Lecture by Danielle Kalani Heinz | Reverberations of the Past: Towards a More Trauma-Informed Archaeology

Indigenous archaeologies have often been praised for uplifting the voices of marginalized communities and contributing to more equitable forms of archaeology. However, even Indigenous archaeologies can cause trauma for Native communities. While the colonial origins and ongoing colonial structures of archaeology are significant sources of this trauma, they are not the only factors. The examination of historical colonial violence, alongside contemporary experiences of similar injustices, can be emotionally taxing for Native individuals, contributing to challenges in recruiting and retaining Native scholars in the field. This talk employs a landscape archaeology approach to analyze how recent events—specifically the Mauna Kea vs. TMT conflict, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Lāhainā fires—demonstrate the enduring impact of colonial landscapes on Native Hawaiian communities. Although anthropology cannot eliminate this trauma, Danielle Kalani Heinz proposes that new frameworks be developed within the field that draw from cultural humility, trauma-informed pedagogies, and archaeologies of the heart to encourage archaeology to serve as a space for healing.  Danielle Kalani Heinz is Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at California State University, Northridge. Her research focuses on developing culturally rooted environmental activism through collaborating with the NativeHawaiian community, integrating Native Hawaiian ways of knowing, conducting microbotanical and isotope analysis,and analyzing historical documents. As an educator, she utilizes Hawaiian culture based education to demystify archaeologyand environmental studies by making these studies more relevant to students. Heinz received her Ph.D. in Hawaiian Archaeologyfrom the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology,at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her dissertation is entitled, “A Microbotanical Based Approach toʻIke ʻĀina inNā Wai ʻEhā, Maui:Edible Plants as Tools of HawaiianSurvivance in the Past, Present, and into the Future.”