For untold centuries, storytelling has been foundational to the ways Black and Indigenous people understand and connect to the world around them. However, knowledge systems upheld in academic settings continually disavow these narratives, and those who hold them, as valid sites of intellectual production. For BIPOC heritage professionals, storytelling taps into historically marginalized ways of knowing. It offers ways to reclaim and retell histories that often counter the harmful and one-sided narratives told about Black and Indigenous peoples through archaeology, museums, and heritage sites.
In this webinar, we explore storytelling through artifacts, cultural landscapes, comics, graphic novels, and video games as a means of counter-history, illuminating new ways of imagining pasts, presents, and futures for Black and Indigenous people. Panelists will discuss how they engage storytelling as an intellectual entryway into interpretations of the material evidence of Black and Indigenous histories.
Panelists:
Weshoyot Alvitre (Tongva), Comic Book Artist and Illustrator
Antoinette Jackson, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of the Anthropology Department, University of South Florida
John Jennings, Professor, University of California at Riverside
Ora Marek-Martinez (Diné, Nimiipuu, Hopi), Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Executive Director of the Native American Cultural Center, Northern Arizona University
Moderator:
Dian Million (Tanana Athabascan), Ph.D., Associate Professor and Chair of the American Indian Studies Department, University of Washington
Captioning:
CART captioning provided by Lori Stavropoulos.
Sponsors:
Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA
Society of Black Archaeologists
Indigenous Archaeology Collective
Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies
Webinar Series:
From the Margins to the Mainstream: Black and Indigenous Futures in Archaeology
