ABSTRACT
Do North American earthworks represent the ruins of prehistoric pasts, or do these well-engineered structures remain relevant to Indigenous peoples living in the present and imagining possible futures? Our understanding of earthworks has been limited by the colonial assumptions of standard archaeological, anthropological, and historical practice, as well as by the discourses of dominant theory. Critical Indigenous Studies offers productive alternatives. This chapter describes one such project: an investigation of the living earthworks vocabularies on display at the Chickasaw Cultural Center, which opened outside Sulphur, Oklahoma, in 2010. I argue that the Chickasaw Nation creates a ritual call and response between the language used to describe earthworks in the signage at the Chikasha Inchokka’ Traditional Village, which includes a full-scale replica of a chief’s mound from the Southeastern homeland, and the language used to describe earthworks in the signage at the Chikasha Poya Exhibit Center, which places mound-building within an expansive Chickasaw history that includes forced removal to Oklahoma. The productive conversation created between these vocabularies is suggestive of the ways Southeastern peoples have understood earthworks and earthworks principles in the past, but also of the ways they continue to develop their understandings in the present and for the future.
