{"id":64267,"date":"2022-11-14T11:27:15","date_gmt":"2022-11-14T16:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/?post_type=r_cas_magazine&p=64267"},"modified":"2022-12-05T11:54:57","modified_gmt":"2022-12-05T16:54:57","slug":"reclaiming-their-voice","status":"publish","type":"r_cas_magazine","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/arts-sciences\/fall-2022\/reclaiming-their-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Reclaiming Their Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wade Campbell was raised on the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners region of Arizona and drew inspiration from the archaeological sites nearby.<\/p>\n

By Amy Laskowski | Photos by Cyrus Norcross<\/p>\n

The Navajo, who call themselves the Din\u00e9, have tended to flocks of churro sheep since the 17th century, when they were introduced to domesticated livestock after contact with the Spanish. Today, the hardy, adaptable breed are \u201cbeacons of traditional life,\u201d says Wade Campbell<\/a>, an assistant professor of archaeology and anthropology, who joined the CAS faculty in January 2022. Campbell himself is Din\u00e9 and says that despite the importance of sheepherding to Navajo society, not much research has focused on the beginnings of the Din\u00e9 pastoral tradition during the Spanish colonial period.<\/p>\n

Campbell is the principal investigator of the Early Navajo Pastoral Landscape Project, which he started as his dissertation program at Harvard (he graduated with his PhD in May 2022). The project seeks to examine how pastoralism impacted the social organization, culture, and settlement patterns of early Navajo communities in the American Southwest in the early 18th century and how the practice continues today, as herding is seen as an important piece of preserving and sustaining traditional Navajo culture. In his research, he also applies theories of ethnoarchaeology\u2014working with contemporary communities to learn about their traditional practices and history, an approach that is especially valuable when dealing with those groups who lack extensive written records, like the Navajo.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up, I was always very curious about the position of Navajo folks within this world when the Spanish arrived in 1598. Where\u2019s the Navajo component in that story?\u201d says Campbell, whose Twitter handle is, fittingly, @looking4mutton<\/a>. \u201cSheep are huge in Navajo culture and society, historically and even now. I was helping shear my family\u2019s sheep the other day at home on the Navajo reservation. It\u2019s one of the ways in which some of these traditional Navajo values are expressed and brought into daily life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Wade
Campbell uses traditional archaeological excavation only as a last resort.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A Rich Regional History<\/h2>\n

Campbell, who was raised on the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners region of Arizona and New Mexico, grew up near archaeologically significant sites such as Chaco Canyon, Navajo National Monument, and Canyon de Chelly. As a Yale undergrad studying archaeology, he worked on digs in Peru, Mali, and South Africa. It was on these trips that he realized his research interests\u2014how humans engage with the environment, how multiethnic communities interact, and how the onset of Western colonialism impacted Indigenous communities\u2014could be applied back home on the Navajo Nation.<\/p>\n

Campbell says the Navajo people have historically fallen outside the traditional narrative of Southwestern history and archaeology. Native people weren\u2019t writing about themselves, he says. \u201cIt was white clerks, soldiers, priests, and missionaries writing about us, until about the late 19th century. Oral history is an important resource, but it isn\u2019t great on the details; it tells big sweeping lessons. I think archaeology provides direct evidence of what people were doing in specific places at specific times. There is a historical reason to help Native people reclaim their voice for these earlier periods through archaeological research.\u201d<\/p>\n

Archaeology provides direct evidence of what people were doing in specific places at specific times. There is a historical reason to help Native people reclaim their voice for these earlier periods through archaeological research.<\/p>\n

Wade Campbell<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Mapping History<\/h2>\n

Typically when people think of archaeology, they imagine trowel-wielding researchers unearthing sherds of pottery or old building foundations. But a key part of Campbell\u2019s Early Navajo Pastoral Landscape Project is to avoid excavation. That\u2019s in part because the Navajo traditionally have what early anthropologists described as a strong \u201cdeath taboo,\u201d or more accurately, \u201ca deep respect for past people such that you weren\u2019t supposed to talk about individuals who died or disturb those places where they had once lived,\u201d he says. \u201cDeath is not seen as something to casually interact with. If the goal of Navajo life is to achieve a long, harmonious life, a natural death is a fitting natural end, and disturbing this final rest through excavation is not something to be glorified.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, engaging with sites where past people lived is fraught with tensions that were exacerbated when archaeologists began excavating Native American sites in the late 1800s. Today, this juxtaposition between \u201ctraditional\u201d Western scientific values and the desires of sovereign Native American tribal communities presents an ethical dilemma for modern archaeologists.<\/p>\n

\u201cEarly researchers in the Southwest dug into sites and took out bodies, took out pottery sherds, and transported them to faraway museums. These actions flew in the face of traditional Navajo conceptions of what is acceptable; it really [was] a sign of a lack of respect,\u201d Campbell says. \u201cBut excavation doesn\u2019t need to happen for archaeological research to occur, or if it does, it should truly be a last resort.\u201d<\/p>\n

At early Navajo sites where Campbell believes there may have been pastoral infrastructure such as corrals or watering holes for the animals, he combines methods such as GIS-based geospatial analyses\u2014a software-based technique that combines archaeological data sets with geographic information\u2014with a site survey and the analysis of soil samples to confirm the former presence of a herding site. He hopes that by identifying sites where animals were once kept, he can help reveal how early Navajo groups successfully herded and used the land, while remaining unconquered and free from Spanish rule\u2014lessons he says are relevant for future studies of pastoralism. Thus far, these noninvasive methods have identified three likely corral sites, establishing where he should focus his future efforts. He says he would like to bring BU students to the reservation next summer to study further.<\/p>\n

When starting this work, Campbell\u2019s family had a stipulation: be reverent, and do your work with a respect for those past peoples whose lives you are studying. \u201cOne way Navajo archaeological work helps the Din\u00e9 community today is to put the power to create history back into the hands of Navajo folks,\u201d he says. \u201cIndigenous communities across the country wrestle with the fact that the pervasive influence of Western culture has led to a deterioration of our traditional languages and cultures. By reclaiming the ability to tell our own histories through a variety of means, including an Indigenous approach to archaeological research, we can help to ensure the continuation of our traditional societies and cultures into the 21st century.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Navajo archaeology and anthropology professor Wade Campbell examines his tribe\u2019s history of sheepherding<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":64283,"template":"","department":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-articles\/64267"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/r_cas_magazine"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-articles\/64267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64935,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-articles\/64267\/revisions\/64935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"r_cas_department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=64267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}