Appropriated Pasts: Indigenous Peoples and the Colonial Culture of Archaeology in Bloomington, MN

McNiven and Russell (both Australian indigenous studies, Monash U.) examine the overt, subtle, and insidious ways archeology has been complicit in appropriating the pasts of indigenous people, using Australia as a base of study and comparing conditions there with those of North America, Africa, and other regions. They argue that indigenous archeology has been largely, if not entirely colonial, and as such is controlled by negative representational tropes and historical misunderstanding of those same tropes. To support their assertions they describe the colonial culture of archeology, the invention of prehistory through progressivism, the misrepresentation of aboriginal people as "living fossils," the use of migration and diffusion to impose control on the indigenous and of science to reinforce it, and the new means of appropriation, "shared history." They propose methods to develop a decolonized practice. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR