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Reconsidering the Legacies of Colonialism in Native North America (January 2013) (19 pages)
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Page: of 19
110
suggesting that contact with other groups “is a
constant of human experience” (2009:25). And in
the Pacific Northwest, Tveskov (2007) considers
the enduring social importance of seasonal gatherings for local native peoples who continued to
come together at certain times of the year to visit,
share stories, and organize, even as the impetus
for such occasions changed from precontact hunting and fishing to participating in the cash economy brought on by American colonization.
Viewed this way, the colonial period —however
defined —is just one part of indigenous peoples’
long-term dynamic histories.
Of course, colonial circumstances did not end
with the independence of modern nation-states
such as the United States, Mexico, or Canada
(Silliman 2005, 2010). While the transition from
colony to independent state had varying effects
for indigenous groups in North America, the onthe-ground realities of asymmetrical power relations, extractive economies, and cultural entanglement often continued or even intensified. In
considering the persistence of indigenous communities and identities, we must also examine
these later periods, which can be seen as simply
more entrenched forms of colonialism from the
perspective of native peoples. The archaeology of
native communities living in more recent times
has not garnered as much scholarly attention as
early colonialism, but as archaeologists consider
the idea of persistence and the implications of
colonialism within the long-term cultural trajectories of native groups, studies of this period will
become a crucial link between past and present
(Frink 2010; Lightfoot 2006).
In tracing persistence over the long term—
including precontact cultural trajectories, the complex social realms of the early colonial period, and
the later entrenched forms of colonialism (including that which has taken place within the boundaries of our modern nation-states)—we need to
stress that native cultures were and are dynamic.
Until recently, many archaeological approaches to
Native American encounters with colonialism focused on acculturation and depopulation, leading
certain scholars to paint modern Native Americans
“as a phenomenon of contact” derived from remnant populations of the early sixteenth century
(Dunnell 1991:573). Such claims often ignore the
broader historical context of indigenous societies.
AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 78, No. 1, 2013
As Van Buren (2010:178—179) suggests, archaeologists must consider the possibility that indigenous histories were not entirely determined by
their experiences of colonialism. The relative importance placed on colonialism by modern indigenous communities will certainly vary, and
reckoning with the violent realities of colonialism
can play an important role in decolonization (Atalay 2006a), but as archaeologists we should remember that native peoples have deep, complex
histories and do not necessarily define themselves
as products of colonialism.
Terminal Narratives and the Persistence of
Native Identities in Colonial California
The long history of anthropological and archaeological research in coastal California presents a
compelling example of how traditional approaches have served to perpetuate the idea of Indian extinction and the implications of such thinking for indigenous groups today, as well as how
current archaeological work is challenging older
assumptions about the nature of culture change.
The purpose of this section is neither to offer a
comprehensive historiography of California anthropology as applied to Native Americans in the
colonial period nor to provide a cookbook approach for how one might “do” persistence in archaeology but, rather, to demonstrate why archaeologies of persistence are needed and how the
concepts explored in the previous section might
be applied to a broader issue. I offer a regional example rather than one based on a specific site or
cultural group precisely because the issue of persistence is both local and global. The missionized
groups of the California colonies have unique
histories, but their individual stories are also reflective of much broader trends in how the dominant society has viewed colonized peoples and
how archaeology can more effectively consider
indigenous negotiations of colonialism, helping to
drive the development of archaeologies of persistence and to make archaeology more relevant
to descendant communities.
Prior to the arrival of European colonists and
American settlers who came in successive waves
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
California was home to one of the densest and
most diverse indigenous populations in North