Digging into My Past: Archaeology and Humanism in the Canadian Arctic

• Published in: Anthropology and Humanism
• Main Author: Searles, Edmund
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2017
• Subjects: Arctic; Nunavut; inuit
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/anhu.12172; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fanhu.12172; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/anhu.12172; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1111/anhu.12172; https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/anhu.12172

SUMMARY The legal battles ensuing from the discovery of the “Kennewick Man” brought mass media attention to a longstanding divide between the science of archaeology and contemporary indigenous peoples. In this essay, I reflect on this divide as experienced from the perspective of a student of archaeology who later became a cultural anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of Inuit/settler relations in Nunavut. Building on the concept of community‐oriented approaches to archaeology, I examine how a humanistic approach to archaeological data can further unite indigenous peoples and professional archaeology.