ABSTRACT
My work as a traditional Abenaki storyteller often dovetails with my efforts as an Indigenous archaeologist. In both roles, I explore and interpret physical and ephemeral locales where memories reside, where Indigenous knowledges are situated, and where histories of past events speak in some way to the present. I am particularly attentive to places where Indigenous stories and understandings have been distorted, threatened, or forgotten. . . . The quixotic, and yet always informative nature of these encounters has trained me to pay close attention to local landscapes and historical memories, phenomenological experiences and collecting processes, and my own situatedness in any particular project or place, at any given time. I believe that the ethics of our profession demand such attentiveness, such reflexiveness. As archaeologists, when we choose to place our hands into the past, we become active agents in shaping that past. We are not just neutral observers; our physical being, thought patterns, and subsequent sorting behaviors interrupt the momentary stasis between what lies above and below, and as we break that barrier, our actions can disrupt and distort the very object of our study . . . unless we are very careful. Storytelling holds much the same dangers. . . .
