WEBVTT 1 00:01:09.300 --> 00:01:09.870 Virginia Butler: hey there. 2 00:01:10.260 --> 00:01:10.710 Hello. 3 00:01:15.480 --> 00:01:16.950 Virginia Butler: let's get the speakers on. 4 00:01:17.550 --> 00:01:19.080 Virginia Butler: heather hey. 5 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:29.970 Virginia Butler: You know I Shelby is the dude on this so it's kind of it's it's very relaxing actually. 6 00:01:31.140 --> 00:01:37.440 Virginia Butler: I can help admit and then just scan the comments for things but she's got this in hand. 7 00:01:41.700 --> 00:01:43.350 Lyssia Merrifield: i'm just reading your reply. 8 00:01:43.740 --> 00:01:44.220 yeah. 9 00:03:16.380 --> 00:03:17.070 Virginia Butler: looking for. 10 00:03:19.980 --> 00:03:22.350 Virginia Butler: darla Marcel has entered the room and. 11 00:03:22.380 --> 00:03:23.280 Lyssia Merrifield: I am not a Co host. 12 00:03:23.310 --> 00:03:24.120 Virginia Butler: Now I know you're not. 13 00:03:26.520 --> 00:03:33.810 Virginia Butler: So it is good i'll stop talking but there's stuff I can do, and so it's nice it's sort of like reading on the couch with somebody. 14 00:03:35.790 --> 00:03:36.780 Virginia Butler: You can do your own thing. 15 00:03:37.950 --> 00:03:39.990 Lyssia Merrifield: You might pause the recording, though. 16 00:03:40.740 --> 00:03:41.580 Virginia Butler: Oh, my goodness. 17 00:03:48.150 --> 00:03:51.630 Virginia Butler: Okay, I think that it's time to start. 18 00:03:53.190 --> 00:03:56.700 Virginia Butler: Welcome to the first Thursday. 19 00:03:57.180 --> 00:03:58.110 Virginia Butler: portland states. 20 00:03:58.590 --> 00:04:13.230 Virginia Butler: archaeology series Thank you so much for coming, this is the last of first thursday's event for the year it's not as last but not least, and great time for celebration on so many friends. 21 00:04:14.490 --> 00:04:18.360 Virginia Butler: Before I get any further, I want to. 22 00:04:20.670 --> 00:04:22.260 move this forward here. 23 00:04:30.840 --> 00:04:32.940 i'm not advancing the slides very well. 24 00:04:34.500 --> 00:04:41.070 Virginia Butler: So i'm feeling okay so i'm just going to move along here, I want to give the land acknowledgement. 25 00:04:41.520 --> 00:04:51.600 Virginia Butler: We know many of you are coming from far away, many places in this digital world, but the university the institution that is supporting this event is located. 26 00:04:52.140 --> 00:04:59.610 Virginia Butler: On the traditional homelands, of the multnomah the wasp go the cath laminate the clackamas the wall of bands of the chinook. 27 00:04:59.970 --> 00:05:08.940 Virginia Butler: The tualatin California, the Mullah and many other indigenous nations who made and make their homes along the Columbia and willamette rivers. 28 00:05:09.300 --> 00:05:22.530 Virginia Butler: This land was stolen through genocide and the destruction of culture, language and lifeways by Euro American settlers we recognize and honor these past and prejudice and present indigenous communities in their land. 29 00:05:28.140 --> 00:05:41.220 Virginia Butler: I am sorry, good people, but I am not able to advance the slides here to move the project along which is to give you the lay of the land about what's going to happen. 30 00:05:42.570 --> 00:05:45.270 Virginia Butler: After I introduce our speaker. 31 00:05:46.650 --> 00:05:58.230 Virginia Butler: Emily then asked last will speak for about 40 minutes and then there'll be plenty of time for question and answers if you'd like you can put your questions in the chat as the top proceeds. 32 00:05:58.860 --> 00:06:08.100 Virginia Butler: But hold them in general, until the end and we will call on you, with the raised hand or or make make sure you get your questions answered. 33 00:06:10.440 --> 00:06:15.180 Virginia Butler: And now here's the time where I really maybe i'm going to do it this way, OK. 34 00:06:17.520 --> 00:06:20.100 Virginia Butler: OK, so now I am figuring this out okay. 35 00:06:22.320 --> 00:06:33.510 Virginia Butler: So Emily then else is lakota and Robbie descent is currently a PhD candidate and the Department of anthropology at India indiana university. 36 00:06:33.930 --> 00:06:40.800 Virginia Butler: She graduated from Yale University in 2016 with a double major in archaeology and anthropology. 37 00:06:41.430 --> 00:06:49.920 Virginia Butler: She has already received several prestigious fellowships and scholarships, including multiple graduate scholars fellowships from from IU. 38 00:06:50.400 --> 00:07:07.980 Virginia Butler: An nsf scholarship for archaeological training through the Society for American archaeology a winner grin foundation dissertation fieldwork grant she's conducted field work in the plains and wyoming Alaska Peru, Spain and and on the by call. 39 00:07:09.390 --> 00:07:13.050 Virginia Butler: hi hi excuse me Hokkaido archaeological project. 40 00:07:14.250 --> 00:07:24.090 Virginia Butler: She has several exciting publications under review, including a paper in and digitizing archaeology applying theory into practice with the University of Florida press. 41 00:07:24.360 --> 00:07:34.830 Virginia Butler: And another rewriting and rebuilding understanding indigenous women's roles in the creation of indigenous future isms in the routledge handbook of co future isms. 42 00:07:35.160 --> 00:07:51.840 Virginia Butler: she's also contributed several public interest publications and media that touch on the critical issues in archaeology today, including digging into worlds, a contemporary indigenous approached archaeology and working it out together magazine. 43 00:07:53.310 --> 00:07:59.520 Virginia Butler: She has she has she has been is continuing to do a lot on the public outreach and media France. 44 00:07:59.940 --> 00:08:04.890 Virginia Butler: she's making important contributions to the climate and environment at indiana university. 45 00:08:05.160 --> 00:08:15.720 Virginia Butler: Through her involvement as an instructor and leader in various university hosted workshops and panels on topics such as teaching difficult topics and how to survive and thrive. 46 00:08:16.110 --> 00:08:30.390 Virginia Butler: At a P wi fi park and wife and and white allies her dissertation project is focused on indigenous women's relationship to rock art and how these images are related to the cultural and environmental landscape. 47 00:08:30.840 --> 00:08:40.350 Virginia Butler: Taking a diet chronic approach her research connects white rock art images created in the past to contemporary landscapes and ceremonies in the present. 48 00:08:40.710 --> 00:08:53.880 Virginia Butler: Her work is grounded in methods of indigenous archaeology and community based research practices we So are we are so grateful that you've taken the time to join us and share your work, and we thank you very much. 49 00:08:55.440 --> 00:09:01.830 Virginia Butler: So i'm going to stop sharing and give it to Emily to share. 50 00:09:02.070 --> 00:09:04.800 Emily Van Alst: All right, let me share my screen. 51 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:09.780 Emily Van Alst: And i'll start. 52 00:09:11.250 --> 00:09:25.800 Emily Van Alst: Okay, thank you Virginia for that excellent introduction I really appreciate it so hi everyone, my name is Emily and today i'm going to be sort of talking about my dissertation research, as well as sort of larger. 53 00:09:26.820 --> 00:09:34.500 Emily Van Alst: Rocker research that's occurring on the Northern plains and i'm really thrilled and excited to be here with all of you today. 54 00:09:35.760 --> 00:09:44.370 Emily Van Alst: Before I begin I do want to acknowledge the Miami shawnee Ottawa to me and Delaware who are the past, present and future care. 55 00:09:45.780 --> 00:09:46.710 Emily Van Alst: Of the. 56 00:09:48.300 --> 00:09:50.850 Emily Van Alst: deanna were indiana university resides. 57 00:09:54.180 --> 00:10:06.300 Emily Van Alst: So i'm going to start sort of orienting us geographically, so the plains, is a really large area in what is now known as the United States, and so we have from southern. 58 00:10:07.500 --> 00:10:18.720 Emily Van Alst: Alberta saskatchewan all the way down to Texas, and then on the West, we have sort of it follows the border of the rocky mountains and then to the east sort of follows the Mississippi Missouri rivers. 59 00:10:19.740 --> 00:10:29.190 Emily Van Alst: Because this area is so large researchers have sort of divided it between sort of northern plains central plains and southern plains. 60 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:47.250 Emily Van Alst: And because it's such a large area means that in the 10,000 years of history that we see on the plains, we have a lot of different indigenous communities who are highly mobile moving in and around this area and so today we see. 61 00:10:48.480 --> 00:10:51.480 Emily Van Alst: lakota cheyenne shoshone. 62 00:10:53.130 --> 00:10:59.700 Emily Van Alst: arapaho man Dan has so many different groups that traversed this area and it means that. 63 00:11:00.810 --> 00:11:09.540 Emily Van Alst: In the area that I work, specifically, we see a lot of different Rocker because a lot of different people were leaving their sort of Rocker signature, so to speak. 64 00:11:11.610 --> 00:11:21.480 Emily Van Alst: So I research areas really focused in and around the Black hills, so the black hills, is an important site, as it is the site of emergence for lakota communities. 65 00:11:22.320 --> 00:11:32.190 Emily Van Alst: There are many different Robert sites that I focus on in my dissertation but I really focus in on the black hills, as it sort of Center point to try to understand how lakota people would have moved. 66 00:11:32.550 --> 00:11:42.540 Emily Van Alst: From their area of the black hills to these other sites and how they may have interacted with these other indigenous communities that have been highly mobile in this area. 67 00:11:43.020 --> 00:11:56.520 Emily Van Alst: And you can see, we go from I really focus on Montana South Dakota wyoming as this area has a lot of different Rocker but also specifically elk imagery which i'll get into a little bit here in a bit. 68 00:11:58.320 --> 00:12:08.490 Emily Van Alst: So in the sort of ecology and I hope that there's some folks who are familiar with the planes it's an incredibly sort of flat some rolling hills. 69 00:12:09.570 --> 00:12:22.050 Emily Van Alst: The wind is is a lot in both the winter and the summer, but what we see are also these sort of like the black hills the sort of uplifts within the sort of geology. 70 00:12:22.650 --> 00:12:26.610 Emily Van Alst: Of this area, we also get these really amazing sandstone views. 71 00:12:27.120 --> 00:12:37.980 Emily Van Alst: And here, is where we see a lot of the Rock art sandstone is a really easy rock surface to work with and it's really easy to actually sort of manipulate and create. 72 00:12:38.460 --> 00:12:52.710 Emily Van Alst: carved imagery so a lot of the sites will be looking at today are at the sites that are these sort of sandstone uplifts these buttes that we see on the plains they're also in this there, most of them are in a isolated area. 73 00:12:53.880 --> 00:12:58.110 Emily Van Alst: sort of away from those sort of those winds that are really harsh. 74 00:12:58.710 --> 00:13:13.680 Emily Van Alst: There in areas where we see more plant life, where we see small rivers and streams so they're almost like these oasis or refugee sites if you're traveling across this the sort of vast planes areas, you have a site where you get the things that you need as a human essentially. 75 00:13:15.840 --> 00:13:22.770 Emily Van Alst: So, before I sort of go any further, I kind of dissect a little bit using the term Rocker I use it here. 76 00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:38.580 Emily Van Alst: interchangeably with imagery but Rocker It really is a term that sort of stems from archaeological and our historical practice and it's very simply, a term to describe painted or scratched images on the surface, on a rock surface specifically. 77 00:13:39.120 --> 00:13:43.890 Emily Van Alst: And we don't really see this term until about the 1940s actually in the literature. 78 00:13:43.950 --> 00:13:45.720 Debra Boyer: But it was while you. 79 00:13:47.160 --> 00:13:48.120 Emily Van Alst: And so. 80 00:13:48.360 --> 00:13:49.050 Debra Boyer: To do this. 81 00:13:49.410 --> 00:13:56.640 Virginia Butler: um excuse me, what everyone make sure, and have their mute button on Thank you very much. 82 00:13:56.700 --> 00:13:57.090 Emily Van Alst: Thank you. 83 00:13:58.170 --> 00:13:58.620 Emily Van Alst: um. 84 00:13:58.650 --> 00:14:02.520 Emily Van Alst: So we see rock art is this sort of term to encompass a lot of. 85 00:14:02.760 --> 00:14:03.810 Emily Van Alst: different sort of. 86 00:14:04.110 --> 00:14:09.000 Emily Van Alst: imagery on rock services, but this is a very Western approach to using rock art. 87 00:14:09.360 --> 00:14:18.570 Emily Van Alst: As a term because rock art for a lot of indigenous communities isn't seen as Rocker it's seen as something else, it can be seen as communication or writing. 88 00:14:19.050 --> 00:14:28.830 Emily Van Alst: It can be seen as a place where ancestors or sort of non human actors spirits would do and still exists today in these places. 89 00:14:29.250 --> 00:14:38.010 Emily Van Alst: And really it's a site that holds a lot of incredibly important cultural knowledge for native communities, and so, though I use the term rock art through this presentation. 90 00:14:39.060 --> 00:14:47.850 Emily Van Alst: I do want us to think about why we use that term and why that might be, in contrast to what indigenous communities might call these images that we're looking at today. 91 00:14:50.370 --> 00:14:56.670 Emily Van Alst: So very brief overview of sort of northern plains chronology using the Kaiser and pleasing. 92 00:14:58.230 --> 00:15:08.790 Emily Van Alst: We see that the plains, has been sort of divided into these main areas of sort of culturally of like Paleo Indian archaic and then you get this sort of late historic. 93 00:15:09.720 --> 00:15:18.480 Emily Van Alst: Late prehistoric proto historic and this is based, mostly on stone tools and other artifacts in this in the plains region, but what we also see is. 94 00:15:19.170 --> 00:15:27.330 Emily Van Alst: rock art imagery that has been sort of categorized in these different timeframes and so, for my own research I specifically look at. 95 00:15:28.170 --> 00:15:40.140 Emily Van Alst: The late prehistoric and part of historic era and why this is important because this is a cultural period where we get in Rocker ceremonial tradition, which is sort of this larger. 96 00:15:41.190 --> 00:15:53.250 Emily Van Alst: I almost call it a catch all where we see a lot of different types of rock art imagery all within this time period, so I think it's a it's an important time period, and we see again this sort of diversity of record images. 97 00:15:54.570 --> 00:16:07.110 Emily Van Alst: So i'm going to just briefly for folks who don't know north west plains proper traditions just sort of go through them, the first is early hunting scenes, which is about 10,000 2000 years ago, which is the image on the top. 98 00:16:08.070 --> 00:16:11.070 Emily Van Alst: We see a lot of just figurative humans and animals. 99 00:16:11.700 --> 00:16:22.890 Emily Van Alst: In these sort of hunting scenes where we might have a human and maybe a Kanan mostly like human groups who are hunting sort of the large fanta that we typically would see on the plains, in this time. 100 00:16:23.670 --> 00:16:39.900 Emily Van Alst: deer elk bison those types of animals well, we also see is sometimes human, animal transformations occur, where we see sort of a humanoid figure that might have some animal like features, or vice versa. 101 00:16:40.620 --> 00:16:59.310 Emily Van Alst: But this is a very hard to discern because these images are so incredibly old next we see the dinwiddie tradition which has been associated with shoshone communities and what we see are sort of these anthropomorphic more abstract images the bottom photo you can see sort of these. 102 00:17:00.720 --> 00:17:11.430 Emily Van Alst: elongated emphasized hands and feet, the images are the figures themselves are sort of long they're not very they're somewhat humanoid but not really. 103 00:17:12.180 --> 00:17:23.310 Emily Van Alst: show any oral tradition tells us that is probably some sort of ancestor or potentially images created after sort of a fasting ceremony that would have taken place. 104 00:17:25.830 --> 00:17:27.000 Emily Van Alst: We also see. 105 00:17:28.260 --> 00:17:36.780 Emily Van Alst: The ceremonial tradition, which I talked about and i'll get into that in a little bit because it it encompasses a lot of different imagery, but we also see. 106 00:17:37.710 --> 00:17:49.350 Emily Van Alst: shield bearing warriors, which is about 600 to 150 years ago that includes human figures with these sort of shield as their torso so the bottom photo you see this larger shield. 107 00:17:50.130 --> 00:17:59.790 Emily Van Alst: With this sort of human head and arms and legs, but those shields would have the the bodies are are the shields that warriors and other. 108 00:18:00.360 --> 00:18:08.250 Emily Van Alst: native men would have sort of carried into battle with them so they would have created those images on the rock. 109 00:18:08.730 --> 00:18:21.810 Emily Van Alst: to sort of signify maybe their their community or their clan or something like that they also see by a graphic tradition, which is the middle photo where we see you know very figurative humans and animals. 110 00:18:22.950 --> 00:18:34.680 Emily Van Alst: You know, we see a lot of sort of men riding horses, maybe stealing some horses, maybe in battle with somebody we also see a lot of territoriality and this time period. 111 00:18:35.550 --> 00:18:42.570 Emily Van Alst: Where we're getting I think this is one of my favorite stories about planes Rocker there's somewhere in Montana there's a site where. 112 00:18:43.410 --> 00:18:54.720 Emily Van Alst: A black feet person came in and did sort of a black feet sort of signature and then a crow Uppsala QA person came and didn't want, and then it was sort of back and forth for a while to sort of mark that territory of who owns what right. 113 00:18:55.500 --> 00:19:05.010 Emily Van Alst: that's like just one of my favorite little stories about this region, but that territoriality is really important, as settlers are starting to make their way out on the plains right. 114 00:19:05.460 --> 00:19:09.900 Emily Van Alst: So now i'm going to get a little more into ceremonial tradition, which again is. 115 00:19:10.320 --> 00:19:20.400 Emily Van Alst: Probably the most common and most widespread that we see there's a lot of different styles again that sort of shield bearing warriors we see elaborate human figures conventional animals. 116 00:19:20.820 --> 00:19:37.680 Emily Van Alst: ritual objects ceremonies and weapons so we see a lot of different things, the majority of them are petroglyphs and not pictograms so petroglyphs being sort of carved abraded or incised images versus picture graphs that are painted with some sort of organic material. 117 00:19:38.850 --> 00:19:55.110 Emily Van Alst: You see, in these a lot of these images are in these sort of isolated areas, the foothills of the black hills again those sandstone cliffs so we can start to think about why maybe humans were picking the place that they picked based on this sort of isolated. 118 00:19:56.370 --> 00:19:59.310 Emily Van Alst: area that they that they that we see these images. 119 00:20:01.680 --> 00:20:02.490 Emily Van Alst: Another. 120 00:20:04.170 --> 00:20:12.810 Emily Van Alst: area that we see are different type of tradition that we see that overlaps with this summit ceremonial tradition or track groups or difference which existed between. 121 00:20:13.470 --> 00:20:26.250 Emily Van Alst: which we see between 1200 and hundred 50 years ago footprints are pretty widespread we see from Montana, all the way over to North Carolina on the plane, specifically, we see a lot of the cave hills area and South Dakota. 122 00:20:27.300 --> 00:20:35.670 Emily Van Alst: footprints of elk and deer and bison later on horses and birds and so there's been a lot of research done to try to discern. 123 00:20:36.630 --> 00:20:48.420 Emily Van Alst: You know footprints and track rooms so track rooms are are these sort of lines that we see on the bottom photo you can see there there, there was like three right next to each other. 124 00:20:49.080 --> 00:20:55.740 Emily Van Alst: and learn a sense from is is written a lot about how these track groups, maybe evidence of women. 125 00:20:56.190 --> 00:21:05.280 Emily Van Alst: And so there's oral tradition that there was this finger name double woman and lakota and Dakota women would go to these sites, because it is said that double women would give you. 126 00:21:05.760 --> 00:21:14.070 Emily Van Alst: Beautiful quill work and beautiful beadwork and so, if you went and you actually physically are able to sharpen your tools that you would need to create. 127 00:21:14.400 --> 00:21:19.290 Emily Van Alst: beadwork and quill work, you might get some power and might be able to create these beautiful. 128 00:21:19.950 --> 00:21:27.930 Emily Van Alst: bags or whatever it might be that you were creating for your community, so we see archaeologically and within the rock art are these trapped group marks. 129 00:21:28.350 --> 00:21:41.790 Emily Van Alst: Some people have suggested that they might also have to do with fertility, because some of them do look like female anatomy, and so this sort of track roof have print sort of. 130 00:21:42.870 --> 00:21:56.100 Emily Van Alst: weird liminal space might give us a clue about how people were women specifically were thinking about you know their themselves but also potentially fertility and other sort of women ceremonies. 131 00:21:58.590 --> 00:22:08.910 Emily Van Alst: So, now that you guys have like an overview of Northwest plains Rocker i'm going to kind of go into my own research and i'm going to talk about Western rock art research and what's normally. 132 00:22:09.420 --> 00:22:28.740 Emily Van Alst: been done and areas that I see I can build upon as well as ideas about how to bring gender and landscape into this, to create a sort of more holistic interpretation of some of these images, as well as framing my work within Community based research and indigenous archaeology. 133 00:22:30.810 --> 00:22:39.960 Emily Van Alst: So Western methods of Rocker interpretation in this region have a lot of different things we can use as know historical accounts ethnographic descriptions. 134 00:22:41.100 --> 00:22:51.270 Emily Van Alst: talking with native Community members getting oral traditions, if they're painted images we can actually date the organic pigments so we have carbon dating. 135 00:22:52.410 --> 00:22:59.340 Emily Van Alst: A lot of these sites also have associated artifacts so like a lot of the track groove sites that I talked about just in the last two slides. 136 00:23:00.060 --> 00:23:10.200 Emily Van Alst: There are associated bone needles and all at the site, so we can use the associated artifacts to get a picture of when the images were created and potentially made them. 137 00:23:10.920 --> 00:23:20.610 Emily Van Alst: And then, using that already established chronology of rock art styles, we can sort of discern when something was made and what sort of style it might fall into. 138 00:23:21.330 --> 00:23:30.120 Emily Van Alst: And though these are all really fantastic I see my work is building upon these and including some other aspects to really again get that holistic interpretation. 139 00:23:31.830 --> 00:23:34.410 Emily Van Alst: So my approaches to gender, are very much. 140 00:23:35.460 --> 00:23:43.890 Emily Van Alst: Looking at the archaeology of gender and looking at john jarrow and Margaret cockiness work specifically Margaret coffee is she's looked at gender in rock art in. 141 00:23:44.400 --> 00:23:57.960 Emily Van Alst: Spain and in France, the really old 44,000 year old rock art, how do we discern gender as well as long as sons drums work because she specifically is looking at how we discern gender in rock art in the northern plains. 142 00:23:58.980 --> 00:24:14.970 Emily Van Alst: And then, because these images are created by indigenous people, I thought it was really important to include indigenous women who work in indigenous studies, who are thinking about how do we elevate indigenous women's knowledge. 143 00:24:15.660 --> 00:24:26.940 Emily Van Alst: Culture recently baldy has talked a lot about you know the the concept of revitalizing and reclaiming indigenous women's knowledge in order to sort of. 144 00:24:28.080 --> 00:24:36.810 Emily Van Alst: pass it on to the next generation and revitalize really important ceremonies and then Leah and Simpsons work talking about how do we. 145 00:24:37.680 --> 00:24:47.010 Emily Van Alst: How do, how do indigenous women understand their relationship to land and because these records sites are in places that are so permanent on the landscape. 146 00:24:47.460 --> 00:25:02.580 Emily Van Alst: I think it's important for me to remember how important that relationship is to land that women were picking these particular sites, because there was an importance there and we'll get a little bit into how plants and other environmental features play into this as well. 147 00:25:04.530 --> 00:25:10.830 Emily Van Alst: So landscape is another aspect that I look at, and there have been archaeologists you've talked about landscape. 148 00:25:11.460 --> 00:25:28.920 Emily Van Alst: krista fertility and separate bowels sort of asked archaeologists to think about you know how do humans pick the place that they leave a mark, how do they move around that area seven fouls is talked a little bit about how we need to think about non human actors. 149 00:25:29.940 --> 00:25:33.570 Emily Van Alst: When we think about a Rocker site so environmental features. 150 00:25:34.800 --> 00:25:45.060 Emily Van Alst: Indigenous ontology and understandings of Rocker which include you know thinking about how ancestors or other maybe non human actors might be part of that rock art landscape. 151 00:25:45.540 --> 00:25:57.120 Emily Van Alst: And part of this is looking at this method that I plan on using called cultural mapping where you do ethnographic interviews with Community Members who have stories and memories of these places. 152 00:25:58.140 --> 00:26:16.170 Emily Van Alst: And can talk about the important plants and other environmental features that are part of this these sort of larger Rocker landscapes, not just the images themselves, but that again that landscape around that site can really might give us some additional clues in terms of interpretation. 153 00:26:18.480 --> 00:26:25.650 Emily Van Alst: And then I am very invested and interested in indigenous archaeology it's really the framework for my project. 154 00:26:26.850 --> 00:26:33.870 Emily Van Alst: One of the indigenous archaeology is archaeology that is really with by and for indigenous communities. 155 00:26:34.650 --> 00:26:44.910 Emily Van Alst: I argue that justice archaeology should really be just for indigenous communities and part of that is Community based participatory research so within my own. 156 00:26:45.720 --> 00:27:00.360 Emily Van Alst: Community I work with them in order to create the research questions to talk about you know what knowledge can and cannot be shared, when we talk about oral tradition, when we talk about these stories related to these records sites. 157 00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:10.350 Emily Van Alst: A lot of this then plays into the colonizing histories, you know archaeologists have played a hand in how indigenous cultures have been interpreted and represented. 158 00:27:10.860 --> 00:27:18.450 Emily Van Alst: And their stories and so trying to get again these indigenous voices in these in these histories, so we have a fuller history. 159 00:27:19.080 --> 00:27:28.080 Emily Van Alst: And then together, I see reclamation and sort of self determination going hand in hand, or reclamation is reclaiming stories and cultural heritage sites. 160 00:27:28.620 --> 00:27:37.320 Emily Van Alst: With the facet of self determination, where tribal communities indigenous communities are deciding what they want done with their cultural heritage. 161 00:27:38.040 --> 00:27:51.810 Emily Van Alst: Not what Western folks think is the best practice for them so indigenous archaeology really informs these other aspects of how we interpret Rocker and how I interact with them and how I interact with my Community while doing archaeology. 162 00:27:55.560 --> 00:28:11.640 Emily Van Alst: So a little bit of background, on my own dissertation research I look specifically at elk imagery and this came about my Community a Hawk oh yeah today is this what is known by ethnography as an elk dreamer society. 163 00:28:12.840 --> 00:28:20.100 Emily Van Alst: They have been doing this elk dance for about seven years now, and the elk. 164 00:28:21.300 --> 00:28:40.920 Emily Van Alst: I will say, before I dive in a little further on the plains, a lot of different indigenous nations have different ceremonies to honor particular different types of animals so elk deer bison for lakota people the elk represents healing and compassion. 165 00:28:41.340 --> 00:28:43.290 Emily Van Alst: and love at the end of the day. 166 00:28:43.890 --> 00:28:51.360 Emily Van Alst: And so, when ethnography visited the plains and started interviewing male elk dancers. 167 00:28:52.260 --> 00:29:09.000 Emily Van Alst: They took this idea of love and compassion and healing and sort of twisted it with their own sort of Western ideas of what that might look like, and so it became this idea of sort of love medicine that you would use to sort of blue a woman, and so what this does is it really. 168 00:29:10.170 --> 00:29:20.610 Emily Van Alst: It does a disservice to lakota women who could in the contemporary are very active members of these elk dreamers societies, they are the reason that this ceremony can take place. 169 00:29:21.090 --> 00:29:30.270 Emily Van Alst: And so, knowing that and knowing that the ethnography was lacking, I thought it was important to start to look at how this ceremony that my Community does today. 170 00:29:30.810 --> 00:29:40.560 Emily Van Alst: How the the rock art could be connected to that because there's so little information about this particular dance, and so this is a drawing by bad heart full. 171 00:29:41.310 --> 00:29:53.220 Emily Van Alst: Of the deer and elk dreamer society dance performance everyone to call it, I want to point you all to the elk dreamer regalia because it's going to be really important when we start to look at these rock hard images. 172 00:29:54.120 --> 00:30:12.600 Emily Van Alst: So we see the the antlers and sort of elongated Elf ears, there are this doesn't have color but the color when they're painted yellow and they're sort of arms and legs are painted black, they also will hold stabs like a staff and then also hoops. 173 00:30:14.310 --> 00:30:29.370 Emily Van Alst: And what's great about this drawing as well, is that in the corner directly to what are known as elk maidens who hold the sacred pipe and they're the ones that are leading the elk dancers around the area that the ceremony can take place. 174 00:30:31.710 --> 00:30:39.090 Emily Van Alst: So early ethnography, there are three ethnography as I look at Clark whistler Francis spends more and Alice fletcher. 175 00:30:39.900 --> 00:30:47.370 Emily Van Alst: Clark whistler talks about an Elf dreamer dance doesn't talk about women at all, and then Francis dens more and Alex fletcher. 176 00:30:47.910 --> 00:30:57.660 Emily Van Alst: Both mentioned the sort of elk maidens they're sort of written off as like though there were two women and that's about it so there's not a whole lot in the actual description. 177 00:30:58.620 --> 00:31:09.270 Emily Van Alst: Really those ledger art drawings, give us a little more insight and show us that there were elk women there and I think that's because those drawings were. 178 00:31:09.780 --> 00:31:18.540 Emily Van Alst: drawn by lakota and cheyenne men, so they would have known that that ceremony existed and so like I said, even though early. 179 00:31:19.410 --> 00:31:36.540 Emily Van Alst: Early ethnography can be really helpful when we use it solely as like the capital T truth in terms of interpretation, with rock art we're really missing whole facets of a society of a perspective because women were normally interviewed. 180 00:31:37.620 --> 00:31:45.150 Emily Van Alst: that's very rare and we're also missing other components of knowledge of indigenous women's knowledge. 181 00:31:48.030 --> 00:31:57.960 Emily Van Alst: So my data set is a lot of different things to try to get this interpretation again those ethno historical descriptions are really great start i've also been. 182 00:31:58.470 --> 00:32:07.770 Emily Van Alst: Through this winter, with the wenner-gren foundation, been able to look at old site forms sort of grey literature archaeological site forums at the Montana. 183 00:32:08.400 --> 00:32:17.970 Emily Van Alst: South Dakota and wyoming historical preservation offices to look at site forums to see what descriptors there are some of them are associated with photographs. 184 00:32:18.720 --> 00:32:25.020 Emily Van Alst: Of these rock art sites that i'm looking at which is really great, especially because erosion is such an issue in this region. 185 00:32:25.500 --> 00:32:30.930 Emily Van Alst: i've also started looking at natural resources, conservation service or NRC SS. 186 00:32:31.530 --> 00:32:38.910 Emily Van Alst: which are part of the US Department of Agriculture and they give you vegetation description plant history what plants are native to the region which ones are not. 187 00:32:39.810 --> 00:32:50.160 Emily Van Alst: Which is incredibly helpful to figure out what plants would have been in what areas oral traditions ledger art and then again that sort of established chronology of planes Rocker. 188 00:32:52.140 --> 00:32:58.830 Emily Van Alst: So these are about the 10 sites that i'm looking at for my research, they were picked based on published and unpublished literature. 189 00:32:59.670 --> 00:33:09.510 Emily Van Alst: They were also chosen, because they have some sort of elk ceremonial imagery right so elk imagery that was created in sort of that ceremonial tradition, I talked about. 190 00:33:10.110 --> 00:33:19.110 Emily Van Alst: And they also might have associated hoof prints or track grooves which might give us a little bit of insight as to how women were interacting with these sites. 191 00:33:21.480 --> 00:33:32.820 Emily Van Alst: So my preliminary results so far i'm kind of in this in between where i've done my archival work but i'm looking towards doing sort of interviews next. 192 00:33:33.420 --> 00:33:43.260 Emily Van Alst: In a few other things so through preliminary results i've seen that plants are an important part of trying to understand. 193 00:33:43.950 --> 00:33:49.890 Emily Van Alst: The sort of landscape around these sites, so I started reading a lot about how indigenous women and specifically lakota women. 194 00:33:50.310 --> 00:34:04.590 Emily Van Alst: Are the knowledge keepers in terms of plant knowledge and you what plans to use, you can eat us for medicine and used for lots of different dyes to sort of paint and beautified different types of material culture. 195 00:34:05.940 --> 00:34:20.640 Emily Van Alst: And so on the plains, we see choke cherry wolf mass black walnuts buffalo Barry white grapes and wild sunflower, as all being really important plants that were used to potentially die quills to use as paint those sorts of. 196 00:34:21.870 --> 00:34:35.130 Emily Van Alst: All sorts of needs and uses and within my preliminary work in 2019 I was able to I just sort of started noticing that there were these really important plants that we use in ceremony. 197 00:34:35.670 --> 00:34:45.990 Emily Van Alst: Today, and that included sage and cedar and there was an abundance of these at every single record site, I visited, which is about six out of the 10 that i'm looking at. 198 00:34:46.830 --> 00:34:57.900 Emily Van Alst: I also started to notice that there was something that folks called like wild burger month or be bomb, but what lakota people call a Hawk of judah for elk medicine. 199 00:34:58.410 --> 00:35:04.560 Emily Van Alst: And I was like I don't think this is a coincidence, I think that you know people would have been cultivating these particular. 200 00:35:04.860 --> 00:35:17.160 Emily Van Alst: types of plants to be here, so that if you were traveling long distances and you made it to this isolated area, you would have all the things you would need to be able to do the ceremony, and to be able to create rock art. 201 00:35:18.750 --> 00:35:28.770 Emily Van Alst: And so I went back to the ethnographic record and I noticed rereading Francis densmore account she interviewed brave buffalo and he talks about. 202 00:35:29.520 --> 00:35:35.580 Emily Van Alst: How we really needed this he needed something to help this person right this healing aspect that comes in, with the elk. 203 00:35:36.060 --> 00:35:48.390 Emily Van Alst: And so, he he prayed and he asked the elks to help him find this this plant that he needed to help this person and he painted himself up in that regalia and he held that held a hoop. 204 00:35:48.840 --> 00:35:59.700 Emily Van Alst: And he was able to find while burger month or hey haka bazooka so we see if know historically that people were using this plan, and that is very much associated with our dreamers. 205 00:36:00.330 --> 00:36:19.830 Emily Van Alst: For instance, more actually also took a photo of the hoop that he used to find this plant and I didn't show it here, because it is a ceremonial object, but it is absolutely covered in this hey haka bazooka so a really cool description in the afternoon circle record. 206 00:36:21.420 --> 00:36:30.510 Emily Van Alst: Now i'm going to jump into three of the sites that i'm looking at the first is register cliff, which is in sort of South Eastern wyoming. 207 00:36:31.320 --> 00:36:46.740 Emily Van Alst: So just to refresh your memory elk dreamers typically have you know these sort of ears these antlers they have a trapezoidal sort of mass are painted yellow and black they hold a hoop sometimes the staff so you can see in this panel. 208 00:36:47.910 --> 00:36:57.600 Emily Van Alst: That we see to elk dreamers so we see one that actually has a face in one that does not they're both holding hoops I hope you all can see my cursor both holding hoops. 209 00:36:58.320 --> 00:37:16.140 Emily Van Alst: And this one has a staff that comes off here this one also has a staff and though this is a great representation about dreamers we also see a little bit potentially of these sort of track group marks that might exist, they might also be part of the the natural. 210 00:37:17.820 --> 00:37:27.090 Emily Van Alst: rock formation, but again, you see this very clear image of this out dreamer and we see this again at cave hills. 211 00:37:28.080 --> 00:37:40.500 Emily Van Alst: So cave hills, is an area in sort of northern South Dakota, this is a very, very faint scratched image and I hope you can see it with the D stretch image on the right. 212 00:37:41.370 --> 00:37:46.740 Emily Van Alst: But if we read the panel from right to left we see this sort of. 213 00:37:47.400 --> 00:37:59.130 Emily Van Alst: Maybe spirit or something that might show us this sort of transformation into an elk that you would need in order to do this ceremony, and this is very faint. 214 00:37:59.850 --> 00:38:14.520 Emily Van Alst: But I also that yellow that we see that people are painting themselves with we see that yellow and these yellow sandstone boots viewed so people are picking potentially picking these areas because of that yellow color which is really important for elk dreamers. 215 00:38:16.080 --> 00:38:26.910 Emily Van Alst: And this site is really great It shows us not only this elk dreamer with again the same type of regalia trapezoidal mask the antlers. 216 00:38:28.020 --> 00:38:30.870 Emily Van Alst: But its associated with this very large figurative elk. 217 00:38:32.160 --> 00:38:40.530 Emily Van Alst: And we know it's an elk because it's antlers go back and also, if you know anything about behavior during mating season. 218 00:38:41.820 --> 00:38:54.270 Emily Van Alst: They would elk bugle really loud, and so this natural crack in the rock actually is the bugle line coming out of the elk, and that is associated with this figure over here. 219 00:38:55.140 --> 00:39:04.350 Emily Van Alst: On your left and then what's also interesting is this little female anatomy track group potentially that has been sort of placed over. 220 00:39:05.220 --> 00:39:21.360 Emily Van Alst: This this this figurative elk and so figuring out that relationship is really interesting have when did everybody sort of create that wasn't in tandem, was it a group did different people come to the site to create those in that image and those images. 221 00:39:22.770 --> 00:39:34.380 Emily Van Alst: So my next steps within my research is employing something called visiting circles so Sean Wilson who's a first nations scholar talks about the importance of of. 222 00:39:34.860 --> 00:39:44.880 Emily Van Alst: Not just doing sort of ethnographic interviews but visiting circles and so for native folks we like to visit like sit down the coffee and maybe some donuts if your auntie stacy's house. 223 00:39:45.180 --> 00:39:58.140 Emily Van Alst: And we'd like to talk and catch up and gossip a little bit, and so I thought about sort of turning the head on, what we see as traditional ethnographic interviews and doing something that's culturally relevant. 224 00:39:58.950 --> 00:40:05.820 Emily Van Alst: To native people, and so, of the hundred people that are part of this Community i'm selected about 25. 225 00:40:06.150 --> 00:40:14.940 Emily Van Alst: I plan to do longer interviews with them, they are knowledge keepers within this Community, and then doing shorter interviews with folks that may have participated in the ceremony. 226 00:40:15.630 --> 00:40:27.480 Emily Van Alst: But not as frequent and then, as a group we're actually going to go to these hopefully go to these sites COPA pending go to these sites to be able to look at them in real time. 227 00:40:28.350 --> 00:40:38.700 Emily Van Alst: I also hope to employ some photo Gramma tree 3D modeling just her to recreate some of these landscapes, so that we can interpret them from the living room essentially. 228 00:40:40.200 --> 00:40:52.980 Emily Van Alst: And then, also with that cultural mapping taking the knowledge and the plants we see during those walkabouts and comparing them with those NRC SS to get a fuller view of what the plant communities may have looked like. 229 00:40:54.930 --> 00:41:03.420 Emily Van Alst: So these things, these are all of the research that i've been doing, I started to think about ideas about accessibility. 230 00:41:04.050 --> 00:41:13.650 Emily Van Alst: So what does it look like to physically bring Community members to record sites and if you recall, on the slide with all my dissertation sites i'm going to look at. 231 00:41:14.370 --> 00:41:20.850 Emily Van Alst: You can see the land ownership is sort of scattered we've got private landowners we've got bureau of land management. 232 00:41:21.630 --> 00:41:31.650 Emily Van Alst: we've got us forest service there's a lot of different folks and not all of them are 100% comfortable with having people visit the site. 233 00:41:32.190 --> 00:41:49.230 Emily Van Alst: That you're looking at right now I am on my partner shoulders and this was fieldwork in 2019 there's actually a literal chain link fence around the site and so sometimes that seems to be the preservation method, it keeps people away keeps them from not you know touching the site. 234 00:41:50.670 --> 00:41:53.850 Emily Van Alst: But for a lot of native Community members. 235 00:41:54.870 --> 00:42:05.130 Emily Van Alst: And and thinking about indigenous scientology's and how we understand rock art sometimes you have to touch the images sometimes you need to go up and you need to do certain maybe ceremonies or something. 236 00:42:05.940 --> 00:42:14.580 Emily Van Alst: there's this site in the Great Lakes it's a petroglyph site for years it was totally boarded up chain link fence around it. 237 00:42:15.270 --> 00:42:30.690 Emily Van Alst: Sony Atalay and some other additional Bay women worked on actually getting rid of the overhang of the chain link fence they talked about how for admission Ave women they actually need to go and water every once a year, water, the petroglyphs in order to keep it. 238 00:42:31.770 --> 00:42:35.700 Emily Van Alst: alive, because it represents knowledge and ancestors in these different things. 239 00:42:36.780 --> 00:42:45.990 Emily Van Alst: And so I started to i've been trying to think about probably a future project would be actually policy creation what types of cultural protocol, need to be enforced. 240 00:42:46.590 --> 00:42:59.940 Emily Van Alst: That do preserve these images obviously they're very important, but how do we still allow native people to be able to physically go to these sites and be able to interact with them and the culturally relevant and important way. 241 00:43:02.160 --> 00:43:11.070 Emily Van Alst: And then the very last thing that i'll touch on and how I see my my research helping these these ideas of reclamation. 242 00:43:12.390 --> 00:43:30.540 Emily Van Alst: I see archaeology is a really important tool in terms of reclaiming cultural heritage sites potentially reclaiming land again reclaiming stories and indigenous voices in order for us to be able to interpret cultural heritage in a meaningful and ethically an indigenous way. 243 00:43:32.040 --> 00:43:40.860 Emily Van Alst: i've also been talking recently with some archaeologists about this concept of remade creation, so if you are going to return cultural heritage or return. 244 00:43:42.390 --> 00:43:52.800 Emily Van Alst: You know, potentially like human remains or something like that you need to be able to actually have the homelands that Mother Earth, to be able to. 245 00:43:53.550 --> 00:44:05.220 Emily Van Alst: repatriate or remade create in a correct and culturally relevant way, so I see because Rocker it is such a permanent material culture type for native people. 246 00:44:05.940 --> 00:44:21.240 Emily Van Alst: I see reclaiming and remade creating sacred sites and rockers sites as part of this sort of reclamation or remade creation process that like I said, I think, archaeology really can be a tool for indigenous people to be able to do this. 247 00:44:22.350 --> 00:44:27.810 Emily Van Alst: I use this final picture you know traces of america's past I think it's really ironic. 248 00:44:28.680 --> 00:44:40.590 Emily Van Alst: To think about how it becomes america's past while excluding native people, so I hope that this work, we can find sort of a middle ground between what indigenous people need and what america's past may actually look like. 249 00:44:41.910 --> 00:44:59.370 Emily Van Alst: So I just want to acknowledge very quickly hey taco you're saying my community as well as all of these wonderful institutions that have supported my research, and I also want to thank Shelby Anderson Kelly Butler and Virginia Butler for their. 250 00:45:00.450 --> 00:45:09.720 Emily Van Alst: welcoming me and that wonderful introduction and inviting me to talk with you all about my research, so thank you all so much and are there any questions. 251 00:45:12.900 --> 00:45:14.580 Shelby Anderson: So me clap virtually. 252 00:45:15.360 --> 00:45:19.650 Shelby Anderson: Thank you so much Emily That was really, really excellent. 253 00:45:19.860 --> 00:45:20.610 Emily Van Alst: Thank you. 254 00:45:22.140 --> 00:45:27.420 Shelby Anderson: If folks have questions you can put them in the chat or I think that's the best way. 255 00:45:29.310 --> 00:45:30.480 Emily Van Alst: i'm going to stop sharing. 256 00:45:30.480 --> 00:45:31.200 Emily Van Alst: My screen. 257 00:45:37.020 --> 00:45:37.440 There we go. 258 00:45:40.170 --> 00:45:41.400 Shelby Anderson: i'd be buddies digesting. 259 00:45:43.500 --> 00:45:47.700 James Keyser: Shelby Shelby this is June Kaiser Virginia somebody. 260 00:45:49.500 --> 00:45:51.210 Virginia Butler: Here, Jim you got a question. 261 00:45:51.390 --> 00:46:00.960 James Keyser: Okay sorry I got a kind of a weird picture on my screen doesn't show me and I didn't know if I was even here, I would like to ask me a question. 262 00:46:03.630 --> 00:46:04.290 James Keyser: geyser. 263 00:46:05.370 --> 00:46:05.730 Emily Van Alst: hi. 264 00:46:06.990 --> 00:46:30.150 James Keyser: hi great great talk, by the way, really good very, very lots of cool information in there, I had a question and maybe you can or can't answer it early on, but the fourth or fifth slide you showed ledger drawing of a lady on a horse with an umbrella, and you said that's dated in 1906. 265 00:46:31.650 --> 00:46:31.980 James Keyser: It did. 266 00:46:33.030 --> 00:46:37.380 James Keyser: In my limited knowledge of that it looked like a 1906 drawing to me. 267 00:46:37.710 --> 00:46:39.090 James Keyser: How the day. 268 00:46:39.900 --> 00:46:55.650 Emily Van Alst: um That was the date on the website that I found it, I think it was supposed to be 1906 and the person who created the ledger drawing may have been inspired by a previous 1906 ledger painting, but I agree the colors are very, very well done. 269 00:46:56.100 --> 00:47:00.810 Emily Van Alst: and very bright vibrant for a 1906 ledger are drawing. 270 00:47:02.340 --> 00:47:05.700 James Keyser: Right and and the style the style doesn't look 1906. 271 00:47:05.790 --> 00:47:13.320 James Keyser: yeah what I suspect is that it looks like something that was taken off there there's no longer. 272 00:47:13.770 --> 00:47:15.780 James Keyser: My camera on that thing. 273 00:47:16.650 --> 00:47:24.990 James Keyser: Anyway, it looks to me like what it is, is some sort of a I take on a on a there we go. 274 00:47:25.440 --> 00:47:27.780 James Keyser: Okay gun shy and drawing because they. 275 00:47:28.230 --> 00:47:37.620 James Keyser: Typically use a lot of ladies with umbrellas and whatnot and i've been to that thing was drawn in 1986 based on the 19 oh. 276 00:47:37.770 --> 00:47:38.130 yeah. 277 00:47:39.510 --> 00:47:45.330 James Keyser: Otherwise, great really, really loved your top thanks a million for coming and talking to us. 278 00:47:45.930 --> 00:47:50.580 Emily Van Alst: yeah Thank you so much, I really appreciate it, I read a lot of your work, so I really appreciate. 279 00:47:50.580 --> 00:47:54.390 Emily Van Alst: You being here and listening to me, so thank you. 280 00:47:59.190 --> 00:48:02.970 Virginia Butler: Shelby do i'll read a 10 question. 281 00:48:04.260 --> 00:48:04.620 Virginia Butler: So. 282 00:48:04.860 --> 00:48:07.680 Shelby Anderson: Ted okay i'm not able to see all of them, it looks like. 283 00:48:08.040 --> 00:48:13.770 Virginia Butler: So one of the things that I neglected to say in the introduction, is that Emily is the daughter of. 284 00:48:15.120 --> 00:48:22.560 Virginia Butler: director of our indigenous indigenous nations studies program and so it's wonderful to have this Father daughter connection. 285 00:48:23.070 --> 00:48:39.870 Virginia Butler: Ted has asked for said thanks for the wonderful presentation, a quick question, you mentioned that the dance has been done for seven years, or has been done for seven years, I wonder if you wanted to mention or talk about the break in the dance and how how and why it's returned if appropriate. 286 00:48:41.640 --> 00:48:42.240 Emily Van Alst: That is an. 287 00:48:42.510 --> 00:48:44.460 Emily Van Alst: Excellent question Dr man oh. 288 00:48:45.450 --> 00:48:57.840 Ted Van Alst: Well, Miss then also I think you're I think you're like she would be okay with you today telling why and what's happened and I just want to make sure you're comfortable with it, and thank you for a wonderful talk you good job. 289 00:48:58.590 --> 00:48:59.970 Emily Van Alst: Thank you um. 290 00:49:00.210 --> 00:49:13.680 Emily Van Alst: So the dance was essentially on about 135 year hiatus the last sort of F know ethnographic description, we have is that Alice fletcher that I mentioned. 291 00:49:14.670 --> 00:49:24.750 Emily Van Alst: And she wrote about an 1883 and that it that date coincides with the date that the Court of Indian offenses made it illegal. 292 00:49:25.200 --> 00:49:36.990 Emily Van Alst: For native people to be able to practice their ceremonies anymore, so it wasn't until 1978 with the American religious American Indian religious freedom act being passed native people were allowed to practice their ceremonies anymore. 293 00:49:38.520 --> 00:49:47.310 Emily Van Alst: And so my uncle who is sort of the head of the sort of elk dreamers has talked with me extensively about you know. 294 00:49:48.000 --> 00:49:57.870 Emily Van Alst: Through dreams and through oral tradition, he was able to revitalize the ceremony, and when he did that he was able to bring in you know the elk maidens come into play. 295 00:49:58.380 --> 00:50:11.340 Emily Van Alst: Women are really essential part of how this all plays out and so with conversations with him we've been talking about how important is that we are revitalizing the ceremony we're in a very particular moment I think in history. 296 00:50:11.700 --> 00:50:23.550 Emily Van Alst: And within politics that people, especially in the ad hoc oh yeah they need healing and love and compassion and that is why uncle Chris does the things that he does as an elk dreamer. 297 00:50:24.510 --> 00:50:34.830 Emily Van Alst: And so, though there was this hiatus as revitalization is really critical and I think we're seeing more indigenous women's sort of voices and knowledge as part of that revitalization. 298 00:50:37.560 --> 00:50:38.490 Ted Van Alst: Thank you so much. 299 00:50:39.360 --> 00:50:40.440 Emily Van Alst: No problem. 300 00:50:43.500 --> 00:50:45.420 James Keyser: really good I ask another question if. 301 00:50:48.360 --> 00:50:58.500 James Keyser: I have my my interest in their site I think it's really cool what you're doing I know the site's threat is, I know all of those sites that you're dealing with but. 302 00:50:59.010 --> 00:51:08.880 James Keyser: Particularly I know the site in the cave hills, the one on the Tongue river outside of ashland and the one down at register rock and all three of those. 303 00:51:09.420 --> 00:51:20.940 James Keyser: appear to me to have the men players in this dance, but none of the lady players, why, why is it that the rock art sites, because the ledger books have the women too. 304 00:51:21.390 --> 00:51:33.270 James Keyser: And it's relatively common, why is it the rock art sites seem to be male oriented I mean I know there's a lot of women's rock art sites in the vicinity, but they don't have pictures of the women. 305 00:51:33.600 --> 00:51:36.420 James Keyser: With the men dancer what what's going on there. 306 00:51:37.290 --> 00:51:46.890 Emily Van Alst: You know i'm not 100% sure and i'm hoping through those interviews that we we try to figure that out, because I think it's really interesting that we have these. 307 00:51:47.370 --> 00:51:56.220 Emily Van Alst: very elaborate l dreamers that are being depicted maybe lakota men are a little more show your the lakota women but i'm not exactly sure. 308 00:51:56.910 --> 00:52:01.980 Emily Van Alst: But I think that that's something that will come i'm hoping that will come through in my research, I think that. 309 00:52:02.850 --> 00:52:09.840 Emily Van Alst: My guess is that native women and lakota women were there when those images for potentially created. 310 00:52:10.140 --> 00:52:27.930 Emily Van Alst: or they came back later on and may have created other images that we just don't know necessarily are associated with those algorithm or ones so again i'm really hoping that in those interviews that that sort of that idea, you might get a little bit more into why women. 311 00:52:29.610 --> 00:52:32.490 Emily Van Alst: If they created if they didn't, why did they not. 312 00:52:33.750 --> 00:52:44.880 Emily Van Alst: I think that is an area that's just not been really explored so i'm really hoping this research will be able to do that, so I don't have a perfect answer for you, maybe in a year when i'm finishing up my dissertation I might have an answer for you. 313 00:52:45.960 --> 00:52:47.130 Emily Van Alst: We will see. 314 00:52:48.570 --> 00:52:56.130 James Keyser: Sure well that's that's good, and I would don't, the only thing I would do is I would direct you to some work that Dave whitley has done. 315 00:52:56.490 --> 00:53:05.940 James Keyser: about the actual substrate conditioning what part of the art has put on it, because we know and lead your drawings they put both men and the women in the dance thing. 316 00:53:06.390 --> 00:53:11.670 James Keyser: Right rock art there's something about that that says, you only put the men's part. 317 00:53:12.000 --> 00:53:18.930 James Keyser: on the rocks and maybe your oral traditions today will will help you sort that out. 318 00:53:20.340 --> 00:53:27.420 Emily Van Alst: yeah that's a really great point I will definitely look at at whitley's work that's really great Thank you so much. 319 00:53:29.130 --> 00:53:29.400 Virginia Butler: yeah. 320 00:53:30.540 --> 00:53:31.380 Ted Van Alst: Thanks Virginia. 321 00:53:31.590 --> 00:53:41.850 Ted Van Alst: Now i'm just thinking and teasing that out and thinking about that and wondering if there's a particular medicine associated with either the color of the substrate or the composition of it that. 322 00:53:42.210 --> 00:53:48.030 Ted Van Alst: That is that is gender inflected right, so that this is a this is sort of a male only area. 323 00:53:48.570 --> 00:53:52.170 Ted Van Alst: You know, for presentation and that may be something I would I would. 324 00:53:52.380 --> 00:54:08.520 Ted Van Alst: Consider and look at that and also your the the work on the on the flora as well right because some of this is completed, some of that might occur naturally, and so there may be a particular medicinal quality in that area that precludes the depiction of women in in that in that area. 325 00:54:09.090 --> 00:54:09.750 Emily Van Alst: yeah. 326 00:54:10.080 --> 00:54:16.920 Emily Van Alst: That is a really good point, because I know that men are traditionally painted in that yellow and we see them to pick do with yellow. 327 00:54:17.340 --> 00:54:27.810 Emily Van Alst: But a lot of times the women have the tendency to be depicted with red and so i'm wondering if we're looking at soil and substrate there might be a sort of gender difference in the soil. 328 00:54:28.680 --> 00:54:39.300 Emily Van Alst: I don't know this is really cool and i'm really excited about it now, so thank you and James for making me think about this, because this is really another pass it to think about Thank you. 329 00:54:39.570 --> 00:54:45.750 Ted Van Alst: right because red and yellow are the two colors associated with it, with the hey haha oh yeah so. 330 00:54:46.440 --> 00:54:46.710 Emily Van Alst: So. 331 00:54:46.770 --> 00:54:58.740 Virginia Butler: Just to remind people to put questions in the chat or use the hand up and the reaction button on the bottom right of your screen or just unmute yourself and start talking. 332 00:55:00.360 --> 00:55:01.500 Virginia Butler: No, no, no, no sorry. 333 00:55:01.530 --> 00:55:02.070 Virginia Butler: No, sorry. 334 00:55:02.490 --> 00:55:09.450 Virginia Butler: So I wanted to ask, and I think that that isn't the focus of your dissertation but it might be like a next step. 335 00:55:10.320 --> 00:55:11.940 Virginia Butler: Is the context of these. 336 00:55:12.210 --> 00:55:27.840 Virginia Butler: within other motifs other rituals that are going on and whether or not certain panels are already claimed for certain rituals, and you wouldn't be able to put those dancers on them to you know so. 337 00:55:28.350 --> 00:55:43.620 Virginia Butler: I love that you're kind of going at it with that focus to for the elk dance but at some level some of the understanding might be what is with it and it just strikes me in the complexity of it all that that may be part of the story. 338 00:55:44.520 --> 00:55:46.020 Emily Van Alst: yeah absolutely that's a. 339 00:55:46.080 --> 00:55:49.590 Emily Van Alst: that's a great question, I know, through talking with. 340 00:55:50.670 --> 00:55:59.130 Emily Van Alst: TIM mccleary who works with the solid her crow one of the sites on my dissertation list, though a fantastic site. 341 00:55:59.880 --> 00:56:11.730 Emily Van Alst: He actually went with a crow elder who talked about how his great grandfather had visited that site and created that rock art and that elk image, specifically because he had this sort of elk medicine. 342 00:56:12.000 --> 00:56:21.990 Emily Van Alst: dream, so I know for sure that this is not a that was not a lakota site which is fine, I think it should be part of the dissertation sample size, because it, it shows. 343 00:56:23.130 --> 00:56:33.510 Emily Van Alst: That ceremonial elk imagery and so i'm not sure in terms of the different rituals i'm hoping that might come up a little bit in my dissertation but in terms of what. 344 00:56:33.900 --> 00:56:41.910 Emily Van Alst: native group claims, what sort of panel, we can see that using again sort of oral tradition historical descriptions. 345 00:56:42.780 --> 00:56:47.550 Emily Van Alst: That sites that I showed with elk dreamer and the figurative bull elk. 346 00:56:48.450 --> 00:56:59.370 Emily Van Alst: James geyser and a few other folks have said it probably might be more cheyenne than it is lakota given the sort of area that it is, but again sort of determining what tribal nation created. 347 00:56:59.760 --> 00:57:12.330 Emily Van Alst: The imagery is really, really hard to do until you sort of get into more the biographical where people are like pretty sure like they they will let you know, in the rock art if they created that image. 348 00:57:13.170 --> 00:57:23.100 Emily Van Alst: So, in terms of ritual i'm sure that there was liminal spaces, where you could many different people could do rock art sure there were very separated spaces. 349 00:57:23.610 --> 00:57:36.450 Emily Van Alst: The site that I showed the track groups, there are no other motifs in that area, it is only track groups and host prints when Linda and I visited which was really interesting, but then these other sites have multiple different. 350 00:57:38.160 --> 00:57:48.210 Emily Van Alst: images that people have come through later to create so again it's really hard to discern but it's definitely I think people are thinking about you know, space and what is allowed to be used and what isn't. 351 00:57:51.900 --> 00:57:56.100 Virginia Butler: Okay questions out there i'm kind of like Jim i'll fill a. 352 00:57:56.160 --> 00:57:56.700 Emily Van Alst: Space but. 353 00:57:56.910 --> 00:58:04.410 Virginia Butler: I was, I think it's a great audience to respond to this because i'm so glad that you unpacked walk art. 354 00:58:04.770 --> 00:58:22.290 Virginia Butler: You know this this this pair of words that we use and my struggle with it because it's a Western and what would you what would you want allies, you know what would you want us to say how do you want us to to name that phenomena. 355 00:58:23.970 --> 00:58:26.220 Emily Van Alst: I think a lot of the work that I. 356 00:58:26.370 --> 00:58:48.090 Emily Van Alst: am trying to do is re contextualize so so many Rocker and images are so specific to the communities that created them, so I think I don't have a perfect answer, but I do think that, if you are working specifically with a community and they say you know this is how we. 357 00:58:49.290 --> 00:59:02.040 Emily Van Alst: Talk about this image, then you should use that I know in i've read a lot of work that's come out of Australia, a lot of market research researchers work with aboriginal Australian communities. 358 00:59:03.000 --> 00:59:09.390 Emily Van Alst: A lot of those sites they're just ancestors so even though in the publication, people are saying rock or rock or rock or. 359 00:59:09.780 --> 00:59:23.880 Emily Van Alst: When they're actually with Community members they're calling them ancestors because that's what the Community has asked for, so I think it really depends on the context, I think, through my talk, you can hear me say you know imagery a lot, because I think it's general enough. 360 00:59:25.350 --> 00:59:37.140 Emily Van Alst: Because they don't exactly know how lakota people want to reference it quite yet we've talked a little bit about it and in sort of preliminary interviews we haven't really figured out exactly. 361 00:59:37.170 --> 00:59:38.850 Emily Van Alst: What we want to call it quite yet. 362 00:59:38.910 --> 00:59:40.920 Emily Van Alst: But there is not a lakota word for rock art. 363 00:59:41.970 --> 00:59:48.360 Emily Van Alst: Which is really interesting, so I think it's really context and the community that you work with and their wishes. 364 00:59:48.780 --> 01:00:00.360 Virginia Butler: that's so important, but I mean rock imagery if you just want to cast it, it has a generality about it that doesn't make claims of it it's. 365 01:00:00.360 --> 01:00:03.600 Virginia Butler: Ray image form and its associated with walk so. 366 01:00:04.230 --> 01:00:07.080 Virginia Butler: yeah so Questions we've got another minute or two. 367 01:00:07.650 --> 01:00:12.480 Virginia Butler: Questions out there i'm scanning the reactions for Shelby yeah. 368 01:00:12.960 --> 01:00:17.430 Shelby Anderson: it's um maybe it's nothing showed up this question but i'm really excited about. 369 01:00:18.660 --> 01:00:23.280 Shelby Anderson: What you're talking about with accessibility and thinking about the places as. 370 01:00:24.690 --> 01:00:32.940 Shelby Anderson: Also, the places might be ancestors in some places, some parts of the world or belongings basically that these are living places that need to be tended to. 371 01:00:33.360 --> 01:00:36.450 Shelby Anderson: And it reminds me a lot of conversations that i've had with. 372 01:00:37.140 --> 01:00:47.520 Shelby Anderson: folks at the grand round that i've been working with here we're talking about objects, the sort of things being objects their belongings and they're they're living history and and versus putting things in a museum. 373 01:00:47.910 --> 01:00:54.780 Shelby Anderson: they're being used interacted with today, and so I was just struck by that and thinking about the track groups. 374 01:00:55.230 --> 01:01:07.740 Shelby Anderson: And how that that activity has been interrupted, it sounds like it's all of these places and i'm wondering i'm just excited to hear about what's going to happen next, so I couldn't quite figure out how to put that into a question but i'm really struck by those connections. 375 01:01:09.180 --> 01:01:10.470 Shelby Anderson: And excited to see where it goes. 376 01:01:11.190 --> 01:01:21.720 Emily Van Alst: Thank you so much yeah I was talking to my community about museums, recently, and we were talking about how a lot of times the objects that we use. 377 01:01:22.290 --> 01:01:31.470 Emily Van Alst: For ceremony or things like that they we burn them after we use them they're not supposed to be a stagnant thing you're either using them. 378 01:01:31.830 --> 01:01:38.100 Emily Van Alst: Or you don't need them anymore, and so you you put them away you burn them they're not part of the process anymore. 379 01:01:38.670 --> 01:01:46.200 Emily Van Alst: So it's really interesting when you see all of these objects in a museum that are sort of stagnant there behind glass they're not being used by the Community anymore. 380 01:01:46.530 --> 01:01:55.890 Emily Van Alst: it's not really the wishes of the Community, because those objects, need to be their living, they have a purpose they're supposed to be used by the Community. 381 01:01:56.700 --> 01:02:04.050 Emily Van Alst: And then the accessibility component, as is you know, being able to physically, be able to visit those sites again is is something that i'm. 382 01:02:04.530 --> 01:02:16.740 Emily Van Alst: Really passionate about and I really hope that this dissertation will be able to you know, having a PhD will allow me a little more access to some of these sites and maybe bringing Community members to them. 383 01:02:17.940 --> 01:02:20.280 Emily Van Alst: But thank you for your very kind word, shall we. 384 01:02:21.540 --> 01:02:22.530 Shelby Anderson: yeah that balance. 385 01:02:27.270 --> 01:02:27.810 James Keyser: Emily. 386 01:02:28.200 --> 01:02:30.480 James Keyser: yeah one last question and then i'll shut. 387 01:02:30.480 --> 01:02:44.700 James Keyser: up, I noticed, you had a picture of some tribal members and what I think was the permit picture graphs how did that to get in there because it's way outside your study area and I had to look out the door, so I didn't catch quite a picture with him there. 388 01:02:45.450 --> 01:03:00.840 Emily Van Alst: I just showed it to show doing sort of these more group interpretations of Rocker I was able to work with the sale of scrutiny about three years ago and we went to the perma picture graph site with sales scrutiny college. 389 01:03:02.070 --> 01:03:06.000 Emily Van Alst: BA members other part of the tribal historic preservation. 390 01:03:07.560 --> 01:03:10.440 Emily Van Alst: what's it called program and we were able to take. 391 01:03:10.440 --> 01:03:21.000 Emily Van Alst: Some Jewish folks to that site and be able to de stretch some images and talk with them about why the site is so important, so that's where that image comes from. 392 01:03:22.800 --> 01:03:28.440 James Keyser: And you and I are probably the only people on the whole group here that would recognize the site, but. 393 01:03:28.650 --> 01:03:29.880 James Keyser: yeah okay that explain. 394 01:03:30.300 --> 01:03:34.110 James Keyser: Sorry, I did i'd stepped out and I just thought wow that's kind of an awesome. 395 01:03:36.360 --> 01:03:37.050 No problem. 396 01:03:38.640 --> 01:03:39.120 Virginia Butler: and 397 01:03:39.360 --> 01:03:40.620 James Keyser: Good good talk. 398 01:03:40.680 --> 01:03:41.430 thanks again. 399 01:03:43.050 --> 01:03:46.110 Virginia Butler: hey we've run out of time, I think. 400 01:03:46.470 --> 01:03:54.750 Virginia Butler: I do see a question here just wanted to show appreciation for your work and insights level discussion so very positive. 401 01:03:56.070 --> 01:03:58.350 Virginia Butler: notes coming into the chat about what a great. 402 01:03:59.850 --> 01:04:07.770 Virginia Butler: So if people want to take their cameras off and show yourselves and let's do a round of applause celebrate this wonderful. 403 01:04:07.800 --> 01:04:25.020 Virginia Butler: presentation on the first Thursdays and look forward to seeing you many of you at our archaeology roadshow talks further along in May on the archaeology of water so take good care stay well Thank you so much Emily this is inspiring. 404 01:04:25.080 --> 01:04:31.260 Emily Van Alst: Thank you, thank you so much, thank you guys, I really appreciate y'all listening to me talk, so thank you. 405 01:04:31.470 --> 01:04:33.510 Emily Van Alst: Emily Thank you. 406 01:04:34.380 --> 01:04:36.420 Virginia Butler: Emily great job. 407 01:04:39.750 --> 01:04:40.710 Shelby Anderson: bye everybody. 408 01:04:41.100 --> 01:04:41.940 Virginia Butler: bye bye.