Archaeology conference aims to centre Indigenous perspectives in work on ancestral sites [Video]

Beneath the rolling hills around Lethbridge, now tinged with green after the past week’s rain, understanding of the past is lodged in the landscape itself. 

It’s here, at the city’s university, that archaeologists have gathered to listen and learn from the voices of the people who have always been here, and whose ancestral belongings are objects of desire to museums across the country. 

Just over a decade since its inaugural event, the second Blackfoot Archaeology Conference, called Ksaahkommitapii, meaning “spirit of the ground” in the Blackfoot language, wrapped up on Saturday, after two days of collaboration and consultation between conference-goers and member tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy. 

And while agenda items included technical presentations with titles such as, “using photogrammetry to record a rock art glyph at Writing-On-Stone, Alta.,” the event’s main goal was to reinforce the inclusion of Blackfoot philosophy into the analysis of archaeological sites.

“Archaeology can look …