In this era of “Decolonize Everything” (as one popular poster reads), it is easy to become desensitized to what such a call to action means. Decolonization is both a goal and a process, “the process of deconstructing colonial ideologies of the superiority and privilege of Western thought and approaches” (BCcampus Open Education, “Pulling Together: A Guide for Curriculum Developers,” https://opentextbc.ca/indigenizationcurriculumdevelopers/chapter/indigenization-decolonization-and-reconciliation/). Contributors to Decolonizing “Prehistory” consider how historical narratives embedded in American “prehistory” have imposed a hegemony over Indigenous peoples and their heritage in the context of nineteenth-century literature, contemporary water rights, issues of race and identity, and more. As Gesa Mackenthun and Christen Mucher state in the introduction, “This volume seeks to challenge the ubiquitous colonial narratives by exposing power imbalances and recentering Indigenous knowledges of the ancient American past” (p. 9).
Three broad themes are highlighted: the need to decolonize “prehistory,” racial narratives of American prehistory, and topological knowledges. Although the contributors do not fully or consistently address “decolonization” per se, each engages with one or more of these themes. The collection is dominated by five chapters focusing on the Pacific Northwest, with two from the Yucatan Peninsula, and three others in between.
A common theme is how strongly nineteenth-century arguments about race and identity (e.g., the Mound Builder myth) resonate with contemporary politics in North America. For example, in “Competing Narratives of Ancestry in Donald Trump's America and the Imperatives of Scholarly Intervention” (Chapter 1), Annette Kolodny examines race and racism in the context of ancient DNA and modern right-wing extremism, and the Penobscot Nation's legal actions to retain its right to the Penobscot River—both cases are affected by outdated or contentious ideas (both old and new) about population replacement theories (regarding the Red Paint People) that challenge the legitimacy of Indigenous identity. Mucher's contribution (Chapter 2) takes the theme of genetics and identity further in examining Indigenous American genotypes and the challenge of DNA research that, if not used responsibly, continues to promote “impersonal abstractions” (p. 64) that weaken or ignore Indigenous affiliation to the land. Race and ancestry are also examined in Melissa Gniadek's study (Chapter 3) of nineteenth- and twenty-first-century novel plots that involve race and identity (and Mammoth Cave, Kentucky), all fed by antiquarian accounts of the Americas.
Shifting to the Northwest Coast, Rick Budhwa (Chapter 4) introduces epistemological differences between oral traditions and geological accounts of cataclysmic events. He raises important questions about congruences and contradictions in Indigenous and settler accounts, and he argues for an epistemic awareness that incorporates both. Mackenthun (Chapter 5) also examines cataclysms, this time as (legal) extinction, termination, and ruination relates to the Klamath. In Chapter 6, Keith Carlson and Naxaxalhts'l (Sonny McHalsie) explore how settlers were (and still are) “ontologically blind” to Stó:lō values relating to their land—one in which ancestral beings and power-infused places confronted a Judeo-Christian mindset that failed to respect or protect sacred sites. Jeff Oliver (Chapter 7) takes a pragmatic approach to the challenge of disparate mindsets by asking “Can one do ‘decolonial’ archaeology and yet maintain the formative logic of Western historical disciplines?” (p. 105). Coll Thrush (Chapter 8) provides a before/after examination of how settlers’ “grammars of place” (p. 171) rejected Indigenous knowledge and precipitated environmental degradation and cultural erasure.
Jessica Christie's smart approach to Maya historicity and identity (Chapter 9) focuses on the “international space” between scientific narrative and living Maya heritage, and local histories. This is complemented by Mathieu Pica's (Chapter 10) ethnographically informed study of “plurivocality” in the context of the sacred, the political, and the oral historical dimensions of Tulum, and the opportunities (and complications) brought on by tourism. Despite the ruptures brought on by colonialism, both chapters show the challenges of representation and legitimation of Maya people and places in a charged political landscape.
In Chapter 11, Philip Deloria offers a critical reading of Red Earth, White Lies (1995), the controversial critique of archaeology and science written by his late father, Vine Deloria Jr. Here, Philip Deloria identifies some of its problems but also highlights the value in prompting “geology, archaeology, paleobiology—to challenge [their] own orthodoxies” (p. 243), a theme reflected throughout this volume. A too-short epilogue by legal scholar Kirsten Carlson raises unexpected but valued insights about the legal dimensions of “clashing views” (p. 250) of deep time brought forward in the chapters.
Ultimately, this is a book about how settler origin stories, epistemologies, and politics colonized Indigenous North Americans and continue to shape the contemporary landscape. The contributors offer a fresh take on the challenges we need to address today in order to shed that legacy.
