| Joan Gero, Senior Representative
(American University, USA)gero@american.edu
This is my first annual report as senior
North American representative to WAC, and
to me the WAC climate in North America,
or certainly in the United States, feels
poised and ready for intensification. Although
there hasn’t been a lot of vital activity
on the WAC front on this continent during
the last year of the 20th century, it seems
that North Americans (archaeologists and
interested others) and WAC need each other
more than ever at the beginning of the new
century and the new millennium. Various
indications that an interest in WAC should
grow in North American ‑ and perhaps
I speak here more for the U.S.A. than for
Canada ‑ in the 21st century include
the following.
1) As the Society for American Archaeology
grows in size and influence, working always
closer with the governments of individual
states and with the federal government to
assure a good working climate for archaeology,
there arises a greater need for an archaeology
that protects divergent interests and that
looks for ways to protect minority and disenfranchised
peoples’ interests in the past. Many advocates
of more diversified views in archaeology
used to be closely affiliated with the American
Anthropological Association instead of with
SAA, or they belonged to both organizations,
but the AAA has gone through a difficult
period of losing its archaeological constituency,
and in the past few years SAA has exploded
in growth and power and emerged as the single
professional organization for archaeology
in North America. If an archaeology in service
to the state is incomplete, then the array
of perspectives (as represented by WAC)
is increasingly missing as SAA comes to
represent the interests of the profession
of archaeology and its practitioners rather
than providing the table around which diverse
practices and viewpoints might sit.
2) Native Americans and First Nations Peoples
in North America are continuously becoming
more resourceful, more visible and more
successful in setting the terms of archaeological
research concerning themselves and their
ancestors, and in having their say about
displays of Native American materials in
museums. The 1998 opening of the Mashantucket
Pequot Museum and Research Center, offering
a powerful tribal perspective on the prehistory
of this now‑wealthy northeast coast
Native American group, marks a new watershed
in Native American control of its past.
Several academic conferences in the United
States this past year were specifically
devoted to exploring native peoples’ views
of prehistory including the annual student‑run
Chacmool conference at the University of
Calgary (in November) on “Archaeology and
Indigenous Peoples” and the December 1999
conference in Hawaii on “World Indigenous
Peoples”. This building of a First Nations
Peoples’ power base invites dialogue across
traditional cultural and professional boundaries.
3) The US legislation (especially NAGPRA,
the Native American Graves and Protection
Act) that dictates the terms under which
public institutions must return Native American
mortuary remains and sacred objects has
gained the cooperation of SAA and all major
museums in the US by now, and the repatriation
of native objects and remains is increasingly
in the news and media for the American peoples
to follow. American Indians, Native Alaskans
and Hawaiian peoples have become sophisticated
at processing relevant papers. However cumbersome,
interactions are taking place, accords are
being struck, and native voices are empowered
to be involved in archaeological research.
At the same time, new initiatives towards
a community‑defined archaeology, in
which archaeologists put themselves at the
service of native communities, or work closely
with the leadership of tribal councils and
band councils, are increasingly in the news
and under development. Statements that the
future of archaeology lies in the hands
of native groups are not uncommon these
days, as more native students of archaeology
and anthropology are being trained in our
universities and in our field projects.
What all of this means is that professional
and public interest in a kind of “engaged
archaeology” is at an all‑time high
in North America. WAC is positioned to lead
the way in coordinating interests in these
efforts.
Towards these ends, I was able to schedule
two events that forefronted WAC and its
perspectives during the American Anthropological
Association’s annual conference in Chicago,
November 17‑21, 1999. First, I presented
a paper about WAC’s history in a highly
visible symposium (designated as one of
13 “Presidential Sessions” ‑ out of
approximately 550 symposia ‑ at these
meetings!) entitled “Anthropology at
the Millennium: Retrospectives from the
Discipline’s ‘Critical Centers’”. The
common premise of the session was that while
contemporary anthropology is accused of
being fragmented, self‑absorbed and
largely marginal to understanding and resolving
pressing social issues, that the best positioned
and most central areas of contemporary anthropology
are precisely the areas that originated
to represent marginalized populations such
as Latina/o, Black, Native American Indian,
feminist and gay anthropologies, and applied
anthropology. By luck, I heard about this
symposium in time to urge that WAC be included
as a parallel anthropological entity that
had begun to represent the marginalized
interests of archaeology and today stood
in a compelling position to represent the
future of the discipline! The paper was
well received (by a largely anthropological
audience who had never conceived of a critical
strain of archaeological thinking!) and
should appear in WAB 12 later this
year.
The second WAC event that took place at
the AAA conference was a co‑facilitated
workshop (Joan Gero and Stephen Loring of
the Smithsonian Institution), sponsored
by the Archaeology Division of the AAA.
We offered an informal, unstructured noon‑time
slot to convene archaeologists in order
to discuss “Confronting the Political Practices
of Archaeology”. About 30 people attended,
and we put forward a list of issues that
we thought would fall under the rubric of
“political practices,” from the roles that
archaeology plays in stabilizing and rationalizing
the modern world order to the impact of
archaeology in the communities where it
is practiced. We invited participants to
bring issues, quandaries, examples, lessons
and predictions to the workshop, and had
an active if non‑directional discussion
for the full 1.5 hours allotted us in that
space. (We also handed out WAC fliers with
membership applications which we had prepared
for the occasion.)
As we face the beginning of the year 2000,
we are considering whether it is feasible
to host the WAC5 conference in the United
States, and the results of these speculations
will be known before long.
|
World
Archaeological Bulletin