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Digging into My Past: Archaeology and Humanism in the Canadian Arctic
Author(s) -
Searles Edmund
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1111/anhu.12172
Subject(s) - indigenous , humanism , archaeology , anthropology , arctic , perspective (graphical) , history , sociology , art , ecology , visual arts , political science , law , biology
SUMMARY The legal battles ensuing from the discovery of the “Kennewick Man” brought mass media attention to a longstanding divide between the science of archaeology and contemporary indigenous peoples. In this essay, I reflect on this divide as experienced from the perspective of a student of archaeology who later became a cultural anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of Inuit/settler relations in Nunavut. Building on the concept of community‐oriented approaches to archaeology, I examine how a humanistic approach to archaeological data can further unite indigenous peoples and professional archaeology.