Indigenous Persistence in the Colonized Americas: Material & Documentary Perspectives on Entanglement
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BOOK REVIEW
Indigenous Persistence in the Colonized Americas: Material & Documentary Perspectives on Entanglement Heather Law Pezzarossi and Russell N. Sheptak (editors), University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2020. 250 pp., 15 figs., 2 tables, list of contributors, index. $75.00 cloth William A. Farley Accepted: 17 August 2020 # Society for Historical Archaeology 2020
The edited volume Indigenous Persistence in the Colonized Americas: Material & Documentary Perspectives on Entanglement represents a cohesive, convincing, critical, and ambitious effort. It is a worthwhile read for any archaeologist who grapples with the challenging ethical questions inherent to the study of indigenous colonial history. The book is edited by Heather Law Pezzarossi, a visiting scholar at Syracuse University, and Russell N. Sheptak, a Research Associate at the University of California, Berkeley. Both are wellpublished and respected scholars of archaeology, historical anthropology, and critical indigenous studies. The chapter authors are an impressive group who lend weight to the volume with thoughtful and specific analyses. They include both senior and junior scholars from a broad geographic background and focus, and indigenous authors are featured in several of the chapters. Law Pezzarossi and Sheptak have gathered these chapters into something that is more than the sum of its parts. They do so in order to achieve a number of challenging goals. By my reckoning, the volume lays out six goals, or perhaps they could be more loosely defined as “themes.” They are: 1. To draw the work of postcolonial studies and entanglement theory forward into the later colonial W. A. Farley (*) Department of Anthropology, Southern Connecticut State University, 501 Crescent Street, New Haven, CT 06515, U.S.A. e-mail: [email protected]
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and industrial periods. By doing so, the authors hope to break the longstanding focus of historical archaeology on the earliest years of colonial interaction in any particular region. To understand the dynamic nature of indigenous persistence across the entirety of the colonial period. To confront, critique, and address the notion of “authenticity” in all its forms, including temporal authenticity, authenticity of identity, and authenticity in terms of pragmatic contemporary political considerations. To strengthen the existing bridges, or build new ones where they do not exist, between archaeologists and contemporary indigenous communities. They seek to accomplish this by providing practical examples of how this has been done in South, Central, and North America. To encourage actions among archaeologists that create tangible benefits to indigenous people living today. Finally, to encourage actions that cede partial or total scholarly authority to indigenous descendant communities.
Indigenous Persistence is most dedicated to the goal of problematizing authenticity narratives and revealing the dynamism of indigenous reinvention and survival throughout the colonial and postcolonial periods. Sev
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