Feminist Indigenous Archaeology:

From Decolonizing Methodologies to Native Feminist Movements

Farid Muttaqin
Department of Anthropology, SUNY-Binghamton, NY

Learning Indigenous Archaeology: Personal Reflection and the Foundation

In Spring 2012, I took the Indigenous Archaeologies course at the Department of

Anthropology, SUNY Binghamton with Professor Randy McGuire. This is my first (formal)

academic experience of being directly involved in the discussion of indigenous archaeology and

indigenous peoples. Since the course is designed to developing a professional level proficiency

in critical and constructive thought in indigenous archaeology (McGuire 2012), it is really

influential to my developing a more emancipatory perspective in the field of anthropology and

archaeology as well as in dealing with (the issues of) indigenous peoples specifically from the

hegemonic influences of the processual ways of thinking.

In a class session discussing the topic of What Does It Mean to Be Indigenous? we were

provided with an article Ethnic Equity in Archaeology: A View from the Navajo Nation

Archaeology Department by Miranda Warburton (2002). She discusses a collaborative project

between the Navajo Nation Archaeology Department and Northern Arizona University (NNAD-

NAU) in providing students from the Navajo Nation a training program in archaeology as part of

empowering ethnic equity efforts in indigenous archaeology (Warburton 2002:20).

My academic and professional backgrounds in feminism provide me with self-awareness

about linking various academic fields with feminism. Hence, in addition to my significantly
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growing interests in the issues of sovereignty and self-determination of indigenous peoples, what

really invites my intellectual attention to indigenous peoples, specifically when reading

Warburtons piece is that the article exhibits various pictures showing a number of Navajo

women participating in the Student Training Program, as part of the collaboration program and

decolonizing indigenous archaeology programs.

Though Warburton does not really highlight a feminist aspect in the article, I view that the

necessity to reshape archaeology for the purpose of ethnic equity really requires taking

gender equity or equality into account by counting and involving indigenous womens groups in

any available programs. In 2002, NNAD-NAU appointed Davina Two Bears, who is now a PhD

Candidate in the Archaeology of the Social Context program, Indiana University Bloomington, as

the Program Manager of the program (Warburton 2002:22). More interestingly, Warburtons

article was in fact published in the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) Archaeological

Record, September 2002, Volume 2 (4), with a special issue on Gender and Ethnic Equity in

Archaeology. Furthermore, this observation has helped my developing stronger interest in

studying feminist archaeology and archeologists and examining their contributions to enforcing

gender equality and womens rights within indigenous women, especially Native American

women.

In another class meeting on Indigenous Methodologies, we discussed two reading

materials, Dwelling at the Margins, Action at the Intersection? Feminist and Indigenous

Archaeology, 2005 by Margaret W. Conkey (2005), who is among the early pioneers in feminist

archaeology (Hays-Gilpin and Whitley 1999:5), and an influential book Decolonizing

Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples by Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999). I got a deeper

insight about the important role feminism and feminist archaeology have played and the

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significant contribution they have provided to decolonizing indigenous archaeology, including

epistemological and philosophical foundations. I am specifically inspired by the idea that feminist

archeologists need to develop the project-specific coalitions between previously unconnected

but equally interested parties in order for them to be able to offer, not just to wider

feminisms but also to our own social and cultural worlds (Conkey 2010:94) and how feminist

critical approaches are offered in developing the arguments of decolonizing indigenous

archaeological methodologies (Tuhiwai Smith 1999: Chapter 9).

These above experiences become my reflective background inspiring me in writing this

paper. After a brief observation by reading additional resources mainly on gender archaeology

including Reader in Gender Archaeology (Hays-Gilpin and Whitley 1999), I come up with an

initial conclusion about the temporal phases in the developments of feminist indigenous

archaeology which refer to its academic agendas. The first phase is mainstreaming feminism in

archaeology when feminist archeologists are engaged in building and developing some key

critical points to challenge andocentric archaeology (and anthropology). The second agenda is

feminist archaeology as decolonizing archaeology when feminist archaeology and

archaeologists extensively exhibit their contribution challenging processual archaeology. The

third agenda is feminist engagement in the activism toward womens rights (and gender equality)

movements when, to some extent, feminist archaeologists build initiatives to bring feminism

more practical in archaeology, for instance through the establishment of Committee on the

Status of Women in Archaeology (COSWA) at the Society of American Archaeology (SAA).

In the first two phases, as I understand from reading these key sources in feminist

archaeology, feminist indigenous archaeology and archeologists are to a great extent influential in

liberating native archaeology from andocentric and positivist approaches of Western

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archeological methods and methodologies. Nevertheless, from my further observation of reading

news and watching documentary movies, I found that feminist archaeology and archeologists

seem to provide a little contribution to enhancing activisms within native feminist and womens

rights movements, particularly in the North America. In fact, as I will elaborate later, Native

American women still face various discrimination and violence, including high rate of rape,

intimate and domestic violence, homicide, and among others. The foundation of the COSWA

seems to be an important way archaeology and archaeologists, especially in the North America,

both as academic interest and a profession could initiate toward a stronger focus on the issues of

gender based violence, even though with a greater attention paid more to the status of women

archeologists emphasizing their personal and professional experiences (Rizvi 2008:6-7) instead

of the status of indigenous women that I will discuss further in the below section.

In this paper, I discuss how feminist indigenous archaeology and archaeologists can provide

further contributions to strengthening feminist and womens rights movements within indigenous

women, particularly in this case Native American women. I will specifically discuss what further

transformation needed toward feminist indigenous archeologists being deeper engaged in native

womens rights movements; what roles feminist archaeology and archeologist have played and

what contributions they have provided to feminist movements within Native American women

and why it is important for feminist indigenous archaeology and archeologists to get deeper

engaged in enforcing womens rights within Native American women.

Two core subjects of this paper are, in the first, I will explore intellectual dynamics within

archaeology in developing and mainstreaming feminist ways of thinking into indigenous

archaeology, including feminist archaeologists engagement in decolonizing indigenous

archaeological methodologies. In the second section, I will discuss how feminist archaeology and

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archaeologist can provide greater offers in consolidating womens rights movements within

indigenous communities. Why is it necessary? Here I will also examine the status of women

within indigenous groups, particularly Native American nations as one of the situational

backgrounds of the needs feminist archaeology and archaeologists work further in this area.

Feminist Indigenous Archaeology: From Mainstreaming Feminist Perspectives to

Decolonizing Methodologies Vice Versa

Anthropology and archaeology had gained significant criticisms from indigenous peoples

and other non-Western communities. These criticisms were mainly based on the view that

archaeology and anthropology as well as archeologists and anthropologist were believed as the

agents of imperialism and colonialism (see for instance Nicholas and Hollowell 2007, Spector

1993). Anthropology was viewed as a Western project (Biolsi and Zimmerman 1997:14) and was

the academic discipline that [made] sense of the Others the West has both created and

encountered in its global expansion since 1500 (Biolsi and Zimmerman 1997, 14 quoting Biolsi

1997 and Diamond 1974). The Western hegemonic philosophy of positivism and Western

ethnocentrism are indeed seen as the central source of the problem (McGuire 1997, Tuhiwai

Smith 1999, Harris 2010, Atalay 2010).

The critiques against the imperial perspective of anthropology and anthropologists (as well

as archaeology and archaeologists) come from both indigenous peoples and the archaeologists.

In my opinion, this situation creates a crucial environment of scholarship and politics toward the

development of non-colonial indigenous archaeologies through various important initiatives.

In 1969, Vine Deloria, Jr. wrote an influential book Custer Died for Your Sins that criticizes

anthropologists for showing insensitive attitudes toward Indian peoples and their cultures.

Chapter 4, Anthropologists and Other Friends, consists of a satirical illustration of how

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colonial attitudes of anthropologists create Indians and establish an academic situation in which

Indians have been cursed above all other people in history (1988:76). He points out that since

in anthropology (and archaeology) people are object for observation, experimentation,

manipulation and for eventual extinction, The anthropologist thus furnish the justification for

treating Indian people like so many chessmen available for anyone to play with (Deloria

1969:81). Trigger (1980) furthermore theoretically observes how archaeology was employed as

the Imperial tool by arguing, for example, that cultural evolution in the European way of

philosophical thinking has strongly influenced anthropologists (and archaeologists) in the North

in making such stereotypes against indigenous peoples as the Others, barbarism and uncivilized

and in creating the myth around the First Nations that legitimized the Western colonialism.

The imperial ideology of archaeology (and anthropology) also appears in its epistemology

that believes rationalism as the only valid philosophy of knowledge, rationality as the only valid

methodology of knowledge, and rational knowledge as the only valid knowledge. While on the

one hand, the processual archaeology and the colonial archeologists make an absolute claim

about the truth of the rational knowledge of Western archaeology and reject non-rational

knowledge that commonly exists within (and is widely believed by) indigenous peoples, on the

other hand, they stereotype and label indigenous peoples as irrational and incapable to understand

and develop rational knowledge and, therefore, backward and uncivilized. In fact, Indigenous

peoples have their own ways and concepts of knowing, such as oral stories that provide the ways

indigenous peoples develop their knowledge about their origins and even become the conceptual

foundation for their sovereignty (for further discussion see Eco-Hawk 2000, Atalay 2010).

An edited volume, Indian and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria, Jr and the Critique of

Anthropology, published 28 years after the revelation of Custer Died for the Sins, draws our

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attention to the (power) relation between archaeologists and indigenous peoples created from the

colonial academic environment within indigenous archaeology (and anthropology). McGuire

(1997) in this volume argues that the archaeologists claim that they are the stewards of the past

creates the colonial (power) relationship between archaeologists and Indian peoples. This claim

leads archaeologists (and anthropologists) to seeing themselves as the authorities on Native

American pasts (McGuire 1997:64). The authority give archaeologists and anthropologists a

power over those pasts to be called as expert witness, [their] testimony [is] more weight

than that of tribal elders (McGuire 1997:65). With and within this kind of relationship,

archaeology is (still) seen as the Masters tool and archaeologists (still) employ a colonial

relationship in their interactions with indigenous peoples. As a result, Zimmerman (2005:307)

mentions that, Many descendant communities, and not just those of Indigenous peoples, feel

victimized by an archaeology.

After the big waves of criticisms challenging the colonial perspective and European

ethnocentrism of archaeology and anthropology, a period of new hope in this field and a new

generation of archaeologists who are expected to sincerely integrate non-colonial ways of

thinking and methodologies in their archeology of indigenous peoples emerges. During April 10,

1996 meeting, SAA adopted Principles of Archaeological Ethics which the initiative was begun

since 1991. These ethical principles consist of 8 points including Stewardship, Accountability,

Commercialization, Public Education and Outreach, Intellectual Property, Public Reporting and

Publication, and Training and Resources that emphasize the responsibility of archeologists for

acknowledging and respecting to indigenous communities (SAA 2012). Yet, since the code of

conduct is only morally and ethically binding, there are some concerns especially in its weak

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position in controlling the harmful attitudes archeologists might have (for further discussion, see

for example Smith and Burke 2010).

Another important effort is in the context of legislation; in the United States, it appears in

the form of, for example, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation (NAGPRA) of

1999 and the National Museum of the American Indian Act (NMAIA) of 1989 (Watkins

2010:155). The importance of this legislation rests in its requiring archaeologists for formal

consultation with indigenous communities. McGuire (1997:77) illustrates that as archeologist

did not listen well a message as voiced by people like Deloria that the past we had taken as our

own were the heritages of living [indigenous] peoples, this legislation is very important to

stop our ears. Consultation and later collaboration become an important way toward the

development of more equal relationships between archeologists and indigenous peoples.

One of the most influential actions of decolonization of archaeology is in the area of

philosophy, ideology, epistemology and scholarship through the project of decolonizing

methodologies of archaeology (and anthropology) that is introduced in both internal and

external academic institutions. Among the key points are the acknowledgment of indigenous

ways of knowing which have been neglected and marginalized in the positivist archaeology and

the important engagement of indigenous peoples in archaeology and various development

programs derived from an indigenous archaeology (see for instance Tuhiwai Smith 1999, Atalay

2010, Smith and Jackson 2010).

These all actions importantly demonstrate the plural ways in decolonizing methodologies.

Even though, as Professor McGuire (2012) emphasized during some class sessions, archaeology

and archaeologists with a more sensitive and non-colonial way of thinking are not yet a dominant

mainstream or not all archaeologists show such kind of sensitive attitude, I view that the

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publication of several critical works and the integration of critical thinking within indigenous

archaeology working in the area of indigenous peoples in higher education, on one hand, creates

significant popularity of non-colonial archaeology within new generations of archaeologists

and, on the other hand, plays a major role in building a more sensitive perspectives among

archaeologists toward indigenous peoples in a more recent period. When indigenous archeologies

is formally taught in higher education, there will be a greater hope for the transformation.

Meanwhile, like archaeology (and anthropology), feminism and feminists are suspiciously

seen by indigenous feminists and other non-Western feminists as the other agent of imperialism

and colonialism and gain a lot of criticisms as well, mainly from the post-colonial and

multicultural as well as indigenous feminisms. Studies about European women travelers travel

documentation on the status and situation of women in some colonized countries conclude about

how feminism was constructed through the imperial eyes that made it White feminism. In the

travel documentation of these women we basically find stereotypical views against women within

colonized countries as backward, in an absolute oppression, uncivilized, ignorant, incapable for

rational knowledge and the Others who needed help the hand of colonial power for liberation

and emancipation from the backwardness and oppression (see for instance Ahmed 1982:523,

Mohanty 2003: Chapter One).

Furthermore, while feminism and feminists are believed by non-Western feminists as being

the right-hands of the Western imperialism and exhibiting Western ethnocentric perspective, on

the other hand, feminists face a serious challenge in the fact that archaeology (and anthropology)

is a male-dominated academic field. Spector (1993:7) illustrates this situation, Not only were

they [archeology courses and texts] object centered; they were male centered. If people were

mentioned at all, they were men. Here, feminist archaeology therefore has two important

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agendas. The first is to confront the notion of Western imperialism and ethnocentrism in

feminism, especially when encountering indigenous women, and the second is to liberate

archaeology from andocentrism and male archeologists domination. Importantly, even though

there are some great efforts feminist archeology has contributes to both decolonizing archaeology

and centering feminist perspective in archaeology, I found that feminist archeology is still at a

peripheral position, even within a formal educational system. In the Indigenous Archaeologies

course I took, for instance, we did not extensively discuss the contributions of feminist

archaeology and archaeologists, including in decolonization of indigenous archaeology.

Feminism is indeed widely voiced by feminist archeologists in decolonizing indigenous

archaeology as an integral way of liberating feminism from Western ethnocentrism. While

feminism is accused by non-western feminists of employing colonial ideology and methodology

in creating indigenous women, on the other hand, feminism is employed by feminist

archaeologists as a decolonizing tool. For instance, as mentioned earlier, Conkey (2005:94)

suggests considering the emergence and articulation of the intersections between Indigenous and

feminist archaeologies towards an even more transformative coalitional consciousness.

Meanwhile, Linda Smith (1999:5) mentions that critiques by feminist scholars have provided

ways of talking about knowledge and its social construction, and about methodologies and the

politics of research. Reunderstanding feminism within the contexts of multicultural perspectives

is also brought about as a conceptual framework in decolonizing indigenous methodologies and

scholarships (Tuhiwai Smith 1999:165-168) that will give a voice for the visibility of

indigenous women. In a more strategic implementation, as stated earlier, Warburton has provided

a wider education opportunity in archaeology for indigenous women from the Navajo Nations.

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 Janet Spectors book What this Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota

Village (1993) shows a clearer example of how feminist archaeology provides a crucial

contribution to decolonizing archaeology. Spector (2003:7) observes that, not unique to

archaeology, most academic scholarships in early 1970s were exclusively made by white,

middle-class men from Euro-American that discriminate on the basis of sex, race, and class.

Therefore, within this scholarship circumstance, womens perceptions and experiences are

frequently ignored, trivialized, and peripheralized (Spector 2003:7). She underlines an

intersectional issue between indigenous archaeology and feminist archaeology in the fact that

while andocentric archaeology (and anthropology) makes distortion about women in many

cultural contexts, colonial archaeology produces the same distortion about indigenous people as

well. Therefore, as a decolonizing methodologies as well as integrating feminism in indigenous

archaeology, she suggests, feminist archaeology needs to consider and include the unheard voices

and perspectives of these abandoned peoples (Spector 1993:13). In this regards, Feminist

epistemologies typically began from the standpoints of those whose voices have been

marginalized, silenced, or otherwise dismissed (Nicholas and Hollowell 2007:71). Spector

names it archaeology with a strong empathy, a concept that feminists loudly herald.

In the earlier period of scholarship foundation, feminist archaeology has built critical

thinking against male-dominated tradition in archaeology through re-understanding certain key

concepts of gender and power with the formulation of an explicit framework of the

archaeological study of gender (Conkey and Spector 1998:11) and gender power relation.

Andocentric and patriarchal construction in archaeology hinders archaeologists from the

necessity of taking a specific account gender in their archaeological observation. Hence, as a

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consequence, Archaeology has been neither objective nor inclusive on the subject of gender

(Conkey and Spector 1998:11).

The call for addressing gender in archaeology inspires the development of a greater

academic interest in the inclusion of gender in archaeological study that really contests

andocentric and ethnocentric construction in archaeology. Among the significant influences of

this progress can be seen, for example, in how even primatologists began to systematically

record the activities of male and female baboon (Hasy-Gilpin and Whitley 1998:5).

Andocentric (and ethnocentric) archaeology does not commonly talk about sex and gender

directly, yet it speaks about mens and womens roles based on a Western cultural essentialism

picturing women as passive, nurturing, domestic, affective and so on (Trocolli 1999:54) while

men are warriors and hunters (Hasy-Gilpin and Whitley 1998:5) to interpret power relation

between men and women within indigenous peoples (Trocolli 1999: Chapter 3). Such a point of

view does not consider certain periodical and special contexts that make possible differences in

seeing these (gender) roles (Hasy-Gilpin and Whitley 1998:5). Most indigenous peoples in fact

have a different cultural construction of division of labor [that] was not as rigidly dichotomous

as some 19th-20th century ethnography imply (Trocolli 1999:54 quoting Moss 1993:632). As a

result of such a kind of cultural interpretation, womens life stories are hidden from historical

documentaries, and the meanings of their lives are left to the readers imaginations their own

cultural expectation for the natural role of women (Klein and Ackermen 1995:3). More

importantly, I view that addressing power in the discussion of indigenous archaeologies plays an

essential role in deconstructing and contesting both colonial and andocentric perspectives on

power domination toward a more equal and non-hierarchical power relationship within the field

of archaeology and within indigenous communities.

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 In conclusion, the long history of scholarship development and transformation through the

project of decolonization of archaeology and the inclusion of feminist perspectives into the field

of archaeology mediates feminist archaeologists to successfully bring significant changes within

the field of archaeology and the studies of indigenous communities. The history of feminist

indigenous archaeology goes on when feminist archaeologists began to intensively voice the

needs to implement feminist principles into a more practical aspect of advancing the status of

women in archaeology like equality in archaeological employment.

After Decolonizing Methodologies: From the Status of Women in Archaeology to

Indigenous Womens Rights Movements

After the period of the foundation of philosophical and scholarship framework, feminist

archaeology and archaeologists embarks on struggling toward gender equity and equability in the

field of archaeology both inside and outside academic institutions. Fair employment and womens

specific gender needs are the two key issues vibrantly voiced by feminist archeologists as part of

the advancement of the status of women in archaeology.

The SAA Archaeological Record, September 2008, Volume 8 (4) delivered a special issue of

Looking Forward, Looking Back: A Special Issue from the Committee on the Status of Women

in Archaeology (COSWA). Importantly, the publication looks like a further effort of the SAA to

pay greater attention to womens and gender issues within the organization. As this publication is

meant to highlight the relationship between this committee and the larger organization by

compiling a special issue..., dedicated to many of the concerns with which COSWA has been

tirelessly engaged over the years (Rizvi 2008:6), the establishment of COSWA in the SAA and

the COSWA itself involves an intense engagement of the (women) pioneers in the history of SAA

and the field of archaeology.

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 In an article that appears in the volume, Tomskov (2008:8) makes a point about the

importance of locating the COSWA foundation in the historical context of SAA and the field or

archaeology to release a broader picture of the SAA during some of the major organizational

changes that set the pace and stage for the association as we know it today. The history of this

period also highlights generational shifts and changes in the position and attitudes of women who

were active in the earlier decades and the generation of women who followed in the last two

decades. It becomes clear that the path for gender archaeology of the 1990s was laid in the 1970s

and 1980s, when many women were impressively active in efforts to open American archaeology

to wider participation. This implies, on one hand, that there was a significant increase of the

number of women active in archaeology and in the SAA during these historical periods, and, on

the other hand, recognition and acknowledgment of their existences were still not widely

articulated. The formation of COSWA was formally announced during the annual meetings in

Washington, D.C., May 1, 1974 (Tomskov 2008:8).

Referring to the AAA Newsletter 1978, Tomskov (2008:8) mentions, the period of 1978-

1979 was a significant momentum of COSWA with archaeologists such as Susan White, Meg

Conkey, Maxine Kleindienst, Ruthann Knudson, Suzanne Crater, Sally Greiser, and Leslie

Wildesen who worked to disseminate information to and about women in the profession,

including providing such information to popular magazines. The committee also planned a

special SAA symposium on New Perspectives on Prehistory with feminist and other new

interpretations of archaeological method and theory.

As I previously stated, COSWA seems to be a women archeologists organization that

focuses more on advancing the status of women archeologists, women practitioners in

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archaeology, rather than the status of indigenous womens groups. This also reflects in

Tomskov (2008, 9) quoting Wildesen (1980:15):

women archaeologists perceive themselves to be less well off, and less likely to be well off,
than their male counterparts in terms of training, hiring, promotion, tenure, salary, access to
research opportunities, and professional credibility, in spite of relatively high job
satisfaction, salary level (compared with other women anthropologists), youth and
qualifications.... They feel underpaid and unrewarded in nonmonetary ways such as tenure
or prestige, especially in academia. They seem to have sought innovative jobs in the public
and private sectors, in reaction to what are perceived as limited opportunities for women
and less challenging careers in academia.

In a remark as the President-Elect of SAA to the publication of The SAA Archaeological

Record, September 2008, Volume 8 (4) delivering a special issue of Looking Forward, Looking

Back: A Special Issue from the Committee on the Status of Women in Archaeology (COSWA),

Conkey asserts that [S]cience today increasingly recognizes that to move forward --in

substance, discoveries, and in adapting to ever changing circumstances-- is not just aided by

diversity but requires it. And this means equal support, recognition, and opportunities for all

practitioners. COSWA is a key SAA committee in advancing these goals that should help

guarantee that we bring and nurture the very best talents, minds and energies to the tasks and

challenges of 21st century archaeology, no matter the gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality or

other personal attributes (Conkey 2008:7). To highlight the point that COSWA was not

established only to bring and nurture the very best talents, minds and energies of the

practitioners, the archeologists, as Conkey mentions, but also the entire native womens groups,

it is important to build understanding that indigenous archaeology does not separate the

(women) archeologists and the native womens communities.

Still about the status of women archaeologists, the establishment of COSWA that was set in

the long historical scholarship of feminist archaeology appeared to be followed by a significant

impact in terms of how professional archaeological association began to open up a greater

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opportunity for womens engagements and to advance the status of women in archaeology. In the

late 1992, SAA made a census that in general aimed to assist the organization draw a more

empirically grounded profile of its members (Zeder 1997:1). Within the influences of the

emerging attempts of mainstreaming feminist perspective in archaeology, the census paid in a

great extent the status of women in archaeology (Zeder 1997 and 3 quoting Nelson et al. 1999

and Claassen 1994). As a result, the data from the census reported in The American

Archaeologists: A Profile was strongly accommodated sex disaggregated data in all aspects

surveyed including membership profile, education, employment and payment, research,

publication and professional activities (see Zeder 1997). In archaeological employment, for

instance, the survey shows the increase of the proportion of women in archaeology

accompanied by a significant shift among younger women away from jobs in which

archaeology is only a minor component, and toward more full-time employment in the four

primary sectors of archaeological employment: academia, government, museum, and the private

sector (Zeder 1997:45). In 1998 COSWA formed the Women in Archaeology Interest Group

to encourage broader support and participation than is possible through COSWA and will

function as a formal network of SAA members who are interested in a broad range of

professional research, and scholarly issues of concern to women archaeologists (Wright 1998).

The situation described above is a clear proof of the significant progress of the status of

women in archaeology since feminist archaeologists began their struggles for both the

decolonization of the archaeological scholarship and the reconstruction of andocentric and

patriarchal archaeology toward feminist (indigenous) archaeology. It is not to ignore certain

circumstances that still show the subordination of feminist archaeology and women in

archaeology in various aspects. Feminism is not always mainstreamed in archaeological

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methodologies. As Hutson (1998) quoting Zeder (1997b), Stark, Spielmann, Shears, and

Ohnersorgen (1997), in fact it is still found in the field archaeology that male professors earn

more than female professors and that men are more likely to secure tenure track positions than

women. In addition, quoting Stark et al. (1997:9), Hutson (1998) mentions that, women are

not being hired in academia in proportion to their representation among Ph.D. recipients.

It seems such a progressive (feminist) achievement within internal women archaeologists

and in the archaeological scholarship does not really give a significant impact to enhancing the

status of indigenous women feminist archaeologists study and work with and for. Yet, this opinion

is not to undervalue what feminist archaeology and archaeologists have contributed to opening up

a spacious gate for a more visible appearance and existence of indigenous women, especially in

archaeological studies. Instead, feminist archaeology and archaeologists can play a greater role in

advancing the status of indigenous women, particularly in the United States.

First of all, I will describe a more recent picture of the status of Native American women.

The Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005 (VAWA)

includes a special provision of Safety of Indian Women in Title IX. To some extent, the

presence of this special provision is a result of how the long history of making indigenous women

visible and their voices are heard which include the contribution of feminist archaeology and

archaeologists. Nevertheless, despite the importance of this legislation as a legal protection for

Native American women from various forms of violence, on the other hand, the inclusion of this

provision reflects the vulnerable circumstance of Native American women from violence. The

findings described in VAWA show that:

(1) 1 out of every 3 Indian (including Alaska Native) women are raped in their lifetimes;

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 (2) Indian women experience 7 sexual assaults per 1,000, compared with 4 per 1,000 among
Black Americans, 3 per 1,000 among Caucasians, 2 per 1,000 among Hispanic women,
and 1 per 1,000 among Asian women;

(3) Indian women experience the violent crime of battering at a rate of 23.2 per 1,000,
compared with 8 per 1,000 among Caucasian women;

(4) during the period 1979 through 1992, homicide was the third leading cause of death of
Indian females aged 15.
A report by Amnesty International (2007:5) states that a high number of perpetrators of

sexual violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women are non-Indian. In Oklahoma,

58 per cent of the cases involved non-Native perpetrators. In Anchorage, Alaska, 57.7 per

cent of Alaska Native victims of sexual violence reported that their attackers had been non-Native

men. Domestic violence and sexual assaults are an important factor in the increasing number of

Native Indian women affected by HIV (Ditewig-Morris, Blue, and Folsom 2011). As many

Native Indians still live in poverty, Native Indian women appear to experience a more difficult

economic situation (for recent examples, see Kramer 2007 on poverty situation of Native

Kumeeyaay women in Baja California and Aljazeera 2007 on the condition in the Pine Ridge

Reservation of South Dakota).

Smith (2005b:1) underlines that gender and sexual based violence against indigenous

women of color is not simply a patriarchal control, but also serves as a tool of racism and

colonialism. Smith (2005b:10), furthermore, shows how the colonial creation of stereotypical

imagination that Native bodies are also immanently polluted with sexual sins gives a seriously

negative impact to Native women; Because Indian bodies are dirty, they are considered

sexually violable and rapable, and the rape bodies that are considered impure and dirty simply

does not count. Smith (2005a:116) also shares a touching story about her experience as a rape

18
crisis counselor, When I worked as a rape crisis counselor, every Native client I saw said to me

at one point, I wish I wasn't Indian.

Asetoyer (1990:87-91) explores how alcohol was used by the Europeans to intimidate,

threaten, bereave, bluff, swindle, and manipulate Native Americans, into relinquishing their

lands, their culture and most of all to disintegrate and most of all to disintegrate a strong healthy

nation. Alcohol was and is still a serious problem within Native Americans. Various forms of

violence, including domestic and other intimate violence against women appear to be a serious

impact of the alcoholic use and abuse (Asetoyer 1990). Interestingly, while this problem has a

long historical root that involved European colonialism, stigmatic responses against Native

American attitude of alcoholism remain.

I argue that as many problems of gender and sexual violence and discrimination against

indigenous women rest in a cultural and political construction of Indian womanhood or

womanness including that is a result of the creation of the past of the history of colonialism, it

is crucial for feminist archaeologists to get deeper engaged in indigenous womens rights

movements. It can be said, Indian women (or other indigenous women) are in a vulnerable

situation of being target of gender violence because of their Indianness and womanness.

Indigenous women are told that, [T]hey experience contemporary sexual violence as a legacy of

impunity for past atrocities (Amnesty International 2007:5). In other words, race based

prejudices are an underlying source of problem of various gender and sexual injustice and

violence against indigenous women. Therefore, a potential action feminist archaeology can

greatly contribute is revisiting various conceptual frameworks in understanding power within

indigenous communities that indeed relies on cultural development toward gender power

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relationship that is guaranteed from not being applied as a legitimacy of violence and

discrimination against native women.

Feminist archaeologists crucially contribute in developing a cultural interpretation of gender

power relationship of indigenous peoples including by mainstreaming feminist perspective in

understanding womens domestic role as displaying (informal) power. Nevertheless, the

problem invokes when any many circumstances formal (political) power is considered more in

making a decision including of representation and collaboration and women are not in a formal

leadership position. We understand the significant (cultural) meaning of womens informal

leadership within indigenous communities in the historical period, but there has been a giant

change with the leadership structure of indigenous peoples in the recent periods, including in the

North America when some indigenous nations accept and adopt a formal (political) leadership. In

that circumstance, do women within indigenous communities really participate in a real

participation in any collaboration? Feminist archaeologists build critical views against

andocentric archaeology, yet as a result of glorifying multicultural approaches as a dominant

feminist perspective since the late 1970s, it seems that feminist archaeologists seldom

demonstrate critiques against (possible) patriarchal and male-centered political and social

system within indigenous communities. Nevertheless, Native Indian women have started to

express their critical voices against patriarchal construction within their indigenous communities.

Smith (2005a:122) quoting Allen (1986:202) asserts that, While women still play the traditional

role of housekeeper, childbearer, and nurturer, they no longer enjoy the unquestioned positions of

power, respect, and decision making on local and international levels that were not so long ago

their accustomed functions.

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 Some Native American women now in fact hold a key position in a formal political

leadership within their nations. Theresa "Huck" Two Bulls is the President of the Oglala Sioux

Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota that was reported to facing a number of

serious social problems including high rate of unemployment, crime and violence, and poverty

(Giago 2010). However, more indigenous women of course are in a contrast situation with what

Two Bulls is.

Toward this end, feminist archaeologists are suggested to strengthen their archaeology

with empathy as Spector suggested 9 years ago. I view that active engagements in activisms of

indigenous women in every level will play a significant role in building a stronger empathy

among feminist archaeologists, men and women, so they will be able to listen and understand

what indigenous women really want as being an indigenous and a woman.

Indigenous women in general accomplish valuable impacts from feminist archaeological

cultural reinterpretation of gender and gender power relation within indigenous communities.

However, they are still a peripheral group within marginalized indigenous peoples. Native

womens groups show a critical point of view that sovereignty and self-determination as

indigenous nations do not really reflect in the living conditions of native women evident for

example in the high rate of gender and sexual violence. They view the importance of voicing

Sovereign Women Strengthen Sovereign Nations (Bubar and Vernon 2005:58).

While indigenous feminism and feminists strongly consider that their voices of anti-

white feminism exhibit significant contribution to claiming sovereignty of indigenous nations,

their contribution is neglected by their own nations. Winona LaDuke (1994) as Smith

(2005a:122) quotes shows her critique by calling to not cheapen sovereignty; LaDuke asserts

that, Traditionally, Native men took care of their own. Do they pay their own to these women? I

21
don't think so. I know better. How does that equation better the lives of our children? How is that

(real) sovereignty? The U.S. government is so hypocritical about recognizing sovereignty. And

we, the Native community, fall into the same hypocrisy (Smith 2005a:122). In this regards,

addressing the linkage of womens sovereignty and the sovereignty of nations by native

feminists should encourage feminist archaeologists to take more efforts in advancing the status

of indigenous women in their archaeological works to support the manifestation of the

sovereignty of native nations into the lives of indigenous women.

It is indeed not simple for feminist archaeologists to build feminist solidarity with native

womens rights and gender equality advocates. Hall (2008:277) notes that, Many activist

indigenous women are also suspicious of calls for solidarity on the basis of female identity and

shared gender oppression across cultures within the historical perspective that feminism is a

legacy of White colonialism. In addition, multicultural insights on gender diversity and

differences within various cultural contexts emerge to be a critical articulation of some native

womens groups against feminist ideas. Nevertheless, as a result of the long process of feminist

struggles, some other native women show a more open view toward feminist movements. As an

illustration about this latter situation, Smith (2005a:117-118) reports an interview with an Indian

activist woman saying that, Feminism means to me, putting a word on the women's world. I

can only talk about the reservation society, because that's where I live and that's the only thing I

know. I refuse to limit my world. How could we limit ourselves?"

In the context of multicultural contexts that give feminists, particularly feminist

archaeologists working with indigenous women a potential trap (Conkey 2010:98),

understanding and addressing intersectionalities between feminist and indigenous archaeologies

as Conkey suggests is again a key conceptual framework. Here, while on one hand, we need to

22
show a strong cultural respect, on the other hand, we need to show our political stance against

various forms of gender and sexual discrimination and violence. Toward this end, a crucial role

feminist archaeologist can play is strengthening cultural, political and personal cultural awareness

among archaeologists and indigenous communities about the existence of patriarchal ideology

where various forms of gender discrimination and violence against women ground is extensively

believed in many societies. Green (2007:22) states that, Some aboriginal cultures and

communities are patriarchal, either in cultural origin or because of incorporation of colonizer

patriarchy.

After the long and intensive process of decolonizing archaeology, mainstreaming feminist

frameworks in archaeological studies and empowering the status of women in archaeology,

feminist archaeologies have crucial opportunities to engage deeper with indigenous women

toward the advancement of their status. With the archaeology with empathy feminist

archaeologists can advance themselves from performing only ethical or legal approaches in

working with and for indigenous women. Archaeologists (and anthropologists) also appear to be

among academic communities having access the most to the real situations of indigenous groups

with their deep engagement during archaeological observation. This circumstance provides

archaeologists an opportunity to not only understand the situation, but also think and work

on how they can play a more influential role in providing ways out for certain social and cultural

problems in the communities, particularly among these faced by womens groups. In this regards,

feminist archaeologists need to transform themselves from being a passive observer whose

works limit to only research, collect data, interview, and write a report toward an active

activist and strengthen their political stance in dealing with social, cultural and political injustices

among indigenous peoples, in this context, native womens groups.

23
 Feminist archaeologists are encouraged to expand their struggle for the advancement of the

status of women in archaeology, out of the internal circle of women archeologists toward broader

womens groups, mainly indigenous women. Experiences of Warburton with female students

from the Navajo Nation can again be an important model to build more initiatives to empower the

status of indigenous women. Within the context of collaboration that reflects the necessity of

equal dialogues, feminist archaeologists can mediate the establishment of collaboration and

dialogues between indigenous women and other organizations or individuals seen as having

important position for the development. This is a necessity as within male dominated social and

political structure in both internal and external native communities, it is not easy for

indigenous women to freely express their voices and interests. By applying a (feminist)

commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination (Conkey 2005:97 quoting Collins

1990:37-38), feminist archaeologists, on one hand, contest andocentric and male-centered power

relation existing in various social, cultural and political structures and, on the other hand, support

native women empower themselves and articulate their power.

In conclusion, as I previously express, the necessity to reshape archaeology for the

purpose of ethnic equity really needs to consider gender equity or equality by counting and

involving indigenous womens groups in any available programs, including in the elimination of

all forms of gender and sexual based violence and discrimination. Feminist archaeologists have

played and still play a major role in bringing the equity and equality among indigenous

communities through their crucial contributions in transforming feminist perspectives within the

field of archaeology. Feminist archaeologists give their influential contribution in challenging

both colonial and andocentric legacies in archaeology; their contributions of decolonizing

archaeology and mainstreaming feminism in archaeology helps archaeology transform into a

24
more sensitive attitudes of archaeologists toward native peoples in general and native women in

particular and other peripheral groups within indigenous communities. It is acknowledged that

feminist archaeology gains an important popularity within the discipline of archaeology. With

their greater engagements in any initiatives of advancing the status of native women, feminist

archaeologists will provide greater contribution in enforcing ethnic equity that takes gender

equity or equality and native womens sovereignty into serious account, while so far we still

witness the ignorance of indigenous women by both their own native communities and other

(external) social, cultural and political entities.

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