The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere

Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere

With Dr. Paulette Steeves

Patty Krawec

We're here with Dr. Paulette Steves.

Josh Manitowabi made a remark that the Anishinaabe word Giiwedin contains the idea of going home. And that what it was referring to was the glaciers, that the glaciers were going home. And this is knowledge that's contained with elders. And he gave me you know, reference to a couple of books where elders are, you know, talked about this, in the Cree have a similar word. I think it's a kiiwedin rather than with the G. And I was just so captured by this idea that our language contained knowledge, not only of the glaciers, but the fact that they hadn't always been there. And then I encountered somebody was talking on Twitter was talking about talking about Paulette’s book, Dr. Steeves Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere kind of expands on that hugely on Indigenous presence, not just 5000 years ago, or 10,000 years ago. Like, like your dissertation. You know, it's more than 100,000 years ago,

Kerry: we love it so much

Patty: that’s an extremely long time. And I was just like, when I saw that this book existed, I was like, this needs to be in my and I rewrote part of the beginning of my book based on it. I was like, I need to get this book into my book. Because it is a story of beginnings, right? I don't focus on that. But creation stories ground us, they say so much about what we believe about ourselves.

Dr Paulette Steeves:

And that's, that's important. That language you Giiwedin, because that tells us that the people were here, before the glaciers came, right. And they were here when the glaciers went home. And white faculty, white archaeologists don't know our language, don't value our language, and don't understand that not just Indigenous history, but World History is held in those languages. So that's really, really an important point about the language.

Patty: 

And then I came across it in your book, I came across more examples of that, right, where you talk about Thunderbirds and the terratorns, and the story of the Osage have, and then they went and found all these bones. And it's like, wow, it's like, if you talk to the people, maybe you could learn something.

Paulette:

Right. But archaeologists typically for decades forever wouldn't talk to Native American or First Nations people, because they didn't give their knowledge any value. And because their academic capital was built on our history, our artifacts, and how the archaeologists told the story. So, they owned it, they own the artifacts, if they talk to us, they were terrified, oh we might have to give them something back and acknowledge them, that is slowly beginning to change. But, you know, I worked in field archaeology a lot in the US and archaeologists were supposed to by their agreements, consult with tribes, and they didn't, and none of the archaeologists on the crew had a clue, even whose land they were on. So it was really sad. I learned a lot about how devastating archaeology can be to Indigenous history from working in field archaeology for I don’t know, six years in the US. And seeing that, you know, how terrified archaeologists were that, you know, the Indians were going to take everything back and, and they wouldn't own it. And that was their academic capital.

So in an upcoming coming, grant, I have some collaborators and one of them is going to talk about the capitalism of history and how that is controlled by non-Indigenous archaeologists. And so there's a lot of points that people don't think about. They don't realize it's not just archaeology and history, capitalism is involved in a big way. The nation state is involved in controlling that story, because they stole all the land based on Oh, it's a terra nullius. nobody's using it, we can have it. Right. And so when we show that's not so it makes it unsafe for the nation state. But I mean, I got an email yesterday from an archaeologist that um, his wife is Colombian. And they went down to Bogota. And he talked to a lot of archaeologists there. And they don't even discuss what we call pre Holocene or pre 10,000 year before present sites because of the pressure from archaeologists in the US to deny it. And not to acknowledge that these these ancient Pleistocene sites exist. So a lot of the field of archaeology has ignored this timeframe for Indigenous people, because it's dangerous to go there. Because archaeologists in the US say so

Kerry:

I'm fascinated with the world of archaeology and and the, the sense the knowing that we, as people who are Indigenous to the land, people who have existed beforehand, people who have been colonized in this space in time, I think we have an innate understanding that that existence began beyond what we are allowed to claim. And then, you know, the truths of those existence are scattered all over the world, you know, that were they there's these artifacts that show up, that can't be carbon dated within the timeframe that suits the world archaeological space that exists right now.

And you mentioned something that brought up two questions for me, one being that, you know, you mentioned the capitalism, the capitalist kind of system that exists around archeology, as it exists now. And that brought to mind also how the colonial system managed to take the wealth out of our, you know, our peoples, and turned it into their ownership, their, you know, history, and also, my understandings or studies of things has always shown up that for, for the origins of white folks like that understanding of what it is to be white, you know, whatever we're going to use that they they that understanding isn't found everywhere, like it normally comes from, you know, people who have color involved in the spaces, and then somehow they show up, like we are older. We are older forms of existence, or older species that existed. And I find that an interesting space, like for you does that. Do you think that's one of the things that fuels this colonial way of being? Is that sense of wanting to know where they come from? Do you know what I mean?

Paulette:

Yeah, no, in, in a lot of the things that I've studied, I've really come to understand how archaeology is a child of colonization. And so if you go back into early archeology in the Americas, you'll see that Aleš Hrdlička was sort of a self trained archaeologist, he trained as a physician. But, he was extremely racist. And he claimed that the Indians had only been here 3000 years. And the thing is, if you if you look at what's required in archaeology, to make claims, and to write histories, you have to have data, you have to have evidence, you have to have science. And he was basing this on one graveyard he'd done up in Alaska. He wasn't even looking at, you know, all of the evidence from all of the continents. And he went to his grave denying that we been here for more than 3000 years.

So it was actually an African American, freeman, a Black man in Texas who was working as a cowboy that found the site that broke that barrier and prove that we've been here at least 10,000 years. He found this site with these huge bones and realized they had to be extinct animals because they were way too big. And he told his story. And his story got to Jessie Figgins at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. And in 1927, he went out and started excavating this area in Texas, and actually found what they call a Clovis point in the ribs of an extinct bison. And he had to fight for a few years and have people come and see it. Nobody would believe them because everyone believes Aleš Hrdlička, right. This white or white guy who was racist. And eventually that was accepted and they're like, Okay, so the Indians have been here at least 10,000 years. Right, but it's been stuck there since the 19, late 1920s. And all this evidence has surfaced are our ancestors left us their stories in the land to tell us of their time here. They left it on the rocks with rock art. They, they've held it in their oral traditions. Archaeologists have traditionally ignored all of that. But since I've started publishing and writing more or listening, and they're stepping out of that box, so there was there's a huge fear in archaeology, it's it's been said that if you talk about sites or published on sites that are older than then 11 or 12,000 years, that's academic suicide. Right? The violence that violence against archaeologists that found older sites that's not scientific, that's not academic, that's racist..

Kerry:

Mm hmm 

Could you tell us some of the stories tell us what, what, what the ancestors know and what was left in the rock art?

Paulette:

Oh, there's, there's so much in the rock art, it's immense. So I just had my students completed database of rock art sites whose location was known and made public. And we have, I think, over 2000 sites, there's another 1500 that are held within another database, and their their locations aren’t public. So I won't publish on those. But what that tells us is that, you know, those rock art sites are like mnemonic pegs. So I have heard that one person worked with elders in the Yukon, and they wouldn't tell certain stories. But if you took them back to a rock, or a certain area, they would sit down and start telling the story because the rock held that story. Right.

So they have an amazing, amazing, very rich oral tradition of history. And when you hear, like, they have words in their language, that mean, the glaciers went home, you know, they were here, then. And that's anywhere from 8000 to 12,000 years ago. So you know that people have been here for such