Coming into Relation

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Coming into Relation: Indigenous Time and Place in the Archaeology of California

This lecture builds on Dr. Schneider’s work as an affiliated scientist with the U.S. National Science Foundation Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science. It highlights relationality within his archaeological, historical, and collections-based research on Indigenous hinterlands as critical sites of refuge and recourse for Native American communities enduring colonialism in California’s San Francisco Bay area (ca late-1700s to mid-1800s).

Relational attentiveness opens up critical opportunities to rethink the usual work of archaeology, including routine dating and categorising of Indigenous places and belongings. Quite unlike the stories of Indigenous “extinction” advanced by American anthropologists in the early-twentieth century, his research casts light on an overlooked history of Indigenous resilience enacted through distancing and rebuilding efforts. More critically, connections between community, cultural places, and more-than-human relations are at the heart of resilience, in the past and today.

The talk concludes with a discussion of Dr. Schneider’s continuing efforts to practice a more relevant and community-engaged archaeology of doing and belonging in Indigenous homelands.

*Photo by Jahmanz Williams on Unsplash