Post-Repatriation: Collaborative Methodologies to Enhance Multivocality

The research project ‘Post-Repatriation: Collaborative Methodologies to Enhance Multivocality’ (acronym: Collab4Multi) speaks to the Indigenous research methodologies and partnerships in community-based research in academia and beyond.

It strives to explore the recently recovered archaeological material from the Nunalleq site (1400-1675 AD) in southwest Alaska in close collaboration with non-academic research partners, including Indigenous artists and young culture bearers.

The pre-colonial history of the Yup'ik is poorly known from the archaeological point of view: most of what we know about it comes from the Nunalleq site.

It is therefore important that the interpretations of the Nunalleq collection be multivocal and produced combining the strengths of Western archaeological science with Indigenous knowledge systems and worldviews.

Advocating for multivocality and decolonisation of academic research, this project will critically analyse the re-socialisation of cultural heritage in and by the living community.

The research programme of the project rests on a series of arts-based workshops to study this world-class collection of Yup’ik people and (re)create the life-stories of its artefacts together with Indigenous research partners.

The project will also explore the collaborative ways of knowledge co-production and dissemination by developing and piloting co-writing methods informed by Indigenous epistemologies.

The practical outcomes will contribute to the advancement of collaborative methodologies in archaeological and museological research with and for Indigenous communities across the Arctic region.