ecuador. O. Hugo Benavides. 14. Archaeological Ruins: Spaces of the Past, Expectations of the Future. Tourism and Heritage in Nor Lipez (Dpt. Of Potosi, Bolivia). Francisco M. Gil Garcia. 15. The message of the Kuviche in the Llew-Llew. Juana Paillalef Carinao. 16. Archaeology and Caboclo Populations in Amazonia: Regimes of Historical Transformation and the Dilemmas of Self Representation. Denise Maria Cavalcante Gomes. 17. Archaeology and Paresi Cultural Heritage. Flavia Prado Moi and Walter Fagundes Morales. Exit (Entrance): Bolivian Archaeology: Another Link in the Chain of Coloniality? Marcelo Fernandez-Osco. Appendix: Declaration of Rio Cuarto Index About the Authors

What has become known as “indigenous archaeology” took form in the 1990s through efforts to ensure a place for descendent communities in the discovery, interpretation of, benefits from, and decision making about their heritage. This followed growing public awareness of the plight of indigenous peoples worldwide, the passage of federal legislation to protect tribal interests, and a commitment by anthropologists and archaeologists to counter the colonial legacy of their disciplines. Since its inception, indigenous archaeology has grown considerably in scope and become more nuanced in its practice; in the early 21st century, it garners much attention in discussions of heritage management, stewardship, collaborative research practices, indigeneity, postcolonialism, and the sociopolitics of archaeology, among other topics. Indigenous archaeology now comprises a broad set of ideas, methods, goals, and strategies applied to the discovery and interpretation of the human past that are informed by the values, concerns, and goals of Indigenous peoples. It has been defined, in part, as “an expression of archaeological theory and practice in which the discipline intersects with indigenous values, knowledge, practices, ethics, and sensibilities, and through collaborative and community-originated or -directed projects, and related critical perspectives” (G. P. Nicholas, “Native Peoples and Archaeology,” in Encyclopedia of Archaeology, ed. D. Pearsall [New York: Academic Press, 2008], 3:1660). Major issues addressed range from differences between indigenous and Western epistemologies, to inequalities in representation and decision making, to meaningful research and heritage management strategies, to challenges relating to indigeneity and racialism. Usually placed in the context of postprocessual archaeology, indigenous archaeology has both influenced and been influenced by Marxist, critical, feminist, and interpretive approaches in archaeological theory and practice, but ideally it is expected to be grounded in local indigenous values, worldviews, and epistemology. Its nature, goals, and benefits contribute to debates regarding who controls, has access to, or benefits from archaeological endeavors; who is “indigenous”; whether indigenous archaeology should be separate from the mainstream; and the tension that exists between positivist and relativist modes of knowledge about “the past.” While indigenous archaeology is much involved in examining the material aspects of past human endeavors (i.e., the archaeological record), it is a more complicated affair that may involve ethnography, traditional knowledge, and religious practices and worldview. Some argue that pursuing indigenous interests departs from archaeology as we know it. In addition, indigenous archaeology is as much a method or process as a political agenda to change and improve the nature the discipline, much like feminist archaeology. Indigenous archaeology is part of a suite of approaches (e.g., public, collaborative, community-based) in contemporary archaeology that seek to connect contemporary groups to their heritage but is generally distinct from them in retaining a political agenda in aid of indigenous goals.

Public archaeology, as a method of involving public groups in the practice of archaeology, has a powerful possibility of benefiting tribal groups by allowing their full involvement. Indigenous archaeology utilizes the general elements of archaeological theory associated with cultural historical, processual, and post-processual approaches. This article discusses public archaeology and indigenous archaeology in terms of each branch's utility to Native American groups in the United States. It provides a brief history and description of indigenous archaeology, and then examines some of the intersections and divergences between public archaeology and indigenous archaeology. The article discusses how public archaeology can benefit tribal groups, some of its strengths and weaknesses, and some of the shortcomings within current public archaeology programmes and ideas. Suggestions are presented for making public archaeology better suited to Native American use, either as a part of a hybrid public indigenous archaeology, or as a means in and of itself.

Settler Violence? Race and Emergent Frontiers of Progress in Honduras Christopher A. Loperena (bio) The displacement of black and indigenous peoples from sites of economic opportunity in Honduras, and the systematic enclosure of the natural resources within their territories, is intimately tethered to white socio-spatial imaginaries and the politics of frontier making. In this essay, I analyze how elite investors, with support from the state and multilateral development banks, mobilize the ideology of national progress to further disenfranchise rural communities of color and to legitimate acts of violence against land and environmental activists. This violence has increased dramatically since the 2009 coup against Manual Zelaya Rosales, which was followed by a surge in extractivist activities throughout the national territory. In the quest for land, mestizo elites harness both legal and physical coercion to seize vital natural resources within indigenous and black territories.1 The process of turning indigenous territories into frontier zones for economic development underscores not only the racialized dimensions of dispossession but also the ways in which violence is used to hasten the power and racial domination of mestizo settlers over indigenous and black peoples.2 Settler colonialism, according to Patrick Wolfe, entails conquering the land and then populating the conquered territory with the victorious people. Although qualitatively different from the colonial project imposed by the Spanish and Portuguese—at least from an ideological perspective, since it was contingent on the incorporation of indigenous peoples into the national body politic—settler colonialism remains pertinent to analyses of race relations in Latin America. Wolfe states that settler colonialism is an ongoing process premised on a “logic of elimination.”3 Through an analysis of settler violence, I elucidate the relationship between settler colonial logics and contemporary development practices in Honduras. The ongoing removal and elimination of indigenous and black peoples is epitomized by the targeted repression and killing of key indigenous social movement activists, including the March 2016 assassination of Goldman Environmental Prize winner Berta Cáceres. [End Page 801] The logic of elimination is also expressed through legal arrangements that erode collective property rights and undermine black and indigenous sovereignty over the natural resources within their territories. Although Honduras has signed and ratified international legal conventions on the territorial rights of indigenous and tribal peoples, the state has aggressively pursued development projects that directly violate these rights. Even communities in possession of titles to their lands are subject to these forms of expropriation, particularly when the motive is couched within the discourse of national progress. Progress as Settler Colonial Logic In Latin America, national progress is crucially bound up with white socio-spatial epistemologies, which relegate indigenous peoples to a mythical past and thus render invisible contemporary indigenous peoples’ existence and political vitality.4 Indeed, the ideology of indo-Hispanic racial mixture, or mestizaje, has been used to negate indigenous and black territorial claims and to buttress the political and economic aspirations of the mestizo elite. The incorporation of indigenous peoples into the nation through the ideology of mestizaje ultimately furthers the whitening project on which postcolonial national identity was founded.5 Aspirations to whiten the nation gain material coherence through development practice. Following Keisha-Khan Perry, I understand development projects as the spatial dimension of the whitening ideology.6 The proliferation of extractivist economic activities within black and indigenous territories asserts national sovereignty over the natural resources to which rural communities of color lay claim, and thereby buttresses white spatial imaginaries. Sharlene Mollet’s research in the Honduran Mosquitia illustrates how indigenous land use practices are defined as backward and thus deemed, by the state, unsuitable for market production.7 In this way, racist understandings of indigenous inferiority position mestizo colonos (settlers) as more apt to use the land productively and thus legitimates their continued presence and spatial dominance over black and indigenous peoples. Indeed, the notion of “idle” or “underutilized” land has served as a central justification for the usurpation of lands in areas populated by indigenous and black peoples and which have been folded into the agrarian reform policies adopted by the state, beginning with the Agrarian Reform Law of 1962. Because indigenous and black peoples’ lands were often classified as underutilized, they were subject...

While ethnography has held an essential place in the study of Indigenous rock imagery (i.e., petroglyphs and pictographs) in the United States for the past century and a half, rarely are Tribes and other descendant communities involved throughout the entire research program—from conception to publication. This contrasts with recent developments within more traditional “dirt” archaeology, where over the past 30 years, Tribes have assumed greater roles in decision-making, fieldwork, artifact curation, data management, interpretation of results, and repatriation of ancestral belongings. In concert with these changes, Indigenous archaeology has emerged as a domain of theory and practice wherein archaeological research and cultural heritage management center the voices and interests of Indigenous communities. Collaboration among researchers and Indigenous communities has proven to be an effective means of practicing Indigenous archaeology and advancing its goals, but research into rock imagery all too often still limits Indigenous engagement and knowledge to the interpretation of the imagery. This article highlights a case study in Tribal collaboration from the North American Southwest in the interest of advancing an Indigenous archaeology of rock imagery.

1.Maintaining the Dialogue: Archaeology, Cultural Heritage and Indigenous Communities, Harry Allen and Caroline Phillips 2.Wake Up! Repatriation is not the Only Indigenous Issue in Archaeology!, Joe Watkins 3. Power and Archaeological Material Culture: Willing a Suspension of Disbelief?, Bridget Mosley 4.Part of the Conversation: Archaeology and Locality, Alejandro Haber, Wilhelm Londono, Ernestina Mamani and Laura Roda 5.Taino as a Romantic Term: Notes on the Representation of the Indigenous in Puerto Rican Archaeology and Ethnohistory, Gabriel De La Luz-Rodriguez 6.Defining cultural heritage at Gummingurru, Queensland, Australia, Anne Ross 7. Working Together? Maori and Archaeologists in Aotearoa/New Zealand Today, Caroline Phillips 8.The Crisis in 21st Century Archaeological Heritage Management, Harry Allen 9.The Indigenous People's Views of Archaeology in Solomon Islands, Lawrence A. Foana'ota 10. Archaeology and Indigeneity in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Why do Maori not Engage with Archaeology?, Margaret Rika-Heke 11. Indigenous Archaeology - A Moriori Case Study, Maui Solomon and Susan Forbes 12. Seeking the End of Indigenous Archaeology, George P. Nicholas

Misplaced Objects: Migrating Collections and Recollections in Europe and the Americas

This essay situates the collection by offering a commentary on the nature of Indigenous archaeology, its historical development, and how this approach both intersects with and differs, sometimes radically, from mainstream archaeology. Indigenous archaeology adds new ideas, interpretations, and opportunities to archaeology. In some cases Indigenous archaeology is simply an extension of traditional archaeology in terms of identifying, describing, and dating objects and activities of the past. In other cases and contexts, however, Indigenous archaeology differs when it comes to the interpretation and management of heritage objects and places. This essay also discusses Indigenous archaeology’s epistemological and theoretical dimensions, its connection with other expressions of Indigenous identity, worldview and materiality, and the multiple ways that it addresses the needs of Indigenous peoples worldwide.

<b>José María Arguedas (1911-1969) was one of the most notable Peruvian writers of the 20th century. He was a prose writer, poet, anthropologist and translator who wrote in both Spanish and Quechua, the main Indigenous language spoken in the Andean region where he was born and raised. Throughout his career, he was driven by the desire to defend and diffuse Peruvian Quechua culture and to convince his readers of its extraordinary value for the future of Peru. </b><p>Arguedas’s narrative fiction is considered part of a literary tradition known as indigenismo, which developed in Latin American countries with large Indigenous populations. However, because his work overcomes many of the limitations of this tradition by incorporating elements of Quechua culture into the form of his novels and short stories, it has also been categorised as neoindigenismo. </p><p><br></p> Arguedas’s texts have been a source of inspiration for several Latin American literary and cultural critics. Concerned with the region’s overreliance on Eurocentric theories produced for and from literatures emanating from contexts with distinct socio-cultural and historical particularities, these intellectuals have established critical concepts and frameworks that facilitate the study of literature produced in Latin America. Their concepts, such as narrative transculturation and literary heterogeneity, are particularly useful for examining literatures which, because of a historical event such as the Conquest of America, are embedded in fractured societies in which two or more socio-cultural groups struggle to coexist. These critical frameworks enable the identification and interpretation of the plurality of specificities that underpin narratives such as Arguedas’s, especially those that are associated with Indigenous or popular cultures.<div><br>The concerns regarding the transposition of supposedly universal critical apparatuses to the Latin American milieu that motivated these critics are shared by more recent academics who foreground the bypassing of scholarship produced in peripheral regions in favour of that produced in metropolitan academic centres as an issue that occurs across several academic disciplines. These critics stress that in doing so, scholars risk misinterpreting or overlooking the particularities of Latin American literature, as well as denying Latin American institutions their role as producers of knowledge. Indeed, this has been the case in some studies of Arguedian narrative. The approach adopted in this study is a response to these tendencies. It analyses Arguedas visual poetics first and foremost by critically engaging with Latin American or Latin Americanist literary and cultural criticism.<br> <b><br></b></div><div>Critics have celebrated Arguedas for his unique writing style and particularly for the way he wove Quechua music, song and lyricism into his texts. Focus on his incorporation of Andean orality has meant that scant critical attention has been paid to his representation of the visual. This study seeks to develop upon the Latin American(ist) scholarship that establishes Andean Indigenous and mestizo culture as a subversive element in Arguedas’s texts by examining the way he draws on visual conceptualisations of Peruvian Quechua culture to construct a transcultural visual poetics that contributes to the counter-hegemonic nature of his socio-political literary project. <p><br></p><p>Arguably, common understandings of the visual as a predominantly Western mode of perception and of many Indigenous cultures as ‘oral cultures’ have influenced critics’ tendencies to focus on Arguedas’s use of sound as the primary counter-hegemonic force in his narratives. But Indigenous Andean culture has a complex visual tradition that is a fundamental part of its sensory order and worldview. With the invasion of America, many elements of this visual tradition were overridden as the Spanish, and then criollo, colonial project enforced a new visual order. However, there is a considerable amount of scholarship that documents the numerous aspects of Andean visuality. Drawing upon historical accounts, Andean ethnohistory and anthropology of the senses, this study explores the connections between Arguedas’s treatment of the visual, the Andean visual tradition and the Quechua worldview. By taking this approach to Arguedas’s work, the study aims to demonstrate that the visual is not only a Western mode of perception, that there is no universal concept of the visual sense and that, in his endeavour to faithfully represent Quechua culture and to subvert Western writing styles, Arguedas drew upon Andean visuality just as much as he drew upon its orality. </p></div>

<b>José María Arguedas (1911-1969) was one of the most notable Peruvian writers of the 20th century. He was a prose writer, poet, anthropologist and translator who wrote in both Spanish and Quechua, the main Indigenous language spoken in the Andean region where he was born and raised. Throughout his career, he was driven by the desire to defend and diffuse Peruvian Quechua culture and to convince his readers of its extraordinary value for the future of Peru. </b><p>Arguedas’s narrative fiction is considered part of a literary tradition known as indigenismo, which developed in Latin American countries with large Indigenous populations. However, because his work overcomes many of the limitations of this tradition by incorporating elements of Quechua culture into the form of his novels and short stories, it has also been categorised as neoindigenismo. </p><p><br></p> Arguedas’s texts have been a source of inspiration for several Latin American literary and cultural critics. Concerned with the region’s overreliance on Eurocentric theories produced for and from literatures emanating from contexts with distinct socio-cultural and historical particularities, these intellectuals have established critical concepts and frameworks that facilitate the study of literature produced in Latin America. Their concepts, such as narrative transculturation and literary heterogeneity, are particularly useful for examining literatures which, because of a historical event such as the Conquest of America, are embedded in fractured societies in which two or more socio-cultural groups struggle to coexist. These critical frameworks enable the identification and interpretation of the plurality of specificities that underpin narratives such as Arguedas’s, especially those that are associated with Indigenous or popular cultures.<div><br>The concerns regarding the transposition of supposedly universal critical apparatuses to the Latin American milieu that motivated these critics are shared by more recent academics who foreground the bypassing of scholarship produced in peripheral regions in favour of that produced in metropolitan academic centres as an issue that occurs across several academic disciplines. These critics stress that in doing so, scholars risk misinterpreting or overlooking the particularities of Latin American literature, as well as denying Latin American institutions their role as producers of knowledge. Indeed, this has been the case in some studies of Arguedian narrative. The approach adopted in this study is a response to these tendencies. It analyses Arguedas visual poetics first and foremost by critically engaging with Latin American or Latin Americanist literary and cultural criticism.<br> <b><br></b></div><div>Critics have celebrated Arguedas for his unique writing style and particularly for the way he wove Quechua music, song and lyricism into his texts. Focus on his incorporation of Andean orality has meant that scant critical attention has been paid to his representation of the visual. This study seeks to develop upon the Latin American(ist) scholarship that establishes Andean Indigenous and mestizo culture as a subversive element in Arguedas’s texts by examining the way he draws on visual conceptualisations of Peruvian Quechua culture to construct a transcultural visual poetics that contributes to the counter-hegemonic nature of his socio-political literary project. <p><br></p><p>Arguably, common understandings of the visual as a predominantly Western mode of perception and of many Indigenous cultures as ‘oral cultures’ have influenced critics’ tendencies to focus on Arguedas’s use of sound as the primary counter-hegemonic force in his narratives. But Indigenous Andean culture has a complex visual tradition that is a fundamental part of its sensory order and worldview. With the invasion of America, many elements of this visual tradition were overridden as the Spanish, and then criollo, colonial project enforced a new visual order. However, there is a considerable amount of scholarship that documents the numerous aspects of Andean visuality. Drawing upon historical accounts, Andean ethnohistory and anthropology of the senses, this study explores the connections between Arguedas’s treatment of the visual, the Andean visual tradition and the Quechua worldview. By taking this approach to Arguedas’s work, the study aims to demonstrate that the visual is not only a Western mode of perception, that there is no universal concept of the visual sense and that, in his endeavour to faithfully represent Quechua culture and to subvert Western writing styles, Arguedas drew upon Andean visuality just as much as he drew upon its orality. </p></div>

The problems of violent conflicts in Africa today can be traced back to situations deeply rooted in exploitation and colonial domination of Africa. As far back as the days of the Atlantic slave trade to the period of colonial subjugation, Africa witnessed one form of violent conflicts or the other virtually unprecedented in the life of a typical African. Further on was the scrabble for African territories which eventually created artificially bounded nation-states. Similar was the divide and rule method, which alienated Africans from Africans. This method characterized the policies of the various colonial administrations. This paper admits that conflicts, not on a large scale, existed in pre-colonial Africa. It also examines the traditional methods of resolving these conflicts in pre-colonial Africa particularly among the Yorubas. However; the paper traces the incessant ethnic/tribal conflicts or the civil wars on a large scale that have pummeled various African societies since independence to the invasion of the continent by European colonialism. It examines the implication of the partitioning and creation of artificial boundaries in Africa and how it leads to a breakdown of communication among artificially bound natives. The paper submits that the various violent conflicts in Africa are a direct consequence of colonial domination. Key words: Colonialism, conflict, native communications, African, ethnic.

This paper takes the investigation and arrangement of rinya (forests and wild land) as its focus, accompanied with the triangulation of historical materials to discuss if the interpretations of such investigation and arrangement of rinya in Taiwan's shihonshugika (the transition to capitalism) by researchers from Tadao Yanaihara downward are appropriate. In addition, this paper also introduces the colonial administration's view toward forests, the unintended consequences generated after the connection of different institutions, and the heterogeneities of forest resources to explain in a holistic scale how the rinya was incorporated into colonial control, allocated to different stakeholders, and then reached ”shihonshugika”. At the beginning of Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan, the colonial administration divided the rinya into forest lands and forest products through institutions so as to identify the contents of stakeholders' rights. While confronting the existing customary practices of foresty in Taiwan's society, there were problems of articulating the customary practices and new regulations that frequently occurred. The primary resolution did not come out until the establishment of engokanke-rinya (occupation relationships) after the investigation of rinya. As a comparison, although the capitalists that resided in the government-owned rinya under the consideration of the domestication of the indigenous people and wastelands development deployed takushokukeiei (management by colonizing and reclaiming) mainly to the forest lands, the revenue that eminated from the forest products was the important incentive of accelerating the alliance of capitalists and government. After undertaking the arrangement of government-owned rinya in the 1920s, the colonial administration divided the government-owned rinya into preserved and non-preserved areas, while at the same time sorting out the forest people and their engokanke-rinya. Through property devolving, knowledge inculcation and law enforcement, the colonial administration tried to convert these people who resided around the government-owned rinya into forest managers who could live on their own and be no harm to forest protection. Benefits to forest products and lumber industries came about due to World War Ⅰ. However, those capitalists located in the non-preserved rinya and who were unable to arrange in time took liberty of the war and the convenience of colonizing and reclaiming the forest lands to undertake operations that resulted in serious deforestation, which did not comply with the conservation ideas prescribed in forest law. Thus, the colonial administration not only concentrated on the authority of the national forests, but also integrated the strengths of capitalists to manage the national forests efficiently. This government-led model was unexpectedly squeezed between Japan and an international situation turned the profits of rinya into a concern over waste. Consequently, a knowledge system package originating from the European continent's scientific forestry was appropriated. The colonial administration tried to reform the existing systems of forest management and solve the practical problems in the 1930s. As to the research history of rinya which has focused on the primary and mid-term of Japanese colonial rule, this paper adjusts the errors implicated in evolutionist explanations and the unsuitability of the application of theory into history on some level, while at the same time providing possible spaces for dialogue between the research traditions of Taiwan's shihonshugika and the environmental history of South Asia.

“Scientific consequentialism” is the position that the rightness and wrongness of scientific research and reporting is determined by its effects on individuals or groups, rather than by its adherence to the ideals of the scientific method. Indigenous archaeology asserts that archaeology ought to be performed “with, by, and for” indigenous peoples, and in its reasonable form, Indigenous archaeology is important to making Western science more respectful of Indigenous concerns and more applicable to studying peoples with metaphysically inclusive worldviews. However, some proponents advocate for an extreme, consequentialist form of “for” which seeks to limit scientists to research and results that serve and benefit Indigenous peoples’ social and political interests. This may include suppressing undesirable research or results, manipulating scientists or the scientific process, and avoiding research into certain subjects, all of which are presented as morally required efforts toward “the good” of decolonization. This extreme, outcome-driven form of Indigenous archaeology is irreconcilable with and even antithetical to the ideals of Western science, risks unintended negative consequences over the long term, and is no more appropriate now to support decolonial agendas than were consequentialist efforts in the past to support colonial agendas.

Malgre les nombreux changements de la pratique anthropologique depuis une cinquantaine d'annees, notamment une amplitude des objets de recherche, les societes dites traditionnelles, primitives, orales, simples font toujours l'objet de l'interet privilegie des ethnologues. Si la terminologie utilisee pour designer ces societes a ete modifiee au cours du temps (afin de s'eloigner, entre autres, des theories evolutionnistes), les definitions restent encore imprecises, en particulier celle de tribu. L'expression peuple autochtone, utilisee depuis peu, laisse apparaitre une idee de morale et d'ethique mais ne peut s'appliquer qu'a des contextes particuliers, a l'instar de la notion de tribu, et peut alimenter des ideologies diverses qui pronent les liens du sang et de la terre et pour lesquelles les ethnologues ne mesurent peut-etre pas les utuilisations ambivalentes.

Archaeologists have long been called on to use geophysical techniques to locate unmarked graves in both archaeological and forensic contexts. Although these techniques—primarily ground-penetrating radar (GPR)—have demonstrated efficacy in this application, there are fewer examples of studies driven by Indigenous community needs. In North America, the location of ancestors and burial grounds is a priority for most Indigenous communities. We argue that when these Indigenous voices are equitably included in research design, the practice of remote sensing changes and more meaningful collaborations ensue. Drawing on Indigenous archaeology and heart-centered practices, we argue that remote-sensing survey methodologies, and the subsequent narratives produced, need to change. These approaches change both researchers’ and Indigenous communities’ relationships to the work and allow for the inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) in interpretation. In this article, we discuss this underexplored research trajectory, explain how it relates to modern GPR surveys for unmarked graves, and present the results from a survey conducted at the request of the Chipewyan Prairie First Nation. Although local in nature, we discuss potential benefits and challenges of Indigenous remote sensing collaborations, and we engage larger conversations happening in Indigenous communities around the ways these methods can contribute to reconciliation and decolonization.