Archaeological Evidence and Indigenous Law in Settler Courts: Ruegg & Ellsworth v. City of Berkeley and the San Francisco Bay Shellmound Project
Speaker: Dr. Lucy Gill (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UBC Anthropology)
When & Where:
Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024 | 12:30pm-2:00pm
Anthropology & Sociology Building (ANSO) Room 134, 6303 NW Marine Drive
Light refreshments to follow in Lino Lounge. Please RSVP in advance.
Abstract: Archaeological evidence plays a prominent role in legal cases adjudicating Indigenous rights and title in Canada and the United States, where it is often employed by the state to challenge the evidentiary significance of Indigenous oral records. However, lawyers and the judiciary are usually not practiced in interpretation of archaeological evidence or evaluation of its biases, and archaeologists are unfamiliar with the practical and theoretical structure of the legal system, producing research that may not meet evidentiary standards of the Court. In this talk, I discuss the deployment and interpretation of archaeological evidence in Ruegg & Ellsworth v. City of Berkeley, a legal case involving a sacred site known as the West Berkeley Shellmound, and situate it within broader trends in United States and Canadian case law. I describe the epistemic significance of introducing concepts from Indigenous Knowledge and Law into settler-colonial heritage frameworks, including the United States National Historic Preservation Act, as well as the role that collaborative archaeology can play in translating between these Indigenous and settler legal systems.
