00:00.57 archpodnet And welcome back. We are here with Ashley Thompson um so just kind of starting off this segment. Um Ashley so do you think your approaches to archeology and anthropology are different than your colleagues who aren't indigenous and not just like in terms of fieldwork. But even when you got to Arizona as a graduate student um did you notice like how. How you've contributed to conversations and topics in your coursework differently than some of your colleagues who came from more eurocentric backgrounds. 00:28.97 Ashleigh Thompson Absolutely I did um, yeah I think like 1 thing that makes me different than non-indigenous archeologists that work in a more eurocentric paradigm is I'm always. Asking myself about the descendant communities and wondering if my work and my research is in line with their values. Um I'm i. Know that some archaeologists privilege the archaeological record and protecting material culture over anything but my thinking is is like I want to respect the the descendant communities first and foremost even if that means not doing traditional. Archaeological research or changing projects or whatever. Um, it's really important to me that the the descendant communities are involved and respected and so I think that that's different than a lot of our colleagues in the field that don't. Work with indigenous communities or interact with indigenous archeology and um, that's fine like 1 of my mentors actually at University Of Arizona Once asked me. 01:53.57 Ashleigh Thompson Do you think that everybody in North American Archaeology should be practicing indigenous archaeology and I was like that's a good point like he was like yeah not everybody that we know would you know be a great, um, sort of collaborator with indigenous communities and I kind of. Agree with that and but I do think that you know we should all at least be aware of the descendant communities and like do things that aren't antagonistic or um, like not in line with their with with the community's values. So So yeah, but I think that also that we're lucky because um, a lot of we have like scholars that came before us that paved the way for indigenous archeology. So like you know from the from nagpra forward. Um, we we've had a lot of um. People scholars in front of us that have set the stage for more projects to be done collaborative collaboratively with communities and um, it's not it wasn't hard for me to like. Be an indigenous archeologist per se because because of them and and the great work that they did before us. 03:15.23 archpodnet Now and I definitely have to agree with that like Joe Watkins and sonnya and like others definitely got took a lot of the brunt of being pioneers into indigenous archeology and created a space for for us to to flourish in a way that I don't think i. Personally struggled as much as like maybe Joe or Sonya like they've definitely made it easier for me to do my work so I'm deeply appreciative of of them and everything they did back in the 2000 and late 90 s so totally totally understand. Um. 03:44.23 Ashleigh Thompson You know. 03:47.43 archpodnet And kind of moving forward with that like have you faced any challenges in the field as related to your background or kind of that ah need to keep in mind to senate communities especially like in the southwest right? Um, who have you know different. Perspectives on the past and different. Ah, what's the word I'm looking for how they see the material culture how it should be treated is very much different than how archeologists would treat it so it's kind of what have been your experiences with with some of these maybe challenges right. 04:22.37 Ashleigh Thompson Yeah, so I can think of kind of 2 different ones. Um, and the first one. Um I guess is. 04:34.32 Ashleigh Thompson During my field school. So I I went to a field school that was not connected to my University Because Morris didn't have a field school. Um, and so I actually went to the university of Alaska Fairbanks and um went and worked. For like I think it was like six weeks up in ah in the interior of Alaska and we were working at a paleo indian site. Um, the oldest component being 13000 years old so you know like really old site and um, there was like. A lot of or there was a lot of non-native students. There was only me and then an athabaskin woman who were the indigenous students. Um or even like the only indigenous presence like we didn't have any lectures by indigenous people. None of that which I see other field schools having and now I wish I'd like known to to look for those types of field schools. But there really wasn't much indigenous presence at my field school and one of the students um brought up during some sort of like evening lecture. They brought up this. Question like um, especially in regards to paleo indian sites. They said like why should indigenous people who have or why okay excuse me starting over. 06:06.10 Ashleigh Thompson They okay so a student from that field school poses the question. Why should indigenous people have authority over material culture that is one so ancient and 2 um they viewed it as like not belonging to indigenous people. But. Belonging to to humankind generally um and I think they viewed this site as being like thousands of years old and so maybe indigenous people had a distant connection to it and therefore indigenous people shouldn't have rights or authority over how that. Site is managed and studied and at this site not the year I worked on on it but like ah in a previous year There had been human remains found and so um, my fellow fields school student and I the one who is indigenous. Um, we were just like that night pretty miffed about that question because obviously like for indigenous people a lot of times like the time gap doesn't matter as much and as indigenous people who have seen our sites studied so long. Without collaboration or input or permission. We were just surprised that people were still kind of thinking in this way. Um, and I mean now like 10 years after field school like I've come to find out that a lot of people kind of have similar sentiments as that. 07:42.74 Ashleigh Thompson That person. Um, but I would say like that's kind of one of the struggles or challenges of being um, an indigenous archeologist is people. Um I don't think 1 totally understand where indigenous people are coming from when we when we say. We want to protect our our ancestors resting places or we want to um at least have input in how research is done at indigenous sites. So that's one of the struggles. Um and then another struggle which is interesting. Is um, like maybe some lashback from other indigenous people themselves that don't really understand indigenous archeology or how it can be beneficial to to tribal nations and so um, with. With good reason I guess indigenous people are very wary of anthropologists and archeologists and there's a lot of contentious history there between descendant communities and scientists. Um but you know I have seen instances where archeology has helped tribes protect. Cultural landscapes and helped um help tribes in some way. So so that's I think another challenge is kind of changing the narrative around archeology and um, maybe even educating our fellow indigenous people that um, yes, it's a field. 09:17.17 Ashleigh Thompson Started in colonization but in some ways we can use it for good and um I Really like to think of the ah project I worked on in grad school with the blackfeet nation and because of research done by that team before me, they were able to. 09:36.77 Ashleigh Thompson Prove this longstanding presence of blackfeet and lands adjacent to the reservation but weren't on the reservation and it's a place called Badger Two medicine and because of the archaeological research combined with the blackfeet oral tradition. They were able to better protect this. This wilderness area and cancel the mining and oil leases that that were were there. So um, so yeah I think that like working with archaeologists can can help indigenous communities accomplish some of our goals. Um, and and I like to remind. Or like let people know that not all archeology is bad. So. 10:18.38 archpodnet And absolutely I mean that is a theme I think many indigenous anthropologists run into even I was surprised with in my own community that are language teachers who got their masters in Linguistic Ant so they're not even necessarily. Archaeologists well they're not archaeologists but they were seeing the kind of the same backlash being an anthropologist and it's just they're like wait a second like we're bringing the language back and we're trying to you know, do all this with the community just because we're anthropologists and kind of seeing them kind of in that same thread of. Um, even being in a discipline that has much more of an immediate effect as to cultural revitalization having to face some of these long-standing and completely reasonable. Ah hesitations towards anthropology in general. So yeah, that's. 11:13.69 archpodnet I I get that and and with that being said, if you've ever been able to do work with um your home community The Red Lake Ojibway with you know, archaeological research or anthropological methods at all. 11:25.95 Ashleigh Thompson Yes, um, so I got to do my master's in collaboration with our tippo and so um, when I was thinking about what I wanted my master's research to be I was really missing ojibwe lands. And so I thought like I should just try to do a project with my my tribe and so I met our tribal historic preservation officer. Um as well as some other community members and leadership and I told them like i'm. Trying to figure out my master's research project and I don't necessarily like want to come up with a research question and project on my own I would like to do it in collaboration with the tribe so that we can do something that's not just for me but also could help the community and. Um, in Red Lake and actually across indigenous country There's been a lot of great work in the realm of food sovereignty and um at red lake they have certain programs in the community to reconnect. Um, our people to our food ways. Um. Not just because of all of the diet related diseases that our communities face but also for cultural reasons because our foods are so intricately tied to our culture and language that um I think a lot of people view it as a way to keep um, ojibwe moan or the ojibwe language. 13:00.49 Ashleigh Thompson And our traditions alive and so they were like really interested in um, like an overview of what are red lake ojibwe traditional food waste. There's been research done on an initiale food. Generally there's been quite a bit of research on mumin or wild rice. Um, but. Like Red Lake is a little bit unique. Um in terms of our um, our lands like for example in the contiguous reservation which is actually really really large. Um I think it's like eight hundred Thousand acres or so um. Really isn't much wild ricing and so like um, traditionally historically our people um, would move around and so like people that lived at Red Lake could go to ricing beds outside of what is now the reservation. So anyway, I was really intrigued by this plot. Project and they were also in terms of methodology interested in interviews with elders and so that was like yes, absolutely I love talking to elders. Um I could listen to them all day and so I form this. Master's project around like an overview of our traditional food ways and also um the importance that they hold to the community and it was really amazing. It. It made it so that I could continue to return to Red Lake because in the southwest like I would. 14:34.14 Ashleigh Thompson Go back once a year maybe for a visit but um I just really missed being up there and so um and then I I got to learn a lot about our food waste because as someone who didn't grow up in Red Lake um I didn't really get to know and grow up with the that that. Sort of food knowledge and so I I did that project. It was my my mastery thesis. Um, and I'm really happy that I I went that route um and something I was thinking about during the last segment is we were talking about. Um. How we have so many amazing indigenous scholars that came before us in archeology but also within um, an initialinabe studies. There's a ton of ojibwe scholars that come before me and there's a lot of resources like literary resources. Um. For ojibwe language and so I feel really lucky to to be to come from the in theshnabe community which is 1 population wise I think we're like the fifth largest tribe in North America if you include Canada um, and because of that. Think we've had um, a lot of amazing scholars come out of our own communities and so for my my food sovereignty research I got to draw on on previous work I wasn't like the first one or anything which again was really really helpful. 16:06.00 archpodnet I Absolutely so I'll just I imagine your nation is supportive of your work then. 16:11.76 Ashleigh Thompson Yeah, yeah, I've never yeah I haven't met anyone that wasn't I mean it's kind of hard right? because like within one nation. Not everybody's going to agree but like I haven't received any lashback and I I kind of did it in conjunction with our our tippo. So. 16:19.48 archpodnet Right. 16:29.57 archpodnet Tippos can like make or break Master's programs with collaboration. That's awesome that you're able to do a program like that or a project. That's awesome. Um, and then so like real quick you know before we end the segment. You know what? what are your aspirations and in the field of Archeology. At this point you know like what do you hope to accomplish or have an impact On. So. 16:46.92 Ashleigh Thompson Yeah I think Overall I just want to help tribal nations protect their cultural landscapes like that's my my overall goal and within the work that I'm doing now. Um, as. Director of tribal collaboration at a nonprofit archeological organization I'm getting to do some of that. Um, and so we have advocacy campaigns. For example where we're trying to establish protections for certain landscapes in the Southwest. Um, and so. I Love kind of working in the preservation conservation world where um, we're trying to make sure that these sites um are undisturbed that we can get federal protections for Them. So that Tribes can, um. Continue to interact with these sites and they can be set aside for future generations to learn from and so I would say That's my overall goal and it's really fun now to be working in a field and doing tangible stuff tangible work that helps. Helps me accomplish that goal.