Event Details

Dr. Natasha Lyons received her PhD from the Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary, in 2007. She is a founding partner of Ursus Heritage Consulting, which she owns and operates with her husband in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Canada. She is also Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, a department with a long specialty in community archaeology. Natasha conducts collaborative, community-based research with First Nations and Inuit communities throughout Western Canada and the Arctic. She practices and publishes widely on subjects related to community archaeology, ethical research practice, digital representation, ethnobotany and palaeoethnobotany. Her first book was well received in both the archaeology and northern communities: Where the Wind Blows Us: Practicing Critical Community Archaeology with the Inuvialuit of the Canadian Western Arctic (2013, University of Arizona Press).  

Dr. Kisha Supernant is Métis and an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. She received her PhD from the University of British Columbia in 2011.  Her research with Indigenous communities in Canada explores how archaeologists and communities can build collaborative research relationships. Her research interests include the relationship between cultural identities, landscapes, and the use of space, Métis archaeology, and heart-centered archaeological practice. She specializes in the application of mapping methods to the human past and present, including the role of digital mapping and GIS spatial analysis in archaeological research. Her current research project, Exploring Métis Identity Through Archaeology (EMITA), takes a relational approach to exploring the material past of Métis communities, including her own family, in western Canada. She has published in local and international journals on GIS in archaeology, collaborative archaeological practice, indigenous archaeology, and conceptual mapping in digital humanities.

Dr. John R. Welch (RPA) is a Professor at Simon Fraser University, jointly appointed in the Department of Archaeology and School of Resource and Environmental Management. His doctorate (Anthropology) is from the University of Arizona (1996). He fell in love at first sight with Ndee (Western Apache) territory in 1984 and has served this passion in various professional capacities, including work as the archaeologist and historic preservation officer for the White Mountain Apache Tribe (1992-2005) and ongoing commitments as the board secretary for the nonprofit Fort Apache Heritage Foundation. He joined the SFU faculty in 2005 and directs the Professional Graduate Program in Heritage Resource Management. Recent publications include Dispatches from the Fort Apache Scout: White Mountain and Cibecue Apache History Through 1881, University of Arizona Press, 2016, and Archaeology as Therapy: Linking Community Archaeology to Community Health (Schaepe, Angelbeck, Snook, and Welch, 2017), Current Anthropology 58(4).

The concept of an ‘Archaeology of Heart’ originates in feminist and indigenous models of research and well-being that invite us to know and apply our full emotional, social, intuitive, and spiritual selves, as well as our best intellectual and rational selves, in our research, training, and outreach. While novel to archaeology, this emergent approach draws on the growing literatures of heart-centered practice in the humanities, caring professions, indigenous ontologies, and feminist scholarship. Heart-centered archaeologies provide new spaces for thinking through an integrated, responsible, and grounded archaeology, where we: (1) show care for the living and the dead; (2) recognize we are all emotional and social as well as intellectual beings; (3) act upon our needs for responsible relationships with each other, with a range of communities, and with archaeological records, and; (4) emphasize rigor not only in research and presentation, but in all our relational practices. A heart-centered approach to archaeological practice has the power to transform and add multi-dimensional value to how we conduct our professional practices as archaeologists both within and well beyond the discipline. In this online seminar, we build a toolkit for the heart-centered archaeologist.

We will introduce the concept of a heart-centered practice to archaeological professionals, demonstrate its utility and applications, and show how it can be used effectively in community, classroom, field, managerial and other working contexts and situations.