{"id":16748,"date":"2018-11-21T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-11-21T17:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=16748"},"modified":"2018-11-25T21:28:46","modified_gmt":"2018-11-26T05:28:46","slug":"camosuns-nicole-kilburn-incorporates-indigenous-knowledge-into-field-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/11\/21\/camosuns-nicole-kilburn-incorporates-indigenous-knowledge-into-field-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun\u2019s Nicole Kilburn incorporates Indigenous knowledge into field school"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world of archeology is changing, and Camosun Anthropology instructor Nicole Kilburn and the Archaeology Field Assistant program she developed are at the forefront of that change. Kilburn developed the program in 2008 to fill a skills gap in the industry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGenerally, if you are working [in the field] you have an undergrad in Anthropology that would include a field school,\u201d says Kilburn, \u201cbut field schools until very recently have been almost 100 percent on excavation. So you have this funny gap between the types of skills that people finish their undergrad with and the types of skills they actually need to do the fieldwork. This program was designed to kind of fill that gap and teach people what they need to know to be field assistants.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun College Anthropology instructor Nicole Kilburn (photo by Adam Marsh\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The program aims to teach the skills that students will need to work in the field by allowing them the opportunity to work on actual archeological sites; Kilburn recently offered the program remotely to students on to the Tk\u2019eml\u00faps reserve in Kamloops. The skills taught in the program include basic practical skills such as how to use a compass and how to take field notes, as well as important cultural resource management skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could create an archeology site out in the lawn out in front of the Young Building and I know my students would do a good job,\u201d says Kilburn. \u201cThey would go out and they would dutifully map the site and take their field notes, but when we partner with Indigenous communities, it\u2019s modelling Indigenous archeology so [it incorporates] the importance of following protocols and working with the elders and knowledge keepers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kilburn says that students end up working really hard and are very concerned about being accurate and doing things right because it\u2019s a real-life scenario and they see how it\u2019s going to benefit that community. Kilburn says that this incorporation of Indigenous knowledge has not always been a part of archeology.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve learned a lot from my Indigenous community involvement, but I\u2019ve had to re-examine some of the things that I learned from the old school of archeologists,\u201d says Kilburn. \u201cThis idea that I went through my undergrad living in Coast Salish territory, talking about Coast Salish history, seeing Coast Salish archeology sites, and I did not meet a single Coast Salish person… I think about that now and that\u2019s just not right, so I don\u2019t want any of my students to be able to say that. I\u2019m going to make sure that I make those opportunities to hear firsthand from knowledge keepers and to share that voice.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kilburn believes that BC is \u201cleading the pack\u201d in terms of change in archeology and says that some of the difference in what BC is doing comes from a shift in the ways in which historical sites are conceptualized.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Indigenous people look at those bones, they don\u2019t see scientific potential, they don\u2019t see data potential, they see their ancestors,\u201d says Kilburn. \u201cSo how am I supposed to look at that? Increasingly, I look at it as their ancestors.\u201d<\/p>\n

These changes in the field have not come without their own set of struggles, however.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt can be challenging, too,\u201d says Kilburn. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of learning still to be done and a lot of that relationship building takes a lot of time, building trust, and [overcoming] the legacy of bad anthropology, of people who arrived with a sense of entitlement and stole ancestral remains and removed artefacts and didn\u2019t do it in a way that was respectful. My education continues, and there have been really positive developments.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world of archeology is changing, and Camosun Anthropology instructor Nicole Kilburn and the Archaeology Field Assistant program she developed are at the forefront of that change. Kilburn developed the program in 2008 to fill a skills gap in the industry.\u00a0 \u201cGenerally, if you are working [in the field] you have an undergrad in Anthropology […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,223],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-november-21-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16750,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16748\/revisions\/16750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}