Please join us for the talk "A Critical Consideration of the Rhetoric of Reconciliation and Social Justice in Archaeology" given by Lindsay Montgomery, Assistant Professor in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. The talk will take place Friday, February 25, at 3pm ET, and will be held via Zoom.

Over the past five years, a growing number of conference sessions, public talks, and academic publications have called for a politicized archaeology that contributes to broader efforts towards reconciliation and social justice for minoritized communities. In North America, these efforts have largely been inspired by the publication of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commissions report on the legacy of residential schools in 2015 as well as popular struggles against anti-blackness, racism, and police violence spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement since 2016. These efforts have made important strides towards making archeology useful to historically disenfranchised groups in the present. However, in our race towards relevancy, we have not given enough attention to defining what reconciliation and social justice actually means, how these meanings differ across black and Indigenous communities, and what, if anything, the study of the material past can realistically contribute to these distinct efforts. This paper will critically explore current disciplinary engagements with the concepts of reconciliation and social justice with a particular eye towards problematizing the definitional foundations of these terms. In dwelling on these definitions, I’ll discuss the potential for positive change these community-engaged frameworks present as well as how such terminology might constrain effective political action through their appeal to liberal multi-cultural identity politics. 

To access the Zoom link, please RSVP: http://ter.ps/lmontgomery or by email to lafrenzs [at] umd [dot] edu