Indigenous History Month: Sharing Indigenous Voices

This National Indigenous History Month, ONWA is highlighting Indigenous voices, to recognize the historical, social, and cultural contributions of Indigenous peoples.

This month is meant to foster dialogue, understanding, and reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. It is a time to reflect on the past, acknowledge the ongoing challenges, and work towards building stronger relationships based on respect and mutual understanding.

Through my lived experience and research, I understand that archaeological stories that have dehumanized Indigenous people and erased their links to their homelands are a part of ongoing intergenerational trauma, and racism. In carrying out research, I have come to realize that the past weaves through the present along paths of healing only if we do the work to clear the way. Thus, I have spent twenty-two years researching ancestors’ stories held in the land (archaeological sites), global human evolution, and oral traditions, and re-writing the deep Indigenous history of the Indigenous people of Turtle Island as discussed in my 2021 book The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemsiphere.

Based on my research I argue that people have been present in the Western Hemisphere for over 100,000 years and possibly earlier. However, whether Indigenous people have been in the Western Hemsiphere for 100,000 years or over 200,000 years, the First People and their descendants are Indigenous to the continents of the Western Hemisphere and have been so for thousands of years. This land is where their cultures and lifeways were born; this is where they are from. Ancestral connections between ancient and contemporary Indigenous communities are empowering to Indigenous people. The existence of hundreds of ancestral sites in the Pleistocene (prior to 12,000 years ago) creates a dialogue from which Indigenous people can challenge erasures of histories. It foregrounds their Indigenous identities and their links to the land and empowers them in seeking justice.

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