Black–Racialized–Indigenous Archaeologists: Colonially bounded Practice

Session Hosting Format: 
in-person session
Organizer(s): 
  • Uju Rita Onah, The University of British Columbia
  • Neha Gupta, The University of British Columbia
Contact Email: 
ujurita.onah@ubc.ca
Session Description (300 word max): 

Global Indigenous Peoples’ story is a shared history of peoples who not only survived but thrived in spite of the persistent structures of colonialism. This session explores the question of who tells an Indigenous story, and its relationship to ownership of, and authority in, archaeology. In Canadian archaeology, there is currently limited social and intellectual space for the identities, perspectives and knowledges of diaspora people with Indigenous origins as well as descendant communities. The framing of indigeneity as fixed, unchanging groups that a national government recognizes as Indigenous typically overrides, obscures and diminishes the ways that Indigenous Peoples see themselves and how they relate with other communities. In practice, these racisms are intertwined with colonialism and administrative and legal control over identity, making Indigenous Peoples invisible when they are “dislocated” from their place of origin, disconnecting them from cultural communities. Yet, diaspora communities can provide insights into the experience of colonization in Canada because globally, Indigenous Peoples and descendant communities were colonized with similar goals, similar strategies, and outcomes. This session invites papers focusing on knowledges of Indigenous Peoples and descendant communities in the transnational practice of archaeology. We especially welcome scholars who challenge colonial agendas and destabilize dominant understandings of indigeneity in Canada and beyond.

 

Presentations
Amalgamation and Afterlives: On the Worthiness of Preserving Nigeria’s Colonial Origin Site. ( Chinonso Ezenwe )
Presentation format: In-Person
Author(s):
  • Chinonso Ezenwe - Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

In 1914, the British colonial administration formally amalgamated the Northern and Southern Protectorates at what is now known as the Amalgamation House in Old Calabar, now Ikot Abasi, Akwa Ibom, Nigeria. This building marks the administrative birth of the Nigerian state. Yet the territorial and political entity it inaugurated remains deeply contested, evidenced by civil war, secessionist movements, insurgency, and ongoing struggles over belonging and sovereignty. This paper asks a deliberately provocative question: Is the Amalgamation House “worthy” of restoration?

Rather than treating preservation as inherently virtuous, I approach the site as material evidence of colonial state-making and imposed political ontology. The 1914 amalgamation was not a consensual union, but an administrative Consolidation designed to optimize imperial governance. As such, the building is not merely an architectural heritage site: it is an infrastructure of colonial citizenship and territorial imagination in postcolonial Nigeria.

Drawing on decolonial theory and Critical Heritage Studies, I examine how restoration may function as a subtle act of state legitimation, reaffirming the inevitability of colonial cartography. Simultaneously, I explore whether repurposing such sites can instead operate as a form of epistemic intervention, transforming monuments of imperial administration into spaces of critical pedagogy and counter-memory.
Applying Decolonial Frameworks in Nationalist Settings: Community-Collaborative Archaeology in Tlaxcala Mexico ( Sabine Plummer )
Presentation format: In-Person
Author(s):
  • Sabine Plummer - McGill University

Looking to the community-collaborative archaeology project in Tlaxcala, Mexico, as a case study, this paper addresses the application of decolonial theory to archaeological contexts outside the defined scope of projects in partnerships with indigenous stakeholders. Specifically, this paper asks how the nationalist associations of descendant communities in Tlaxcala influences the reconstruction of the historical identity of their indigenous ancestors. Considering how identity eludes definition, defies stasis, and evolves over time in multi-scalar and continuous fashion, this paper looks to how ancestral identities are both affected by and affect the contemporary interpretations of descendant communities, and how this conceptualization can be married to the ethical duty of archaeology to decolonize its methods.

This paper will interrogate the tri-partite roster of stakeholders: the archaeologists, the descendant community, and the ancestors, and consider how each interacts with decolonial frameworks of archaeology. Specific attention will be brought to how applicable methods of indigenous archaeology are to other-than-indigenous contexts, and where alternate frameworks can supplement these, namely Communities of Practice. Overall, this paper considers how differing views of indigeneity and relations to a colonial past can complexify the application community-collaborative methods in projects concerning descendant communities.     
Archaeological evidence as proof of existence and identity: Italian Diaspora and the Saturnia’s last voyage ( Melissa Angel-Mira )
Presentation format: In-Person
Author(s):
  • Melissa Angel-Mira - University of British Columbia

Since the formation of Canada as a nation, dominant groups have used indigenous people’s stories and archaeological materials as a tool for colonial domination. Diaspora peoples in Canada have similarly faced historical marginalization with there stories, histories, and archaeological materials being presented or erased by dominant groups to reinforce colonial narratives.

The purpose of this presentation is to explore how oral stories can be used to validate or invalidate the findings of cultural materials when they change through time and space. Using my lived experience as a second generation Canadian of Italian descent, this paper demonstrates the power of oral history when archaeological evidence is destroyed or hidden by dominant groups to maintain power.

Analysis from records preserved in the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Nova Scotia and my family’s history starting in Sicily, voyaging to Halifax, Nova Scotia on the last sailing of the Saturnia ship (which was destroyed) – will draw inference to archaeological evidence of their arrival in America and existence. This is significant because it corresponds with Indigenous archaeology and oral traditions, both of which affirm their existence and identity– elements that were disrupted, erased, and redefined through a colonial lens.

Indigeneity Beyond Borders: Validating Transnational Indigenous Identity ( UJu Rita  Onah )
Presentation format: In-Person
Author(s):
  • UJu Rita  Onah - University of British Columbia

Narratives of colonization often emphasize loss, erasure, and cultural disruption, frequently overlooking the resilience and adaptive strategies of Indigenous communities. This paper examines how geographically distant Indigenous groups have developed parallel strategies for cultural continuity and political assertion in the aftermath of colonial domination. Through a cross-comparative analysis of the Igbo people of Nigeria, the Inuit and Métis of Canada, and the Māori of New Zealand, the paper explores how distinct Indigenous societies confronted comparable colonial strategies of territorial dispossession, cultural suppression, and administrative control over identity. Despite their geographic separation, these communities have developed related modes of cultural resilience and political mobilization to assert autonomy and reclaim authority over heritage and identity. 

However, this analysis critiques how archaeological practice in Canada often remains embedded within nation-state frameworks. Such frameworks can reproduce colonial logics by marginalizing Indigenous peoples whose identities, histories, and experiences extend across national boundaries. Drawing on decolonial and Indigenous theoretical approaches, this study argues that Indigeneity should be understood as relational, mobile, and transnational rather than territorially static. By centring diasporic Indigenous perspectives, archaeology can move beyond colonial recognition toward more inclusive and ethically grounded practices that better reflect the lived realities of Indigenous peoples globally. 
Transformative Cultural Materiality: Archaeologies of Displacement, Persistent Lifeways, & Identity ( nkem ike )
Presentation format: In-Person
Author(s):
  • nkem ike

Geographic upheaval fosters a sense of cultural persistence, as people manipulate the material world in new environments, form new identities, preserve traditional lifeways, and resist colonial and racial logics. This process, which we term transformative cultural materiality, involves using inherited knowledge to maintain and reassert identities in old and new geographic contexts. Through memory and community, new material worlds are constructed, creating a sense of place that bridges the past and present, and fosters the capacity for freedom-building in the future. 

Using Cherokee and Black South Carolina Coast baskets, this paper explores how the power structures that underpin displacement, relocation, and migration simultaneously reconstitute how communities use their material world to reassert their cultural identity. By taking a Black and Indigenous geographic lens, we demonstrate how inherited cultural knowledge sustains the creation of new material cultures in the wake of geographic upheaval and how transformative cultural materiality can be applied as a framework for understanding archaeological data that positions the past, present, and future in new ways.