Articulations of the ineffable : narratives, engagement, and historical anthropology with the Muwekma tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract
This dissertation integrates Indigenous and western theoretical perspectives to refine thought about the individual in the world, which helps us to approach rupture and growth in American Indian communities without taking recourse to traditional western colonial assumptions. This project has been developed through close collaboration with the Muwekma Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area, descendants of the historically, federally recognized East Bay Ohlone, Verona Band of Alameda County. Although many of the families of the Muwekma Tribe have continued to live in their homeland for generations, their neglected federal status and their physical integration with various waves of settler communities has seemingly hidden their existence, as well as their ways of being. This project has drawn on transcontinental Indigenous theories, as well as Eurasian theoretical perspectives to develop a decolonial narrative articulating Muwekma ways of being in relationship to ancestral narratives, objects, bodies and places. Despite academic assertions of cultural extinction and dilution starting in the 1920s, the Muwekma families have continued traditions and ways of approaching homeland across three consecutive, violent, colonial regimes in central California. Through the interpretation of a series of interviews, historical ethnographic notes, archaeological praxis, and remains, this research illustrates how the Muwekma families weave western practices of research into their way of being autochthonous in their homeland. This dissertation provides an understanding of the significance of the tribal community's ancestral places, whether they be significant places of ancestor's post-European invasion, or ancestors from the deep past. This dissertation also proposes that to conduct a respectful archaeology, which asserts the contemporaneity of interlocating community's perspectives, is tantamount to a becoming, and requires a level of engagement beyond intellectual assent and objectifying the agents in one's study.

Description

Type of resource text
Form electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource
Extent 1 online resource.
Place California
Place [Stanford, California]
Publisher [Stanford University]
Copyright date 2018; ©2018
Publication date 2018; 2018
Issuance monographic
Language English

Creators/Contributors

Author Becks, Fanya Sandili
Degree supervisor Voss, Barbara L, 1967-
Thesis advisor Voss, Barbara L, 1967-
Thesis advisor Bauer, Andrew M
Thesis advisor Ebron, Paulla A, 1953-
Thesis advisor Hastorf, Christine Ann, 1950-
Thesis advisor Lightfoot, Kent G, 1953-
Degree committee member Bauer, Andrew M
Degree committee member Ebron, Paulla A, 1953-
Degree committee member Hastorf, Christine Ann, 1950-
Degree committee member Lightfoot, Kent G, 1953-
Associated with Stanford University, Department of Anthropology.

Subjects

Genre Theses
Genre Text

Bibliographic information

Statement of responsibility Fanya Sandili Becks.
Note Submitted to the Department of Anthropology.
Thesis Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2018.
Location electronic resource

Access conditions

Copyright
© 2018 by Fanya Sandili Becks
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

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