Donald E. Crabtree Lithic Technology Collection

CLIR-DHC: Advisory Board Interview Kisha Supernant 11/17/2022

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (00:00): Uh thank you for joining us today. We’re so excited to have uh, Dr. Supernant here today to speak with us um, on her research and her role on our advisory board for the Crabtree Collection. Um Kisha, I just want to thank you for being here and joining this advisory board. Um we have been so blessed with the particular crew that we’ve got and you have been a huge part of that, and so I just want to say formally thank you for everything that you’ve contributed so far.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (00:25): Um we’ve had a few, sort of, uh, advisory board planning discussions, this is more for the audience who might not know this, and we are able to kind of um, you know talk about what’s happening on the project and this concept, and I just really appreciate everything you’ve contributed to that space and the ways that you’ve really helped us to kind of trouble and think through some of the — the context and implications of this project. So I’m just super excited to have you here to speak with us today. Um I would love if you kicked us off with an introduction to you and your context, um whatever it is that you like to share in a general introduction, and then we’ll just dive right into question number one.

Kisha Supernant (01:00): Great. I’m happy to be here. Tansi. Kisha Supernant nitsikason. amiskwaciy-wâskahikan ochi niya. Otipimisewak niya. Um thank you for that kind introduction as — as introduced. I’m Kisha Supernant, I am Métis, a Métis archeologist. I am currently in Edmonton, Alberta, known in Cree, one of my ancestral languages, as amiskwaciy-wâskahikan, uh, and this is uh, my homeland as a Métis person as well as uh, the lands of Treaty 6 Nations. And I, I’m a professor at the University of Alberta, uh, and have long been uh, an archeologist who’s worked with Indigenous communities across sort of western Canada around a variety of different projects and increasingly developing community-driven, community-led archeological projects including ones with my own nation and then with other nations around a variety of interests and uh, approaches to archeology. And so happy to be kind of part of this really, really interesting conversation for me, at, for my position as an Indigenous archeologist.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (02:03): Awesome. Well, thank you again for joining us. Um we’re so happy to have you here. And I’m just gonna pull up my question set and we’ll dive right in. Um so the first one is what’s your perspective on the Crabtree Collection and ones like it? Do you think it’s appropriative of Native cultures? Is it appropriative of Native cultures?

Kisha Supernant (02:21): I’ve been thinking about this question for a little while, and I was reflecting leading up to our conversation today because, I mean, I think the short answer is yes, but there’s a but, because I think that there’s a really interesting interplay here between Indigenous knowledge and then also, sort of, flintknapping culture and amateur archeology, and also this sense that Indigenous cultures are part of a much, sort of, larger web of global cultures. So when I think about something like the Crabtree Collection, you know he’s, where he was situated on Indigenous lands, um, learning about a particular type of use of technology that Indigenous peoples used for thousands of years, there’s a very clear relationship between his position and, sort of, appropriation of Indigenous knowledge. At the same time, it wasn’t just Indigenous people in North America who made and used lithics over the course of human history.

Kisha Supernant (03:21): And in fact, it’s been a really central part of many, uh, many cultures through time and — and space, but there’s a much different relationship between Crabtree himself and those other cultures than there is between the Indigenous cultures of the lands in which he was doing this. So for me there’s a lot of complexity to it, um, but there definitely is an element of, you know, why did he start doing this and how did he become an expert around something that at the time would’ve been largely connected with — with Indigenous cultures in the place that he was living? And that’s where we can really get into some of that, sort of, colonialism and white supremacy and kinda the patriarchy. There’s a lot of things that intersect there for me, but at the same time, it’s also this much broader context of, you know, millions of years of humans using stone tools.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (04:19): That’s such a great point, thank you. I um, I — I — I do think there’s a real tension in that, and the way that flintknapping sort of um, and I’m not an archeologist or an anthropologist, so this is my current level of understanding, but I tend to think of it as a kind of shared human technology. It’s one of those sort of defining things of what it is to be a human versus say um, some other type of hominid or, you know, even an ape, so to speak. It’s — it’s our use of tools and the way that we do it. And so there is an interesting, sort of, universality to it, and there’s also a, a real interesting appropriation and stereotype or racism to so strongly associate it with only Native American cultures as well too, right?

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (05:00): And so there’s a real tension where we definitely want to honor the um, current and traditional practices of flintknapping in North America, which is the context that Crabtree was primarily familiar with and the ways in which he’s been credited as having a lot of unearned, possibly, Native knowledge and the ways in which it’s something that represents a sort of, connected, shared history. And so there’s just a lot to try to sort of balance in all of that.

Kisha Supernant (05:26): And just if I could follow up on that, just something else that I was reflecting on. It’s — it’s, I think there’s a kinship with other forms of creation that we can look at and maybe help people think through some of the complexity. So we know, for example, humans have made art in all kinds of varieties and ways, but there are culturally specific ways to do so. So, certain types of patterns, certain types of materials, certain types of iconography are tied to particular knowledge systems while the practice itself is one that is arguably universal. And so when I think about flintknapping, for example, like it’s one thing to make tools, but it’s another thing to make very specific tools from specific times and specific places because they are a form of cultural knowledge. So making a Clovis point or making a point from a particular time and place in an Indigenous context, I think that’s where we can really get at some of that appropriation because it was tied to a very specific people.

Kisha Supernant (06:28): And it was tied, it wasn’t, you know, something that was sort of just everyone made a stone tool that way, right? And so I think that we can frame it a little bit in terms of some other of those things that we think of as, as a human universal, but that doesn’t mean everybody has access to all of the knowledge contained within that. And we see that in appropriation of art as well. This is a big issue in Indigenous context in a contemporary sense, where, you know, an Indigenous artist makes a pattern and then, you know, Urban Outfitters the company appropriates it and mass produces it, and it’s — it’s a violation of the intellectual property of that artist. And this is in some ways very similar in that there’s a connection between the specific traditions that are represented that he was deliberately recreating. Right?

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (07:12): Yes. That is such a good point. And there is um, something that kept popping up on my mind is like yes, there’s like no generic version of anything, right, especially when you’re talking about things that come out of a cultural context. It always has all of the — the — the DNA kinda built into whatever it is, right, and the DNA it’s like, just like uh, animal or living DNA. It’s well, inherited, but also the environment, also what you were, what was available, what you were exposed to, so on and so forth, that ultimately shapes how that transfers down, right? And so that’s really interesting to think about that — that we can acknowledge it as a, um pan-human thing, if you will, but we can’t use it to buy into Pan-Indianism, right?

Kisha Supernant (07:54): Exactly.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (07:56): Or a sort of, a — a monolithic Indian. It’s — it’s, we need to say, “Well, there is no prototypical point, right, because they all come out of their own context.” And so you need to say a prototypical point for what, or in what setting, or a prototypical point for who? And I think that’s — that’s sort of one of the tensions of the Crabtree endeavor in the first place, would be to sort of try to define things in a sort of generic and repeatable way when they come out of these specific contexts.

Kisha Supernant (08:21): Absolutely.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (08:23): All right. Jylisa, we’ll let you step into question number two before we talk about one the whole time. [laughs]

Jylisa Kenyon (08:28): Alright. Um do you think folks digitizing digital collections who are not anthropologists should take up this type of contextualizing work, the type of work we’ve talked about in our advisory board meetings and, kinda, the basis of — of this project? Uh and if so, how can we be successful without causing further harm?

Kisha Supernant (08:47): I think it’s really important for anyone digitizing anything of this nature or related, to understand the context because I think if there’s not that contextualization, not that kind of interrogation of what is it that we’re actually reproducing in a digital form, then there is the danger of just literally reproducing the same colonial structures. And whether that be a lithic collection, whether that be ethnographic collections, whether that be photographs, I mean there’s archives, there’s so many elements to this, all of it needs interrogating because it’s all a record of a particular uh, sort of, intellectual tradition which has done itself, and continues to do, a lot of harm. Uh and so I don’t think, you know, anthropologists are always the ones who have to, to have to do this,

Kisha Supernant (09:36): and I’m grateful that there’s other folks engaging in the digitization of collections such as this. But to, like I said, just to kind of reproduce the same object in a digital form doesn’t um, absolve it of all that complexity, and in fact can reify that because what you’re doing is you’re creating another record of it. You’re, you know, and — and, in many, in some cases, maybe not in the lithics case in the — in the Crabtree Collection, but certainly in the documentary side, there’s um a sense of a, an archiving of it, like a, a keeping it for the future, you know. So if for some reason there’s a — a fire and everything burns, the stones will probably remain, but most of the rest of it would be gone, and digitization is creating a, like a — a permanency, or at least a perceived permanency.

Kisha Supernant (10:25): We know it could all collapse too, but right now that’s a lot of the activities we’re engaging in when we digitize, which is to make something sustained for — for the present and for the future uh, in a way that’s more accessible. And in particular, you know, how many people will visit the material collection versus how many people might view the digital object, you’re actually opening up the collection in a way that has sort of its own ethical challenges. So I think contextualizing it is essential, um, and in terms of like how to do it in a way that’s not harmful, one is I think just very much saying that we know this is problematic in the following ways.

Kisha Supernant (11:03): You’ve brought together a group of folks from a bunch of different backgrounds and — and context to talk through why that is, and um, make, to make sure that that context and the uh, actual digital object itself can’t be easily extracted from one another. ‘Cause that’s the other danger when you’re working in a digital space. If you have, like this wonderful contextual description and then someone can just download the 3D model with nothing of that, then that can move through spaces without that context. So for me, one of the key parts is keeping those connections as tight as you can so that there isn’t that reproduction without the context that we can sometimes see in digital objects themselves.

Kisha Supernant (11:45): Um and then also, I think having a space for feedback. So once you put a digital collection up, making sure, because people are going to encounter it in a variety of different ways and you know, the advisory group you put together is great, but we certainly can’t represent all the perspectives on this particular collection. So having a space for people to reflect, to contribute, to provide feedback I think is another way to um, try to minimize the harm that’s done, or if there is more harm done, that you have an opportunity to address it. You have an opportunity to say, “Oh, yes. Okay, we got this piece of feedback. We need to think about this thing that we hadn’t necessarily anticipated,” even though you’ve, I think done a wonderful job of — of kind of doing your due diligence that way.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (12:26): Uh Kisha, this is not on our question list, but just, sort of, expanding off of that, I’m wondering if in this same vein, if you could speak to, you know, there’s kind of this idea of like well, we have in this, in this collection, it’s about 90% Crabtree creations and then about 10% Indigenous belongings. We’re using that as a — a kind of a rough estimate, anywhere between 10 to 15%. And so do we, do you think that it helps to share those with some sort of limited rights in terms of people being able to download them and reproduce them?

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (12:59): Does that help from the perspective of giving more people opportunity to acknowledge that as belonging to their — their culture or their tradition, or do you think that that’s sort of a straw horse? Because I feel like a lot of the times we say, “Well, we’ll digitize things and that helps to repatriate,” and then, you know, does it necessarily do that? And so I’m just kinda curious, you know, what your thoughts are vis-a-vis the responsibility of digitizing and sort of opening things up and letting them out. How does that, kind of balance in a case like this, where we have these unprovenanced Native belongings?

Kisha Supernant (13:32): I think this is an excellent question and it brings up a — a number of different issues. I mean, I think that, again it, there’s — there’s pros and cons. There’s um possibilities in digitization that you could maybe find greater connection to who these belongings might — might belong to, um, and this is the — the challenge of really unprovenanced things is that there’s — there’s a lot of uh, ambiguity. We really, you might have a broad region, but that’s about it. And so I think there’s really kind of two ways you — you could potentially go about this. One is creating the digital collection and leaving it closed, but reaching out to nations broadly from areas that you think the collection could possibly be from, and — and then bring together those communities to have a conversation about what — what you should do. Um and then this, the other way would be to start with a conversation in digitize, should that be something that communities might wish?

Kisha Supernant (14:32): ‘Cause I do think that there is a tendency now to think about digitization inherently as a good. And also openness inherently as a good, and we’ve seen this a lot in the discussions around open science and open data, and I’ve even seen this from my colleagues who are archeologists saying, “Oh, we need to share data, we need to open data.” And I’m sittin’ there going, “Okay. Whose data is it?” And if it’s, you know, archeologists who’ve done work on Indigenous lands that you’ve already taken and now you’re sharing it without actually asking the nation whether or not you should share it, then you’re just doing more harm, like, and — and maybe it’s fine to share it, but that’s not your decision to make, right? If we’re talking actually about sort of data sovereignty and, and the fact that we have as Indigenous people, we have inherent rights to the materials of our ancestors, then we have to be the ones making decisions about what should be open and not.

Kisha Supernant (15:25): But that’s such a daunting task, considering the history of archeology in these lands. There’s so many belongings everywhere that I think archeologists are like, “We’ll just share them and it’ll be good.” But will it? And — and who decides, right? And so for me, I think it’s an important distinction between the materials that Crabtree created, which may have their own issues, but they are not, in my opinion, as sensitive as the belongings could be, especially because we don’t know the context of those belongings. If any of them at some point might have come out of a burial context, for example. Those are sacred and those would need particular kinds of treatment. And, you know, just because we don’t know where any of them come from means that they could be from anywhere, which means the, the greatest amount of care should be given, and I think, and sometimes we have a tendency to do the opposite. “Well, we don’t really know, so we’ll just, it’s not really an issue,” when in fact if we don’t know, then we need to take extra care with — with those materials, in — in my perspective.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (16:28): Yes. We, uh, Jylisa may want to chime in on this, but we, we have really been struck by the sort of language around orphan items and the sort of attitude in archeology and anthropology writ-large that it’s then okay to do, sort of whatever with those because they can. And you know, it’s — it’s incredibly nauseating in any context, and then especially in this year of 2022 and residential boarding school grave sites and the sort of um, horrific state violence against orphans, um, stolen children. And the way that we see that manifest writ-small in this, kind of like “Well, if a belonging can’t be identified, then we don’t have a responsibility to it, right? Yeah. We it’s, it, we should do whatever.” And I, what you said I feel like is just so profound, I want to make sure we sort of highlight it that — that, you know, no, it’s actually the opposite. The less you know about it, that means you need to assume it needs the highest degree of care and respect because until you know otherwise, you should be cautious and assume that way instead of causing harm by going the other direction, right?

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (17:32): And I feel like that’s — that’s such a huge, um, you — you sort of see one of our other panelists, I think it was Angie was talking about the, the sort of difference between like the western mindset and an Indigenous uh, mindset or a Native mindset or an in-culture mindset where it’s like, oh yeah, it’s — it’s almost sort of the opposite where if it’s an orphaned item, it’s actually we should be that much more careful and respectful of it instead of that much more bombastic. Which um yeah, I — I think for Jylisa and I, it’s also just been really interesting as librarians um, or people who are trained as librarians and archivists to come into this and see this different sort of approach because we tend to have a more um, cautious uh, attitude in library science with respect to uh, potential interventions on things, for instance. Um I’m always very cautious. Jylisa, do you have any thoughts you want to chime in on that?

Jylisa Kenyon (18:20): No, it’s, it’s just kind of the, the discussion, it — it first came up when we were, when um, one of our colleagues in the lab mentioned uh, how the Native and Indigenous artifacts are classified as “lost,” and, and that — that use of that term really raised — raised our hackles because we’re like, “They’re — they’re not lost. They were, as far as we know, purposefully stolen, and taken, and sent to Crabtree.” I mean, I guess it’s possible that someone gave it to Crabtree themselves, right, they made this thing and sent it, but all of the records we have show that that is not what happened. So just — just the language being used around those artifacts was — was really eye-opening to us. And that was to Marco and I, and that was just like a month or so ago and it’s — it’s been…

Kisha Supernant (19:07): And — and that question of like, the sort of, we don’t know what these are, we see this with ancestors as well. And when there’s not enough attention being paid to who these might be, you get the situation like the little girls from the MOVE bombing who ended up in a classroom being taught. And that was I think not a deliberate action, it was just a, “Oh, we’re not sure what this is, so we’ll just use it.” And — and the harm that comes from that is so great that you know I think that you said you have to center that care, and — and the, you know, the fact, like you said, Jylisa, they were stolen, you know. So many archeological materials were stolen. Stolen from graves, stolen from our ancestral sites with, without permission, or with colonial state permission, which is not Indigenous permission.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (19:57): Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, on to question number three. [laughs] What makes a digital effort like this a good partner to Native Nations and people? What can the academy and land-grant schools do to better partnerships and be more accountable to Native stakeholders?

Kisha Supernant (20:13): Yeah. Well, I think we addressed the first part of the question a little bit in the last answer, but I think the second part is — is you know certainly the — the bigger question. Um I mean, I think, you know, the digital piece is again, engagement, uh collaboration, partnership. And notice I don’t say consultation, and I don’t mean consultation. I mean, you know, really engaging of like what — what is appropriate to do with these legacy materials? And every institute, every institution of higher learning has something that they shouldn’t have, and how do we — how do we think about returning that in a way that is appropriate and doesn’t just sort of like end up showing up on the doorstep of the nearest nation and dropping off a bunch of stuff, right? Like there, there’s, you have to develop these things in partnership. And for me, the — the bigger question about how to be a better partner um, is to focus on being a good relation first.

Kisha Supernant (21:09): So a lot of the work around I think repatriation or other forms of return has kind of come from a like, a sense of like, “Oh, shoot. We were caught with all the stuff we shouldn’t have had. Maybe we should give it back,” as opposed to a real commitment to — to building an ethical, long-term relation reflecting the fact that these institutions are built on Indigenous lands, often directly stolen from Indigenous people through various kinds of programs, and that there’s actually a responsibility that if you are gonna continue to occupy that land, that you do so as a good relation. Um and so, you know, there’s the aspect of sort of the knowledge that’s held in institutions. I’ve just been having a conversation with our university archives where we have an extensive amount of information, of, you know, knowledge taken from Indigenous peoples and nations, but because of the nature of the archive, it’s in these like specific collections that are governed by agreements with donors. And it’s like well, but whose knowledge is it really? And it, and so working on finding ways to appropriately bring that back to community I think is really important.

Kisha Supernant (22:16): The other piece I — I find really important is continuing to shift the research landscape. I mean, for me, a goal would be that any research that engages with Indigenous peoples, lands, waters, plants, animals on Indigenous lands cannot happen unless the origin of the research comes from an Indigenous community. So the community says, “We want to know this thing,” and they come into the university and say, “Okay, who can help us figure this thing out?” Whether it be health, whether it be ecology, whether it be archaeology, whether it be language, you know. And then the university says, “Okay, we’ve got people here who can do this work. Let’s, you know, work together and find a grant and — and — and do this, meet this need that you have.”

Kisha Supernant (22:58): And we’re nowhere near that yet, but for me, that should be the end goal, right? Then, when we say, “Nothing about us without us,” you know, I think that’s a very important and meaningful statement. And it’s not just bring us in at some point to talk to us about it, but — but, that the origin of the work needs to come from Indigenous communities. And that can then I think lead to a really sort of transformative academy, like a — a transformed academy, and, you know, ultimately it would, it would mean one where more and more Indigenous people would want to be part of it because they’d want to come and learn a particular set of skills and knowledge to be able to come back and help their community address those issues that are so, so pressing. But right now, we’re — we’re a long way, a long way from that.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (23:43): Yeah. That is such a beautiful vision. And right as you said transformative, I was thinking transformative, so I was like — like yeah that’s — that’s exactly the word that I would use for that, is um, that vision that asks for us to almost change the whole order of operations. ‘Cause so much of the way of doing it has really been research idea originates outside of Indigenous or Native community and then maybe is sold appealingly to Indigenous community…

Kisha Supernant (24:12): Yep, “what do you think about this great idea I have?”

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (24:12): … and um, we get — we get some stakeholders. Yeah — yeah, and it’s like, I was thinking, I was like, well, how, how would — how would that happen? And it really comes back to that first part that you said, which I think is also very profound, about being a good relation and what does that mean? And if you are a good relation, that hopefully that gives you this strong um, relationship to be drawing out of that isn’t about, “Oh, we have something and now we include Native people in it,” but it’s like there’s an existing relationship through which collaboration arises. But it’s — it’s such a, it’s a simple and also very profound call, and it would really transform our universities for the better if we could embrace more of that because it really, yeah, go ahead.

Kisha Supernant (24:51): And if you could imagine also that this is not just, I mean, obviously there, I think there are particular responsibilities that institutions in North America have because they are on Indigenous lands, but we are certainly not the only people who have been dispossessed, oppressed, uh, marginalized through colonization and through academic spaces. So I would love to see this also be more expansive, right? That a lot of, you know, any research done on — on Black communities comes from the Black community, right? So that — that the, you know, uh disability research is spurred by the needs and — and desires of people with disabilities, right? So I feel like this — this could, you know, for — for my space, obviously it’s related to Indigenous peoples and — and the work that I do, but I think this model of sort of research as a service, as a — as a,

Kisha Supernant (25:41): not just an intellectual exercise that we — we tell ourselves is for the good of everyone but really is not for the good of everyone. It’s for the good of the white, elite colonial powers. And so let’s — let’s reshape it in a way that it — it literally is something that has a positive benefit to living peoples and not just — just for the sake of intellectual, you know, knowledge creation. Um and for me, that’s — that’s that sort of uh, um, elitist view of what knowledge should be, that we’re just gonna come and study at this institution just because we’re interested in things. And my entire discipline is white people being interested in things that are not theirs. Or at least in North America that’s certainly been the history, and so I think that it’s time to kinda push back and undo some of that as well.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (26:29): I agree. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well said. Um Jylisa, you want to take us into question four, I think it is?

Jylisa Kenyon (26:35): Yes. And — and I — I think you — you kind of already talked about this in question one, so if you — if you don’t have anything to say that’s fine, or if there’s anything you want to add, that’s great too. Um from your perspective, what should people know about flintknapping to understand the art and practice in a way that doesn’t center this one non-Native person?

Kisha Supernant (26:53): I think I did address some of it in question one, but there’s a couple things I think I would add. One of the things I would want people to understand about flintknapping is that it’s not a primitive way of being, and I think there’s a lot of interconnection, problematic interconnection with like, “primitive,” quote, unquote, I use that term very uh, deliberately, but also recognizing the problematic nature of it, um a sort of primitive technology. And uh, anthropology certainly has played into this because we have, you know, focused on early hominids being like, the tools that they make and sort of this progressive nature of that lithic technology and creation became more sophisticated through time. Uh and that sorta feeds into very progressivist nature um, narratives that we see elsewhere in anthropology, like you know, small scale societies to states, that there’s some sort of progressive nature of — of human society. And so I think for me, recognizing that — that flintknapping um you know, is complex. It’s not simply just hittin’ some flakes off a stone.

Kisha Supernant (27:56): It requires a deep understanding and knowledge of not just the stone itself, but where the stone itself comes from, sort of the context and how it gets to the person who actually creates its final shape. And there’s a lot more than just a functional role to it as well. Um we certainly see in the archaeological record uh, lithics being made for — for their beauty right, so they’re not just a functional thing. We tend to think of them as like “oh, they’re arrowheads” or “oh, they’re just this thing that people use,” but they actually have other kinds of — of meanings to them. And so when you’re seeing just like these pieces of a flint, a collection from a non-Indigenous person in this sort of space, you lose so much of that. You lose so much of the cultural meaning around what these belongings actually are or what the uh, knowledge that it takes to make those belongings, how that really is connected to um, ways of knowing and being as well as to the actual object itself, right?

Kisha Supernant (28:57): There’s so much more to it than that. Like I think about in — in uh, again, one of the communities I’m — I’m tied to, are Cree, an Indigenous community here in Canada. Um and in the Cree language, the word for stone, asiniy, is — is animate. So that immediately changes the ways in which Cree people would’ve made stone tools. Because they had a different conception of the stone itself. And when you find them in these collections of flintknappers, I don’t think Donald Crabtree thought of the stone as alive. I mean, I don’t know, but I don’t get that sense. And it was much more about the technique and less about that kind of relational meaning uh, behind that stone. And that’s just one example, and there are probably many other kinds of examples of the ways in which these materials meant a lot to communities and — and also were likely part of everyday life. Right, they were sort of a quotidian part of everyday life, but that doesn’t divest them of that deeper meaning.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (29:59): Wow. So much, so much to think about there. Thank you for that. Um all of your answers have been incredible. That one, I feel like um, just — just again, it’s — it’s been so helpful for me to think of Crabtree, I initially thought of Crabtree more as an archeologist, and then I’ve begun to think of him as an artist who sort of emulated um, these styles that he admired, but didn’t necessarily try to replicate them in a particularly accurate way, paleolithicly speaking, he like invented new things as he went along to create the artistic outputs that he wants.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (30:32): Um and it’s — it’s I’m just thinking again of the sort of implicit racism we see in the, sort of, singular genius, um, creating art objects, and how we need to make sure that in our own trying to counter-story and trouble this, we don’t accidentally fall into that sort of trope and say, “Well, Indians were pragmatic and, you know, creating flint so that they could hunt the deer very well, but they weren’t thinking of them as art.” And it’s like well, of course they are art, right? Like people,

Kisha Supernant (30:58): Of course they are…

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (30:58): are people. And so people have been doing the same things in all different cultures throughout society, which includes this like functional and art, right, and the same object can be both. And, you know, everyone can understand that with like a — a beautiful, a sword or a knife or something like that from a sort of western tradition of like “oh, it can be an art object and a functional object at the same time,” but there’s the sort of tendency to make um, a — a, anything Native sort of primitive or um, overly simple, or devoid of meaning…

Kisha Supernant (31:30): Functional.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (31:31): …or only full of meaning, right, only magical. And so there, there’s, I just think you’re really getting at a lot of um, pretty nuanced tensions there and — and really great points, so, um yeah, so lots, lots to think about and hopefully for our audience to pick up and expand upon. Jylisa, I think I’m next, right? Question five? Okay. Um so one of the topics we’ve discussed as part of this grant project is the relationship between experimental archaeology, amateur archaeology and cultural as well as knowledge appropriation. Uh can you talk a bit about what you see as the relationship between those concepts?

Kisha Supernant (32:04): I think, you know, again, we’ve touched a little on pieces of this throughout our conversation, but this particular question has me thinking a lot about experimental — experimental archaeology as a practice. Because we do see in a lot of sort of undergraduate programs, there are these sort of lab courses or experimental archaeology courses where students of archaeology are learning to try to make ancient things. And that can be stone, it can — it can be clay, it can be, I once did one where we were trying to like build a stone wall [laughs] you know. And so these, but, and — and I think the impetus behind that is partly that this is part of an embodied experience, right, so that it’s not just an object, someone did create it, and there’s a lot of knowledge that goes into the creation of any given thing. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to make a ceramic pot and then fire it in a fire. That takes like very specialized knowledge because otherwise, you’re just going to break a whole bunch of pots, right?

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (33:02): I mean just the kiln has done me in plenty of times, so…

Kisha Supernant (33:05): [laughs] Right? Let alone trying to do it in like a fire. Um but — but — but I think that that’s the impetus behind the experimental archaeology, but what we don’t see is whose knowledge is it that we are working with and what are the contexts in which we’re doing that? And at least in my experience when I was being trained, I didn’t really interrogate any of that. Uh and so for me, I think there’s a really important um, step that folks who work in this realm really need to take, which is whose knowledge are you trying to often recreate, um, from the materials that were left behind? And sure, if you want to try to create something from, you know, 3,000 years ago in Europe and that’s where your family was from, like go to. But if you’re trying to do something that is Indigenous to North America and that you have no connection to that, then I think, you know, there’s a really important conversation that needs to happen there, or you’re trying do something from China when you’re not from there like it’s not just unique to, this — this land.

Kisha Supernant (34:05): And then there’s a whole question of sort of amateur archaeology. And at the time that Crabtree was working, amateur archaeology was a little bit of a different thing than it is now, um, I would say. And — and now we have sort of a, folks who are amateur archaeologists who sort of like to do archeology as a hobby, but they’ll participate in kind of organized activities and — and digs and things like that with other archeologists who are around or under the kind of regulations that exist. Uh but then you have a lot of people who just really like the stuff, who aren’t really even amateur archaeologists. And I certainly work in an environment, you’re also in Idaho, you’ve got a lot of farmers, you’ve got a lot of people who are out in their fields collecting, right, picking things up and putting them on their shelves, and there’s this whole tradition of making like designs out of the, the projectile points that they mount into frames and all this.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (35:00): Yeah. The shadow boxes. We’ve been learning about that.

Kisha Supernant (35:02): Shadow boxes. This is a thing.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (35:04): Yeah, yeah it’s fascinating.

Kisha Supernant (35:06): The glue. They glue all the points together in a shadow box and put it on the, on their wall. Um and I don’t, I mean I think there’s a difference now between sort of the people who are more sort of amateur archaeologists and those folks who are kind of really just, “This is cool stuff I found on my land. I’m gonna put it in a box or put it up on a, on the wall,” um, which I think, one shows, you know to an extent, that shadow box tradition shows a, appreciate, appreciation of the artistic beauty of many of these things, but there’s no engagement of why those ended up there in the first place. And there’s usually a strong disconnection between those materials and living Indigenous people, and that itself is a — is a huge issue, right? And there’s — there’s a tension of course, because yeah, Indigenous people, we don’t live the same way we did 200 years ago, because of colonization [laughs]. And also because we like technological innovation, and so we’re going to use things that are useful.

Kisha Supernant (36:03): Um and so there’s a whole sort of set of things that go into that, but the focus on that material of the past by these collectors and by these folks, can really uh, emphasize this disjuncture between, “Oh those — those people don’t exist anymore. And then now I’m on this land. And they used to live here, but — but they don’t exist anymore.”

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (36:26): Right.

Kisha Supernant (36:26): And I think that’s even more pronounced in my experience in the United States than it is in Canada. We’re better, I think, um, just because there’s a — a larger Indigenous population, more visible, more sort of at the national conversation. I think in the US, there’s this huge erasure. It’s like, “Oh, but the people who made this don’t exist anymore, therefore I can just do whatever I want with it.”

Kisha Supernant (36:45): And it’s tied to that same logic of these sort of orphan materials, these sort of, “Well, nobody actually owns it, so.” And of course, in private property in the US, there’s not even any kind of legal framework which can help nations to say, “Well, no, that’s our stuff.” Um here, if you’re, if you find materials on your land, even if it’s private property, it still belongs to the sort of province. So it’s not yours as a landowner, it is actually sort of the cultural heritage that is managed at the — the, you know, the state level, um, which is not perfect. But it does at least allow some mechanisms to protect things or to have things returned when they’ve been taken. And in the US that is not the case.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (37:30): Well, and arguably, that extends from how a lot of this land was awarded in the first place, uh you know. Uh its rights were created and drawn up, and people were dispossessed and displaced and violently removed. And then now, quote, unquote, people say, “I’ve been in this, you know, state for five generations,” or something. And that’s a — a very long time in one way of thinking, and a very shallow amount of time in another way of thinking. And so it is really fascinating to think about how some of these practices tie into these beliefs of Native people as extinct. And you know we could go on a whole — a whole side tangent that I have here that I mean personally, I feel like the sort of ambiguity around, um, Latinos as Native people contributes a lot to Native erasure and a lot of colonial confusion for Chicano and Latino um Native people who don’t recognize, you know.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (38:22): It’s — it’s really interesting to live in a state that simultaneously has a very growing and burgeoning Latino population and a lot of tension about it, you know. We’ve had some interest in our state with border politics, which might surprise some people thinking about Idaho being worried about the Mexico border. Um but of course, we um you know have to um, just sort of toe this line where it’s like well, but you know, these are — these are Native people, right? So when we’re talking about Native erasure, it’s like yes, we erased Native Nations, we erased Native sovereignty, and we also erased, uh, Latinos as Native people as well. And then back to this example with the, you know the arrowheads on the farms, we’ve — we’ve been hearing about that in some of these advisory board interviews. I didn’t know that was such a common um, common practice, but it — it makes sense.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (39:11): Um my parents had some property in New Mexico actually where we would find pottery sherds all of the time, um, which we would usually just leave, but my sister did actually go on to become an archaeologist partly because of that exposure um, to those and wanting to put them back into a — a correct context. And so it’s just really fascinating to think about how that land ownership creates a kind of um, reprovincing of who things belong to, um, and maybe, you know, a current landowner might want to think about if you find something on your farm, how do you reunite it with someone who might currently have an interest in it while also understanding that if um, you know a sovereign nation says, “No, we’re not interested in those,” then you can accept that as [laughs] a no and move on, you know, because sovereignty is complex I think for people to understand.

Kisha Supernant (40:01): It is. And that, also the, bringing that back a little bit to the question, I also think that kind of erasure, and of course you know, we see it definitely in Latino, we see it in — in Black Indigenous folks that can’t be Indigenous ‘cause they’re Black. Well, that’s not a thing that’s a, there’s a lot of complexity there. Um but also this, when you assume that people are no longer exist, then they no longer own the knowledge and there’s no one to contest their appropriation. So again, this is all kind of, to me, really tied together around this deliberate erasure that is genocide, right? And — and this narrative of like, “well you know, there, nobody — nobody lives here anymore who’s, who made these materials,” or, “these materials, we don’t know where they came from,” and therefore they by default become property of white folks, right? And so there’s this sort of default nature to it.

Kisha Supernant (40:57): And I think about this a lot in light of things like NAGPRA, Native American Graves Protection Repatriation Act, which has a cultural affiliation clause, which has been contested and challenged in a variety of ways, but some um, non-Indigenous institutions, uh, museum practitioners have used it to say, “well, we don’t know who it belongs to.” And my argument is like, “well then why does it — why does it belong to you if it belongs to no, if you don’t know who it belongs to?” And I will tell you, any living Indigenous person in these lands is more closely related to that ancestor than you are. So even if we’re talking about relations, you know every, every Indigenous person, even, like, even if I’m not from Idaho, I have more connection to those belongings than a white archeologist whose family came over 80 years ago from Germany. Right?

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (41:45): Right.

Kisha Supernant (41:45): I have a different relation with that, and it’s — it’s not my place necessarily to make a decision about that, but I have a different relationship with it because of the history I have with — with these lands.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (41:58): That’s right. Yeah, yeah. Very powerfully said. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Uh Jylisa, I think you have the next one, right?

Jylisa Kenyon (42:03): Yes. Um from your perspective, what challenges and opportunities exist when working with a collection such as this that isn’t archeological in nature, at least 90% of the items are not, um, but represents Indigenous knowledge and knowledge appropriation?

Kisha Supernant (42:18): I think there are both challenges and — and opportunities. I think one of the challenges is that they’re, because they’re not sort of archeological, it may be harder for some folks to recognize that they represent — represent an Indigenous knowledge, ‘cause for all the reasons we’ve already talked about, right? About the sort of disconnect and this erasure and the sort of history, it’s like, uh, and then there’s also a tendency for people to say, “well, he made them so they’re his intellectual property.” But again, we bring up that question of where does that knowledge actually emerge from? And I think that’s where the opportunity really is for me, because this is the first time I think that I have had the opportunity to engage with a collection like this in this way, and it was gonna change how I engage with many other kinds of materials and collections because of the work that you folks have — have really done here um, and invited us to — to talk about because it is representative of Indigenous knowledge, and yet it is not created by Indigenous people.

Kisha Supernant (43:22): So it’s, I think of it in, again, coming back to this sort of art world or the representations that we — we see, and there’s been quite a bit of, you know, literature around this, around you know taking iconography or taking symbols from Indigenous contexts and then creating you know these generic inukshuks that you buy at the airport gift shop in every Canadian city, whether you’re north or not, or totem poles, right? The — the kind of uh Pan-Indigeneity that comes with, Pan-Indianness that comes with that. Um and I think there’s a — a danger with these collections that if we’re not interrogating them, that they just sorta become that. They sort of become in that realm of like “well, they’re just these generic points and, and they don’t actually have intellectual property. And anyone who is sort of in — in — in the public domain, people can do what they want with them.” But has — has that ever actually been talked with, have you ever talked to Indigenous people about whether or not that’s — that’s appropriate?

Kisha Supernant (44:22): And honestly, maybe — maybe some of this is, but again, who decides? Right? Who decides? The questions have to be asked, and so this, collection like this gives you a wonderful opportunity to really ask those questions, and you have a chance to really set a precedent for other kinds of related things. I think about ethnographic objects, those might have been created not by Indigenous people, but by non-Indigenous people sitting with Indigenous elders and knowledge-holders, which then end up in museums. And I think there’s a very similar kind of thing, we need to be clear about did they have permission to — to do that, right? Did they have permission to take that knowledge and to create these other kinds of things? Sometimes maybe yes, but it has to be explicit. It can’t just be sort of behind the scenes inherent, like, “of course they did, they just learned and they’re allowed to do whatever they want.” It’s like, hmm, no, not without an understanding of power, privilege, history, colonialism, patriarchy, that whole kind of, uh aspects of things as well.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (45:21): Yeah. That is um, I think especially interesting to think about for libraries and archives where sometimes we get to say like, “oh, anthropology and archaeology, they’ve got ancestors in closets, they’ve got burial belongings.” You know we don’t usually have things like that in archives and libraries, but what we do have is a lot of ethnographic studies or really horrible metadata stuff created by white people that’s full of misinformation and harmful tropes and was possibly stolen. And so I think there’s a way in which our, you know, our professions are complimentary and aligned, but they’re different.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (45:55): And so I feel like sometimes for libraries, it’s been easy to say like, “well, we don’t tend to have, um, collections that would have people in them, and so therefore this isn’t — this isn’t something we have to engage with this way.” And it’s like well, first of all, that’s not entirely true. Please take a close look at your special collections and your affiliated history museums and so on and so forth. And also, even if — even if — even if, you cannot pretend like that’s just the — the stopping point of colonial harm, right? Every record effectively about Indigenous people, um, or um, even informed by Indigenous experience needs this kind of review, especially if it’s going to then be digitized and spread out further, as we were talking about earlier, ‘cause it has the opportunity to touch that many more people potentially.

Kisha Supernant (46:42): Absolutely. And just, uh, to add on to that, yes, you may not have bones, but there are many other hugely problematic things in archives that I have encountered just in my — my sort of cursory looking. And you also often have the voices of our ancestors on reels and on tapes that many of us never got a chance to hear, in our Indigenous languages.

Kisha Supernant (47:05): And so there’s also…

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (47:07): Yeah.

Kisha Supernant (47:07): …power in what can be found in those places.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (47:10): Yeah.

Kisha Supernant (47:10): At the same time, I’ve seen medical collections with photos of experiments on Indigenous bodies. That’s just about as bad as you know those ancestors, let’s just say that. And there’s so many pieces of this harm that are just interwoven in all of these spaces.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (47:26): I agree, absolutely. And just to be clear, I don’t — I don’t mean that I personally think that we don’t have these things.

Kisha Supernant (47:31): No, no. I know. [laughs]

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (47:31): I just think in our profession sometimes there’s a — there’s a conception because people just go so shallowly into it you know and they’re not, they’re often not aware of these records, or even when they are, then they minimize them. You know and I think…

Kisha Supernant (47:42): I’m not saying this for your benefit, I’m saying this for the benefit of the people who are reading and listening. I mean look at what they just, are doing at Harvard to try to return these hair samples that were taken from children in boarding schools.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (47:55): I mean nauseating. Just — just an incredible volume and also shocking that that collection was allowed to exist un-repatriated until 2022, and seemingly just now is the sort of start of the effort to — to put that back. Yeah, I mean it’s just, revolting, is the best word that I can come up with, and you know, I — I, think uh Kisha, I think we’re interacting on Twitter on a — a similar uh sort of related thing where um, as a project for elementary students, someone was having someone track like individuals through boarding school records and sort of like you know maybe using like middle schoolers, I can’t remember. But a sort of like, you know primary research in the archive project, but track um, children in residential schools through their kind of time there and see what records you can find.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (48:40): And again, it’s presented as this like positive opportunity to develop embodied experience, but it’s like embodied experience of what? You know, of speculating on Indigenous pain and thinking that these cursory records can possibly tell a complete story? And, and nowhere in this exercise were Indigenous voices ever brought in, right? Either contemporaries to the records being looked at or contemporary from right now, Indigenous voices are not a part of this conversation. And so I think that’s a — a really great example of records that people will sometimes think of as somehow benign in some way, and it’s like, “well, but what’s, what’s the use? What’s the context?” There are no benign records that come out of these horrific genocidal um, atrocities. There — there — there, they do not have a neutral valence.

Kisha Supernant (49:24): No. And if you do want to do a project like that, anyone who’s reading or listening, have the students look at the people who ran them, not at the students, because that’s a real focus on sort of that Indigenous trauma and all that, and it’s really insensitive to do it that way. But look at who was running them. Who worked there, who ran them? How did they, you know, if you want archival, primary archival material, we need to focus also on the perpetrators. And I think that’s really, really important in any — any kind of seeking of justice, and there hasn’t been enough attention on that.

Kisha Supernant (49:57): I mean there, and there has to be attention on survivors and families, absolutely, but by survivors and families telling those stories, not by non-Indigenous middle school children being told to go trace a child in the archive, let alone the kind of, you need to have trauma-informed practice if you’re going to be doing that for the children too. Like let’s just say these are very difficult records. But focus on the perpetrators. Focus on the people who ran them or who are responsible for — for founding them, right…

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (50:22): Yeah.

Kisha Supernant (50:22): …and what the policies were behind that.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (50:26): I think that is so powerful. And also um, to me, just speaking as a person who is both Native Chicano and white, to me that feels like part of that good relations work, right? I mean, that’s actually part of looking after your relations um, from a non-Native perspective too, which is um, you know there’s a way in which these exercises often sort of divorce people from the reality that some of those people who implemented those boarding schools are their relations.

Kisha Supernant (50:52): Right?

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (50:52): And they need to, you have to take that in and sit with that and think about okay, well what do in, what do I do in my life that responds to that in a way that is meaningfully aligned with my spiritual system, what I believe is right and my ethics? And I think that’s one of the things that gets missed when we sort of ask people to role play as um, investigators tracking children through a boarding school or something, without, and exactly, focusing on Indigenous trauma and the victimization of those individuals instead of the sort of more holistic view and thinking about ancestral relative responsibility and — and what do we do with that, um, yeah. Very, very, very powerful. So much, so much to think about in here. Um we could just go on. Um I think this is the — the last question, right Jylisa? We’re at number seven now? So uh, from your perspective, what should people center/keep in mind as they seek to define the ethics around collections such as this? Wow, we did a great job on these questions [laughs].

Kisha Supernant (51:54): So again, there’s so — there’s so many threads that we’ve talked about in our conversation that contribute to this, but for me, the core of, of ethics around these sorts of collections is the recognition that it is not up to past or present non-Indigenous people to make decisions about these collections. So at the core of it is Indigenous people need to be the ones engaged, being the ones making decisions and having you know, meaningful input into how these collections are done. And of course, we’re not a monolith. We all have sort of our different perspectives and there may be disagreements around that, but it, for me, the core of any kind of good ethic is that being a good relation. And to be a good relation is not to come up with a plan and then say, “Hey, what do you think about my plan?”

Kisha Supernant (52:39): It’s more so here’s a bunch of things that we are trying to consider because we know we have this super problematic thing. What do you think? What should we do? What do we need to do with this? What are our responsibilities? And starting with that kind of understanding of being a good relation, whether it be in an active way or whether it just be starting with a question. You know what — what do we do with this really problematic thing that we have? How do we engage with this collection? How do we engage with this archive? How do we engage with uh, this archaeological material? Again, you know start with the question, “well, who am I to make a decision about this? Who do I need to talk to in order for a decision to be made in an ethical way?”

Kisha Supernant (53:17): Because there isn’t a blueprint, in a certain sense, beyond like being a good relation and really, deeply learning what that means and recognizing that however well intentioned, if you’re, I mean even like from my own perspective as a — as a Métis woman, I’m not gonna go into um, you know, Mi’kmaq country and tell them how they should do things because I’m not from there, right? And I’d — I’d say like, “well, here’s some things I know that we’ve done here. If you find them useful, let me know if I can help,” but I’m not gonna go in and like dictate how they should do things because they’re not from my — my lands, they’re not from my culture, they’re not from — from my history. So part of being a good relation is knowing where, you know, you can bring knowledge to the table, but not being, not imposing that knowledge on — on other folks ‘cause they may have a very different way of relating to it.

Kisha Supernant (54:06): A great example of this is seen in repatriation, right? There are some communities, they don’t, “you took those bones, you — you keep them.” Right? Like that’s not part of how we engage with — with the dead, or a particular type of burial good, right? It’s sort of like, no you, and — and other nations are like, “we must take everything back and put it all back in the ground.” But if you just sort of assume everybody wants everything back, then you are actually not upholding sovereignty and you’re not being a good relation because you’re making an assumption based on uh, you know, maybe one experience you’ve had or based on like a collection of — of folks who wrote a law that you say, “well, we must give everything back.” It’s like no, you need to start the relationship and you need to respect sovereignty, and out of that will emerge ethics around whatever it is that you are doing.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (54:56): Hm-mmm, yeah. I think that is so powerful and such — such a great kind of point I think for us to close on, that — that kind of centering of relationality as central to everything and that if you’re starting there with a — a positive, intentional relationality that encourages the sort of ethics that um, support your specific situation, it’s gonna grow out of that. There is no sort of, just default ethical thing to do here. Um as you were talking, something that occurred to me is um, I’m a practicing Zen Buddhist, and one of the phrases is like, “Does this need to be said by me? Does this need to be said? Does this need to be said right now?” I think I got the order of those wrong, but the point being that you should try to ask yourself those questions to engage in what we call “right speech.” And so speech that hopefully doesn’t cause harm um, to you or other people, or even you know people who aren’t in the room that you haven’t thought of or considered yet, just speech that is, um, positive and beneficial in what happens.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (55:56): And it’s — it’s interesting to think about that in this context of sort of like if you’re speaking on a collection, it’s like, “am I the one who should be saying this, is this the place for me to be saying it, and is this the time for me to be saying it?” And if you’re saying, “oh, I’m not sure if I am the one to speak on it,” um you know, I think our white institutions, they struggle with sort of uncertainty or insecurity or admitting that you don’t know or that kind of vulnerability. And so I think it’s great to say like, if your answer to that first question of, like, am I the person to speak on this is like “I’m not sure,” just like be okay with “I’m not sure,” and then be open to like “well, who would be, who should be in relation to this?” And to think about who is already in relationship to this? Who, who already has these connections, and how can we sort of formalize that and build that out and build collaborations in the work we do in these institutions that reflects um, those relations? So…

Kisha Supernant (56:48): Exactly. Yeah. And it’s really hard for especially a group of academics to say that they don’t know something, let me tell you. [laughs]

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (56:56): Well, and these grants, they don’t necessarily um, embrace that all the way either. You know when you have to, the grant that we’re on for this, we had to really plan our whole grant out well in advance, which meant that we designed our advisory board having not talked to a single person and gotten any consultation on it, and so part of what we did is made sure that we, I mean Jylisa deserves a medal of honor for how many times she’s gone back with our revised budgets and vision and takes on it. And I think that that’s another big part of it, is that willingness to do iteration until you get the right version and to not just stop. Um you know I think there was a few times where we were like, “Maybe we just won’t be able to have an advisory board because we’re not, you know, people aren’t picking up what we’re putting down, and that’s clearly means that we’re not offering the right thing.” And so I think that that’s um such a profound message for people in the academy and uh, writ-large to just think about.

Kisha Supernant (57:49): And that, and honestly you know uh, getting funding for the type of work that um, I sort of laid out earlier, that really transformative work…

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (57:55): Yeah.

Kisha Supernant (57:55): …is uh, there’s a — there’s a structural barrier to that right now. You’re supposed to have a finished, you know, grant application with a project laid out, how do you — how do you have the — the time and space to build the relationship before you create the grant when you can, don’t have any funds to acknowledge the labor of your partners, right? [laughs] So we’ve actually, at — at the University of Alberta, um, I’m just in the process of adjudicating uh, these — these what we call sorta seed grants, which are to really start the relationship.

Kisha Supernant (58:27): They’re relational grants, so like here’s some funds to build the relationship so that you can write the grant for the big amount of money in partnership.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (58:36): Hm-mmm, hm-mmm.

Kisha Supernant (58:36): You can’t do that with no resources because we can’t ask elders to come in and share their knowledge without protocol, without honoraria, without you know, making sure they can, they’re being taken care of in that relationship. So I — I really um acknowledge that that’s a big structural barrier to a lot of this type of work that we’re trying to do, but I think you’ve done a great job bringing together a great group of people um, to — to talk about this, so thanks for persevering.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (59:01): Well, thank you for being a part of it, and thank you for sharing that micro seed grant idea out. That is such a smart um, that’s a smart idea, and I think you could really see it in some of these like planning grants you know like the NEH does or whatever. It would be great to see more focus on building that relation that then bigger efforts could come out of, so.

Kisha Supernant (59:19): Exactly.

Marco Seiferle-Valencia (59:19): Well, thank you again for your time. Um with that, we’ll go ahead and stop the recording. Um thank you again, and thanks to the audience.

Jylisa Kenyon (59:26): Thank you.