Decolonizing "Prehistory: Deep Time and Indigenous Knowledges in North America

Decolonizing Prehistory combines critical investigation of documentation with Indigenous perspectives, addressing colonial encounters and their impact on American scientific discourse. It reveals how anthropology, archaeology, and cultural heritage have shaped collective ideological constructions of Indigenous cultures while empowering voices that disrupt conventional tropes. The book explores the relevance of these narratives to current concerns about identity, sovereignty, and self-determination, as well as the origin and destiny of humanity. Contributors include Rick Budhwa, Keith Thor Carlson, Kirsten Matoy Carlson, Jessica Christie, Philip J. Deloria, Melissa Gniadek, Annette Kolodny, Gesa Mackenthun, Christen Mucher, Naxaxalhts i, Jeff Oliver, Mathieu Picas, Daniel Lord Smail, and Coll Thrush.

Format: Hardback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 04 May 2021
Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Decolonizing Prehistory is an interdisciplinary volume that combines a critical investigation of the documentation of the American deep past with perspectives from Indigenous traditional knowledges and attention to ongoing systems of intellectual colonialism. It brings together experts from American studies, archaeology, anthropology, legal studies, history, and literary studies to offer essential information about the complexity and ambivalence of colonial encounters with Indigenous peoples in North America and their impact on American scientific discourse. The chapters in this book reveal how anthropology, archaeology, and cultural heritage have shaped the collective ideological construction of Indigenous cultures, while actively empowering the voices that disrupt conventional tropes and narratives of prehistory. Constructions of America's ancient past, or the invention of American prehistory, occur in national and international political frameworks characterized by struggles over racial and ethnic identities, access to resources and environmental stewardship, the commodification of culture for touristic purposes, and the exploitation of Indigenous knowledges and histories by industries ranging from education to film and fashion. The past's ongoing appeal reveals the relevance of these narratives to current-day concerns about individual and collective identities and pursuits of sovereignty and self-determination, as well as to questions of the origin and destiny of humanity. Decolonizing Prehistory critically examines and challenges the paradoxical role that modern scholarship plays in adding legitimacy to, but also delegitimizing, contemporary colonialist practices. Contributors to this volume include Rick Budhwa, Keith Thor Carlson, Kirsten Matoy Carlson, and Jessica Chris.

Weight: 508g
Dimension: 159 x 235 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780816542291