The Allure of Mythical Peoples
Can a novel about Navajo culture speak to 21st century sustainability issues? Perhaps. But almost every Southwestern archaeologist would raise an eyebrow after reading this set-up:
In Girl With Skirt of Stars, Jennifer Kitchell draws a sharp contrast between modern society and a culture that has occupied the southwest of North America for thousands of years.
The Reslience ecologists, who I believe have much to contribute to the sustainability debate, might also do well to question the resilience of American Indian romanticization. We’ve already been down that road with the Anasazi.
Oh, God. The book looks okay, and potentially pretty good (though not really my kind of thing), but talking about it that way is missing the point so profoundly that it does make me worry a bit. This is the sort of thing that makes me think someone needs to bring a realistic understanding of southwestern archaeology into the mainstream of public discourse, whether it’s me or Craig Childs or the archaeologists themselves.