Closet Chickens

Introduction

The history of the “Closet Chickens” has been recounted by Atalay (2006: 269–271) and Echo-Hawk (2010a: 95–96) and will only be briefly described here primarily as a means of creating a shared context for the group. There is no single origin of the group, but there are shared remembrances that seem to correlate with an agreed-upon history.

Definition

The nucleus of the “Closet Chickens” developed out of a conference held at Dartmouth College in May 2001 titled “On the Threshold: Native American-Archaeologist Relations in the Twenty-first Century.” The conference, funded by the Wenner-Gren Anthropological Foundation with support from Dartmouth College and led by co-organizers Deborah Nichols and Joe Watkins, brought together a large number of archaeologists of Native American heritage in an attempt to evaluate the relationships between archaeologists and Native American communities. Holding the conference at Dartmouth seemed especially appropriate as the history of the...