Utengqaukut

“I have employed my oft-used trick: inviting all the Indians to a feast.” Archaeology has always been heavily influenced by socio-politics (Solometo and Moss 2013), even when framed within the constraints of a presumed Western scientific objectivism. Both archaeologists and the foundations that fund archaeological research rely on contemporary issues and challenges to define and prioritize research trajectories, climate change being a recent example. The sociopolitical influences of climate instability driving archaeological research can be understood within a framework of crisis, occurring in response to colonial dystopian fears—the fear of settlers and nation-states that the increasing severity of the climate crisis is upending (or will upend) the stability and predictability they have come to experience and depend on, including access to comfort, resources, and cultural norms (Powys-Whyte 2018). While sociopolitical actions navigate between political binaries, they occasionally breach this polarizing divide. The current climate crisis is increasingly representative of this breach as it begins to negatively impact people independent of their orientation on the political spectrum. Colonial dystopian fears are as powerful as colonial desires. Whether perceived as climate change or natural disaster, impacts breach the political divide, demonstrating a shared precarity and risk. Bipartisan crisis responses demonstrate the interests of all parties to protect and stabilize their interests and preserve the nation-state independent of partisan axiological differences. Whether left or right, they share a Western epistemology, representing two sides of the same colonial coin. Archaeologists working in precolonial contexts often rely on the environment, including periods of climate instability and change, such as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) or the Little Ice Age (LIA), as an explanation for cultural change, adaptations, or migrations. Researchers rarely acknowledge colonial contributions to climate change, such as the creation of the Anthropocene. Within this paradigm, contextualization of the current climate warming is defined as either the first human-caused or part of an ongoing natural or normal climate occurrence over an extended trajectory. Climate research aimed at understanding the impacts of the industrial revolution found that the LIA is a direct result of colonial violence and expansion—more specifically, the mass genocide of Indigenous peoples and cultural practices in the Americas, great enough to result in global cooling of 2°C (Koch et al. 2019). Despite these findings, archaeological research incorporates benign, seemingly objective language to speak to the LIA in combination with a movement toward terminology of an Anthropocene, privileging the current colonial dystopia as the only crisis of consequence. The impacts of this are twofold: It supports an ongoing disavowal of the dystopian impacts of Western colonialism and fuels the crisis response to the settler dystopian fears as the impacts of settler colonialism begin to negatively impact settlers. Currently, we are all living with the consequences of colonial-created dystopia, and the climate crisis is urgent. This confluence offers an opportunity for moves toward reconciliation, emphasizing the urgency for NDNs’i sovereign right to meet our responsibilities to the land (Yunkaporta 2020). Just as archaeology has played a role in the determination of NDN rights and access to lands and ways of life, likewise, it can meet its obligations to the ongoing crisis. Archaeological research with a focus on climate change has increased in recent years, including in the Alaskan Arctic and subarctic. Alaska is recognized as a living lab for climate change, experiencing climate change at an accelerated rate in comparison to more southern regions (Markon et al. 2018). Archaeologists and heritage professionals have expressed concerns that the library is burning, a demonstration of fear regarding the loss of archaeological sites due to melting of permafrost, coastal erosion, and subsequent looting or subsistence digging. This expression provides an example of the epistemological, axiological, and ontological differences between NDNs and non-Indigenous researchers. While there are varying views regarding loss of heritage sites among nations and communities, the “libraries” are not embedded in heritage sites but are located within our elders and community members. In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) recognized this disconnect and issued a call for proposals for an initiative seeking to address climate change, adaptation, and solutions in the Alaskan Arctic, urging scientists to partner with NDN communities.ii In 2021, an unpublished survey of awards for community-engaged research in Alaska identified 169 community-engaged proposals funded in Alaska. Only 1 of 169 demonstrated clear community relations prior to beginning collaborative research. The other 168 incorporated the popularized keyword terminology of community engagement and “coproduction of knowledge” as research methods, lacking both a definition and demonstrated criteria or method. This reflects a growing trend of professionalizing ethics via reliance on key words such as: Indigenous archaeology, community-engaged research, coproduction of knowledge, and research sovereignty. A researcher's good intentions, desire, or care alone are not enough to bring these goals into being. Consequences included an overwhelming number of requests to communities for letters of support from unknown researchers, requiring NSF to revisit and reimagine pathways to meet their objectives. The foundation of our discipline is situated in transactions and trickery, an exchange of goods for knowledge, thus illuminating the challenges of Western orthodox research, despite desires to move toward Indigenous-centered, collaborative partnerships. Reframing the transactional nature of Western orthodox research as relational is a paradigmatic shift. Indigenous/Indigenized research allows scholars to consider a backward design, beginning with “broader impacts.” Building good relations with community partners allows time to get to know the interests, desires, and/or needs of partnering communities. This avoids leaving the do-good aspirations of the researcher till the end, often resulting in incohesive, last-minute efforts to tie community desires to a predesigned research. Rather, broader impacts and intellectual merit should be inseparable. This work realigns objectives away from a reductionist, rapid, product-based emphasis to a pace that allows the time necessary to honor sovereignty and adaptive, engaged research. Relationality is not the only method emphasized, yet it is foundational for collaboration. An applied example of this paradigm shift includes an ongoing collaboration with the Village of Tuyuryaq (Togiak, Alaska). Our partnership has spanned over a decade, evolving from a community desire to correct previous interpretations of the old village as a midden, to incorporating an array of village priorities, including supporting village-led research (place names, language revitalization, science engagement and education, subsistence and sovereignty), but especially supporting youth—Elder Helen Gregorio reminding us that this is the Yup'iit way. To date, more than 50 undergraduates have traveled to Togiak as part of an Indigenous community-based archaeological field school that emphasizes co-learning between undergraduate and Tuyuryaq secondary students during an experiential learning week at the school. Co-learning has destabilized perceived hierarchies between local and undergraduate students as they become learning partners. Our collaboration has provided an opportunity for both student groups to engage in applied methods of Indigenous/Indigenous-centered community-led research that is often only theorized about in some university classrooms and overlooked entirely in Western secondary school systems. This collaborative research spans boundaries of multiple communities’ interests and responsibilities, including the tribal nation, the institution, funding agencies, undergraduates, and graduate students (Uluak Itchuaqiyaq 2022). Assessment for the success of collaboration is complicated and specific to context. Success will look different from each point of interest (e.g., Tribal nation, federal agency), making clear that prioritization is necessary when boundary spanning. For the collaboration with Tuyuryaq, success centers around being able to respond to questions regularly posed by Togiak students: When will you be back? This question emphasizes the importance of relationality over an orthodox transactional model. Returning assures youth that they matter; they are not a “resource” exploited for experience or research. Answering this question assures me that I adhere to my priorities, values, and methodologies in my work. The reconciliation potential of this work is supported by initiatives, such as the recently funded CBIKS—a Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledge and Science, a Science and Technology Center, funded by NSF. This initiative holds promise for supporting and including Indigenous Nations and communities and Indigenous scholars, along with Indigenous-centered curious orthodox scholars, as well as supporting NDN students and scholars, in methods of relationality and indigenized research. CBIKS spans epistemological divides, collaboratively defining protocols, policies, and support to address pressing concerns such as climate change. The implications are an invitation for reconciliation, a reclamation and affirmation of sovereignty, and a future that will benefit us all. I continue to have the deepest gratitude for the many friends, family, collaborators, and partners in Tuyuryaq including Tuyuryaq Traditional Council and the fluctuating members of council throughout the past decade: Helen Gregorio, Luther Andrews, Igugpak Nanalook, Lucy Andrews, the Togiak School Board and school, Evelyn Yanez, Francisca Demoski, and others. Special thanks to NSF (#2331727), University of Montana, Bates College, and the University of British Columbia Vancouver, for past and continued support and for providing an intellectual home. Thanks to my colleagues, especially Myron Beasley, April Horton, and Sonya Atalay, among others. Many thanks to Amanda Gaggioli, Sandy Hunter, and the Joukowsky Institute at Brown University for organizing and hosting a thought-provoking workshop and to the other participants who shared critical thoughts and feedback with generosity. Lastly, I want to express my gratitude to the student field school participants and your contributions that have resulted in my continued learning and adaptations. Qagaasakung.

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