Sonya Atalay

‘We don't talk about Çatalhöyük, we live it’: sustainable archaeological practice through community-based participatory research

Abstract Community-based participatory research (CBPR) provides a methodology for engaging descendent and local communities as partners in archaeological research. This article, based on a five-year comparative research project that examines CBPRs application to archaeology, demonstrates a collaborative model that involves reciprocity, is action based and aims to build community capacity while engaging communities in the process of archaeological research and heritage management. Included are details of what community-based participatory research is, the main principles involved in its practice and a demonstration of how it is being effectively applied ‘on-the-ground’ at Çatalhöyük, Turkey. Two components of the Çatalhöyük CBPR project are highlighted: the community internship program and the archaeological community theatre project.

No Sense of the Struggle: Creating a Context for Survivance at the NMAI

Museums, collecting, anthropology, and archaeology were developed within, and are deeply entrenched in, a Western epistemological framework and have histories that are strongly colonial in nature. As with most contemporary fields of study, these areas of research and practice are fully steeped in Western ways of knowing, naming, ordering, analyzing, and understanding the world. Indigenous people, both outside and within the academy, along with a number of non-Indigenous scholars globally, have struggled long and hard to bring the Western and colonial nature of these fields to the foreground. They have worked to bring us to the place we are today, where such statements are acknowledged (by most scholars) and where those who want to continue working to change these disciplines in positive ways have a space to do so. The National Museum of the American Indian (nmai) is one of those spaces. The nmai attempts to profoundly change the practice of museology and the role of Indigenous people in museums on a grand scale. In some ways it is successful in its mission, yet other areas leave room for improvement. This piece focuses on the latter, and in it I offer critiques of the exhibits on display during the museum’s opening on September 21, 2004. Although the substance of this article is primarily critique and suggestions for improvement of the nmai’s exhibits, I want to be clear in stating that, in writing it, my aim is ultimately to support the nmai because I believe so strongly in its aims, mission, and efforts and in the profound power it has to speak to so many people about us— our lives, our communities, our struggles, and our rights as Native people of sovereign nations. I strongly believe that along with the nmai’s gift of voice, which is the result of financial, political, and community support from