Archaeology is rooted in racism and colonialism, say scientists. Here’s how we rewrite ‘everyone’s history’ | CBC Documentaries
Niagara Falls has lengthy been a vacationer vacation spot, with its dashing rapids and breathtaking waterfalls. For centuries individuals have been drawn to the pure spectacle of water cascading to the river beneath. But of the tens of millions of vacationers that cross by way of the world annually, it is possible few are conscious of its significance to Black historical past.
It’s a cloudy day in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Bare timber sign the arrival of fall, and other people stroll alongside the winding paths as chillier temperatures roll in. Saladin Allah, director of group engagement on the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center, sits on a park bench beside Anthony Morgan, host of Secret Agents of the Underground Railroad, a documentary from The Nature of Things.
“This is a beautiful location,” Morgan says within the documentary.
“Yeah, well, to the average person, it’s just a park, right?” Allah says. “To us, it’s hallowed ground.”
The pair are sitting the place the historic Cataract House, a resort inbuilt 1825, as soon as stood in all its opulent magnificence, internet hosting the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and even the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and King George V.
But it is what occurred within the hallways and the kitchen that made the resort a lifeline for hundreds of enslaved Black individuals in search of freedom.
“The Cataract House was one of the most important destinations, or locations, in terms of Underground Railroad activity,” Allah says. “It was one of the most active locations in terms of providing assistance for people who were seeking freedom.”
The resort burned down in 1945 and took with it its historical past. In its place sits Heritage Park.
However, in 2017, by way of a group archaeology undertaking led by the University at Buffalo’s division of anthropology, researchers uncovered a part of the resort’s foundations — remnants of this necessary historic landmark.
Allah, an educator, says archaeology is rooted in racism. “I think people don’t oftentimes understand that when you look at [archaeology] within the context of how it was … originated by Europeans, that these were not scientists or archaeologists,” he tells the CBC. “These were usually white racist hobbyists.”
He believes the Cataract House group undertaking is a part of an necessary shift in how archaeology is together with Black and brown individuals.
“To me, just being in a place and being present and being able to take these artifacts and the stories — to be the one who [is] writing the actual narrative and a story that’s connected to these artifacts — are vitally important because, for generations, we’ve never been in a position to be able to do that,” he says.
For him, it is also private.
His third great-grandfather was Josiah Henson, who’s believed to have been the inspiration for the title character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s landmark novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
“If I could stand in the trenches and feel and just touch some of the vestiges of the Cataract House hotel, I think many things would come full circle for me,” Allah says within the documentary. “Not only being a part of history, but being a caretaker and an ambassador of that history — again, telling our story from our perspective.”
Changing the narrative
Throughout historical past, individuals of color have been judged to be inferior to white individuals, typically beneath the guise of science.
Flinders Petrie, the so-called “father of archaeology,” believed in eugenics, the false notion that the human race may very well be enhanced by way of selective breeding, together with compelled sterilization.
Douglas Perrelli, director of the University at Buffalo’s archaeological survey, acknowledged this one-sided view.
“The foundations of archaeology are very much racist foundations of misconceptions about things like, you know, the intellectual capacity of Black people or Native Americans,” he says. “And so what began as rich white guys travelling around the world and collecting things to fill their cabinets of curiosity, today has become a rich science with a very profound cultural sensitivity.”
And there’s heightened consciousness concerning the position group archaeology can play in uncovering the previous and involving the individuals to which this historical past means essentially the most.
In the 2020 paper “The Future is Now: Archaeology and the Eradication of Anti-Blackness,” the authors replicate on initiatives that empower communities, the group archaeology work of the African diaspora, and the necessity to decolonize archaeology.
An identical piece, “Introduction: Current Directions in Community Archaeology of the African Diaspora,” examines the position group archaeology can play in marginalized communities. There has additionally been a rise within the variety of Black archaeologists — one thing they hope will change the lens by way of which historical past and artifacts are seen.
‘It’s everybody’s historical past’
James Ponzo, an assistant professor on the University at Buffalo, says it is necessary to have a look at historical past as a method of therapeutic.
“For too long, things like the Underground Railroad, the story of chattel slavery, has been taught as specifically Black history,” he says. “The truth is it’s everyone’s history. So I think it’s very important that now we start to, kind of, pull back the curtains and deal with these difficult periods in history because I feel like that’s the only way that we’re truly going to heal and actually move forward.”
Archaeology is rooted in racism and colonialism, say scientists. But the self-discipline is being reformed, and now has a large amount of cultural sensitivity, providing new views on historical past that reveals new tales to provide again to a group.
Meanwhile, Secret Agents of the Underground Railroad follows the archaeologists as they conduct a second dig on the web site of the Cataract House. Morgan joins within the pleasure when the workforce finds the situation of the resort’s kitchen: a spot the place the Black resistance cell operated from — a spot that held a lot hope for enslaved Black individuals in search of freedom and dignity.
An emotional Allah stands within the excavated trench, on a wall that may have separated the resort’s ornate eating room from the kitchen, the place lots of these hopeful slaves handed by way of.
He wipes his eyes.
“It’s different to tell these stories than to literally be in the space,” he says.
For extra tales concerning the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success tales inside the Black group — try Being Black in Canada, a CBC undertaking Black Canadians may be pleased with. You can learn extra tales right here.
