The UBC Department of History Colloquium Series brings together scholars who are exploring important methodological, chronological, or geographical issues that challenge the frontiers of our discipline and contribute strongly to our collective discussions.
We are pleased to invite you to the 2022/2023 Colloquium series, featuring a talk by Dr. Paulette Steeves, Associate Professor of Sociology-Anthropology and Department Chair of Geography, Geology, and Land Stewardship at Algoma University. Dr. Steeves will be presenting remotely.
Whether you choose to attend virtually or in-person, please register for the event. A light lunch will be available for in-person attendees who register in advance.
Talk Abstract
The Indigenous past of the Western Hemisphere (the Americas) has been fabricated to fit into neoliberal timeframes of imagined “New Worlds.” Museums and archives are managed for the most part by non-Indigenous scholars trained in Western academies where Indigenous erasure is a normalized and embedded practice. Archaeological denial of the deep Indigenous past of the Western Hemisphere has traditionally been and in many ways remains a tool of disempowerment and dehumanizing oppression, created by settler archaeologists to keep Indigenous civilizations as “infantile” on a global scale. However, I have documented over 600 archaeological sites dating between 11,200 and 200,000 years ago in both North and South America. In my research, I also discuss how the late modern state and their bureaucracies control Indigenous heritage in the present to erase and minimalize the Indigenous past and cleave Indigenous people’s links to their homelands. I also present an Indigenous and archaeological view of deep Indigenous histories and discuss what reclaiming and rewriting Indigenous history bring to paths of healing for Indigenous and settler communities.
Speaker Biography
Paulette Steeves (Cree-Metis) is Associate Professor of Sociology-Anthropology and Department Chair of Geography, Geology, and Land Stewardship at Algoma University. She is also Canada Research Chair, Tier II, Healing and Reconciliation. Steeves is an Indigenous Archeologist with a focus on the Pleistocene history of the Americas. She was born in Whitehorse, Yukon Territories and spent her childhood in Lillooet, British Columbia.