HURON-WENDAT ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE: BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS TOWARDS COLLABORATION

Resumen

There is a long history of academic interest in the Huron-Wendat people of the seventeenth century in Ontario. Despite this interest, archaeologists and other academics have only recently begun to engage with the Huron-Wendat community regarding excavations of Huron-Wendat sites in Ontario. This engagement is a first step, and it does not represent true collaboration, because in most cases investigations are not partnerships and do not arise from questions posed by members of the Nation. In 2015, to mark the four-hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Champlain in Ontario, members of the Huron-Wendat Nation and archaeologists co-organized a conference focussed on subjects of interest to the Nation, including their relationship with the “St. Lawrence Iroquoians,” Wendat and Wyandot history after 1650, and bioarchaeological analyses. This paper presents a brief history of archaeological research on the Huron-Wendat past and outlines some new, more collaborative avenues of present and future research.