00:00.40 archpodnet Welcome to heritage voices episode 74 I'm Jessica u quinto and I'm your host and today we are talking about walking the ancestors home before we begin I'd like to honor and acknowledge that the lands I'm recording on today are part of the nooche or uot people's treaty lands. The din nata and the ancestral puebloan Homeland today we have Dr Michael Blake on the show. Dr. Blakey is the national endowment for the humanities professor of anthropology africana studies american studies and founding director of the institute for historical biology at the college of William and Mary. He is on the scholarly advisory committee for the us national museum of african-american history and culture of the Smithsonian Institution he was scientific director of New York city's colonial african burial ground archeological site which is now a national monument. He is co-chair with Deborah Thomas of you Penn. Of the American Anthropological Association's commission for the ethical treatment of human remains welcome to the show. Dr. Blakey 01:06.90 Michael L_ Blakey Hi Jessica Pledge to be here. 01:11.28 archpodnet Well I am so um, sorry I also should have mentioned that it it's um, it records our audio separately. So if stuff like that happens. It's fine. Um, and Chris obviously we're editing that out all right. All right? Yeah so I'm so excited to have you here today I became highly recommended by some very loved past guests of ours and I just I wanted to get us started by talking about. You know what? What initially got you interested in this type of work. And and the field of anthropology. 01:55.46 Michael L_ Blakey Well, you're you're asking a question about an entire life actually um, but I I should say I was a science geek as a child in the 50 s when science. Was all the rage. Both of my parents were scientists in their own ways and that was certainly an influence. My father was a dentist who did dental research for in indoosseous implants. Ah, which is the you know all the the plastic teeth that now can people can screw into their gums which then had not been invented. He was working towards that and my mother who is really an artist um had a degree in biology. So. There was interest in science around our house in Washington d c um, but my archaeological interest stems from a more personal experience. 03:09.41 Michael L_ Blakey With materially with my greatuncle. My mother's uncle Kermit Mostlyley in Delaware just 2 hours away from where we where I was raised in Dc and my mother's people were natao or. Natico Moore a mixed native american african and european ethnic group of their own I wrote something about their history in the american journal of physical anthropology and 1988 um, but as a child interested in science I imagined I was interested in my own heritage that side of it. My father was wholly african-american you know? ah. 04:06.61 Michael L_ Blakey That I I was doing on weekends. We often visited Delaware ah I would walk the cornfields or the soy bean fields with my uncle. Who was a real collector. He was one of the biggest collectors in Delaware and find pot shirts and projectile points and all kinds of interesting artifacts. Um. 04:43.34 Michael L_ Blakey And it's an opportunity to be contemplative about the past my even my grandparents would occasionally go out in the field and do this kind of collecting I lived for the science fairs as. This kind of geek so all year in junior high school I'd prepare the science fair project. 1 of my 2 major interests was archaeology and so I would parade the not only the artifacts that I had found. Sometimes some of Uncle Kermits would get on into my project but you know would go home and study them and read read all the the archeology that was available to me about that region. And I was also interested in marine paleontology halfway about halfway between Washington and Delaware are calbert cliffs on the Chesapeake Bay where this excellent biascene. Was then good fossil hunting I think much of its park service now and you can't touch it. Um, but I with a friend I was competitive with at the time at the science fairs Bob Sicora you know they also had projects. 06:12.75 Michael L_ Blakey Those fossil bits we would go out and collect together. He helped me get to these fossil bits and when in the my last year in junior high or middle school I won the grand prize I think it was for earth sciences in archeology. Um, well I should mention that I was doing well enough that I had a teacher science teacher in junior high school who recommended me to Dorothy Martineck who was a member of the archeological society of Maryland so at 13. 06:48.55 archpodnet A. 06:52.00 Michael L_ Blakey She used to take me to the monthly meetings and bethe's the and then it was like getting to this year you know after graduating from junior high school see I told you this a life long thing. Um, my father. 06:53.74 archpodnet Wow. 07:01.89 archpodnet Yeah, you're not kidding. 07:10.60 Michael L_ Blakey Contacted well the real story is a little more interesting because I also love music and I I needed to buy a guitar alifier this was like 1968 imagine that and so I needed a job. For the summer my father arranged with Don Ordner at the Smithsonian who was one of the leading paleopathologists for me to conduct a study in paleopathology. Looked at the musculature muscle attachments and dental pathology and total of 50 skulls and for the summer and wrote a report. Um. 08:04.46 Michael L_ Blakey It's consistent with what paywood pathologist did that so I was 15 and I also done worked with them work with where was a student of J Lawrence Angel and Lucille St Hoim they haven't a summer seminar there in paleopathology and so I was the youngest and only black member of those the student in that while I did my my research I ah. 08:40.39 Michael L_ Blakey When I finished I I got the guitar app and realized physical anthropology is very tedious and I felt more creative than that. So I I left it and got into music thought I'd become a musician. And high school and then at the same time you know that's so common play the guitar and um, but also this was 1968 to 1971. Those are my years of high school in Washington and. 09:15.78 Michael L_ Blakey Long story short I learned about ah politics I learned about I was compelled by the liberation politics of the time. The black consciousness movement. Black power I studied I learned was in study groups with the black panther party where I read du bois mao fanon and others also in cultural national study groups or or organizations. Was all over the place I didn't like that to be tied down to any 1 tendency except the tendency towards finding the truth maybe and of finding it. Most progressive positions I could take um and so I was president of the black student union at my high school coolid high school northwest Dc and we had black studies there for. At least a year I took two semesters of kiwahili and high school so Howard University student who taught it as soon as my class three years after my class left. Apparently they closed all of that and now we're still fighting. 10:50.82 Michael L_ Blakey Just today right? and the Florida standard Desantis and these sort of mad resentful expressions of white fragility come to. 10:52.40 archpodnet Right? right? yeah. 11:07.82 archpodnet Now. 11:10.44 Michael L_ Blakey Impede our ability to know ourselves. Um I don't think it will win but it's mess. So here. We are what is that I can't even count it. Fifty years later trying to get a reasonable history into the high school classroom. Well we had it for a little while when I and I benefited from that which we demanded in the late sixty s ultimately. Um I wasn't as good a musician as I had hoped I did go to music school at Howard for a while things change I would just say maybe I have to mention that my family expatriated to Jamaica in 1971? um. 12:07.37 Michael L_ Blakey The civil rights movement had not had achieved a lot but not enough they decided they would go work in a country that under the man the regime a socialist black nation and but I was also tied to these other interests that was 18 I couldn't stay. Permanently as my brothers did so I came back and went to music school at Howard and where my father had previously taught and then decided now this is not really for me and return to fortunately I had another love. To which to return and that was anthropology took courses there in the early to mid 70 s early to eight seventy s actually on on and off I'm sorry, really 75 to 78 and the when. For the first and only time there was a sizable black faculty. Um, that was ultimately pushed out by sociology and and what I call the I'd say there's the best of Howard and the worst of Howard. 13:13.10 archpodnet Here. 13:23.82 Michael L_ Blakey And the worst of Howard is it's the mediocracy which pulled out that brilliant possibility remove that brilliant possibility of ah the first and only African-american Anthropology program um 13:43.40 Michael L_ Blakey That could you know as the the title of the journal of the association of black anthropologists reads transforming anthropology right? that could transform anthropology but Anthropology is much weighed down I think in black institutions by its. Service to the enemy throughout much of its history and so it's a complicated thing but what wasn't was that I had happened to be there with these really interesting often African-american anthropologists. 14:03.15 archpodnet A. 14:22.14 Michael L_ Blakey Seeking to transform it at a particularly transformative time you know in this moment after the winds of the civil rights movement and before before the 80 s when the backlash came to impede. Those developments I finished at Umass Hamhers Graduate program I spent time at Oxford and University Of London while at at you mass. I ah and ended up teaching at Howard and other places. But what I have done throughout I believe is to create syntheses of. Ah, anthropological specializations that constitute that equip me for what it is that I am interested in doing. 15:35.33 Michael L_ Blakey And that's so maybe it's special about anthropology. Ah I don't know other fields as well. But it's broad enough that you know I've studied archaeology even first and I didn't mention it as well. That while in the. 15:55.12 Michael L_ Blakey My junior year at Howard I I took mesoamerican archeology from Laura Henley at Howard a black student of the who graduated from the Michigan in the heyday of the new archeology. I studied at Dumbard oaks with an interest in doing Maya Archaeology I had an opportunity working with on the with the help of of the David Friedelll at Sarah Maya and bayileize's to do a survey for a month of a site on the periphery that I've mapped by myself with lots of quasi indiana jones of excitement with with snakes and bugs and jaguars. Um, and came back to ah to continue to develop my interest I I realized because I was using Norman Hammond's ah, spatial models at that time when I was a junior in my. Report that I could say this I could take interpretations that were contradictory and use ah on on on a similarly substantial basis which interested me that the truth. 17:28.80 Michael L_ Blakey That archeology as I initially saw it was not sufficiently objective I also studied by the way. Great Zimbabwe and the political influences on its archeology at any rate in my naivete. And decided when I shifted to when I went to graduate school I would shift to physical anthropology biological anthropology for a more objective basis. Ah you know, real science and what I made the choice. And if I was going to get into this thing that I would study its history and so went back to the smithsonians as a graduate student one summer and studied the herrlika the herrlika papers at the national anthropological archives. Krishka was the eugenicist founder of American Physical Anthropology I I know his work now better than any other american I'm sure Frank Spencer was the only other person who knew as much he wrote a long dissertation on hergliishka and missed some important beats. But. You know capture some things I didn't know he and I were equivalent. He's no longer alive. So here I am the the expert on this man and the field he started in what I learned was well. You know I think part of the title of my article called skull doctors is. 18:59.98 Michael L_ Blakey Intrinsic subjectivity um craniiometry all of that nonsense um suited white supremacy. Um, and um, the people who read it. And used it and conducted it were white and I've increasingly looked at how people in Frederick Douglass initially debates with it in one fifty four with Samuel Morton before herlishka and devastates it. These these biodeterministic arguments. So those debates between Africana scholars and the so-called mainstream in fis anthropology you know were increasingly interesting to me and then terms of synthesis. When ah umass with the work of George R Meigos Alan Swedland Arb Brook Thomas were exploring biocultural anthropology which I also learned. Um, ah. On my own in that environment. So I was influenced by them and yet by other things and I found out that these other influences were old Africana old african diasporic intellectuals insights that. 20:34.23 Michael L_ Blakey The causal arrow which the eugenicists and other mainstream anthropologists the causal arrow they pointed from biology whether it's race or now Dna to behavior is. Misguided and that what we needed to do was turn the causal arrow on its head and have it point from society from political economy. The structures of power and economic distribution. To human biology that are this these things that these aspects of our history that one that we create ourselves as human beings that determine differences in health and physiological effects that important differences in human biology are created by human beings. And so umass was working towards biocultural anthropology those with whom I had studied um continue to develop it There are a couple of nice volumes on this now and I proceeded to. You know, develop my version of it. Um ran into Leslie Rankin Hill another umass graduate in Washington and Leslie invited me in again to work with Larry Angel 22:10.51 Michael L_ Blakey On the first African Baptist Church the first the largest at that time african-american skeletal population I had done a lot of work with skeletal populations and living populations before and. And so I I found myself increasingly focused on and and shios who was a biocultural is a biocultural anthropologist and so we we worked towards those goals about theoretical goals as well as of ah, biocultural studies as well as. To elevate our knowledge of african-american history where it was not adequately written about and so as a student of mine once said, a poet student once said, so we read. Body as text and so I continued to work with those including the african burial ground who were interested in reading the body as text, but with the particular edition of which in our work is to ask permission. 23:09.10 archpodnet A. 23:28.37 Michael L_ Blakey And to do it in an ethical way. Just 1 thing that I I didn't say I meant to say in that in that part of the anthropological trip. Um, at umass I've mentioned our melligos in Sweedland Thomas but as a serious someone serious about biocultural studies. Um. Felt it would be important to have as co-chair of my committee a cultural anthropologist and here the african leftist feminist african-american cultural anthropologist ah with expertise on the african diaspora janetta be coal. 24:07.89 Michael L_ Blakey Became my co-chair of my doctoral committee and she continues to have important influences on my thinking. 24:29.15 Michael L_ Blakey So I Guess that brings us up to the African burial ground. Um and I'll just say that since then developing in that project. What is being called The. What we're calling the clientage model that has us as anthropologists bio archeologists work for descendant communities whose permission we have Asked. Um, ah for to. Ah. 25:04.65 Michael L_ Blakey Study Their Ancestrals remains um that that option of working on remains if the ethical conditions of informed consent have been met. 25:22.90 Michael L_ Blakey And we've had conversations about what research might reveal and what their concerns are as descended communities that's by the way of term that I coined in the 90 s in that project. Um, and. 25:36.12 archpodnet Did you really sorry I didn't know that that's amazing. 25:41.74 Michael L_ Blakey Yes, so it's in our first appears and well I talk about that moment too. But um and I'll just say I was looking for a handle as it were for. 26:01.38 Michael L_ Blakey The protesting african americans and african descent leadership in New York who were concerned about the mistreatment of the skeletal remains at the african burrow ground who were. I think equally concerned about the anthropologists who were there were ill-prepared to study had not trained for studying african-american can remains much less african remains so we stepped into my Howard team stepped in to take it over. With people who were adequately trained and had a history. Ah, as I mentioned the first African Baptist Church the history of the study of african americans um, but also entered. With new ethical sensibilities I like to say that we entered with empathy for those protesting people which neither the Gsa which was our business client nor my colleagues there had or demonstrated it was. Didn't say it much then the people in the community did it was about racism and so um, but I was sitting in the lab working on our proposal. We had a research design of about 160 pages to replace my colleague's 13 page research design that was mostly about the. 27:36.45 Michael L_ Blakey Trash that had been put on the on the burial ground not the remains of the people were buried there so we created a once I got control of it with John Milner associates contract firm. We under my direction wrote a. Longer research design and one that the descended community through numerous hearings in downtown New York and Harlem to which they contributed questions and so we worked with their questions so I was sitting there. On a last version of this and I I was looking for a handle for them. What is their relationship and certainly interested in an empowered relationship to ah this site. 28:32.67 Michael L_ Blakey They certainly asserted one as they protested and had prayer vigils around the site hundreds of people you really needed to see that 1991 92 and so I looked to the national historic preservation act. Um, where because there was no dagbra that was as close to the legitimating document for the empowerment of anyone on that site as there was and. I don't remember frankly whether it was the term descendant community or something that sounded like that I looked in some places I saw a descendant group I had used descendant community before and in in publication in 89 as I had worked with the world archeological congress and and native american rights fund to support what would later become nagra. Ah which was unusual for fis anthropologists very unusual but at any rate I know I I found some language in. Section one. Oh 6 of the historic preservation act and that became descendant community in my mind. Maybe it was literally in the document that I used as a way of tying. 30:06.00 Michael L_ Blakey The community to those legal rights. They had a right to comment as I remember or Gsa knew they had a right to comment only the community community in its own efforts its own protest would assert that that comment you know. Had teeth had substance had consequence and but having the the name helped and immediately community groups started talking about them so referring to themselves as descended community or the descendants and all of that. So um, and then it. 30:28.61 archpodnet Um. 30:45.45 Michael L_ Blakey It has and we had very clear ah ideas about you know that they were our client I wrote something in an article with Cheryl the roach in historical archeology at 9097 where we began to um. 31:05.80 Michael L_ Blakey Ah, that talks about what ah had been developed on the project under my ah ah guide leadership And. Ah, it included this reference to that community as our ethical client. So That's the other part that I um crafted as a way of understanding and reinforcing the empowerment of the descendant community that they are also our ethical client. They are our client and that is to say we work for them because that um because given that they care about these remains which is one of the qualities of Descendant communities. 1 of their the things that defines them. The fact that they care about these remains means that we can hurt them by how how we treat those remains and therefore we have an ethical obligation essentially to informed consent which means they can say no to any research and If. We want to do the research so we're promoting the idea that um of a kind of plural democratization of knowledge that we take community questions we use those that can be. 32:37.21 Michael L_ Blakey Answered substantially with empirical evidence because we are researchers. They don't want that then they want religious practitioners to as most people do marry they're dead. We answer those questions and others. They accept. Um. As we did on the african burial ground um in the end are 2500 page reports that are available online at the national park service monument site I believe are the. Constitutes the most sophisticated bioareological reports that have yet been written and hold them up against any others and they involve questions like the origins of african americans seen through the lens of. Those 419 individuals were analyzed at the african burial ground the physical quality of life created during their enslavement the transformation from different african societies. To an african-american society and then there's the question that is I think particularly important for african americans although all of them are important um resistance what were the modes of resistance so these 4 questions were the. 34:04.82 Michael L_ Blakey Center of our 2500 pages and I think better questions than I have seen elsewhere answered between the covers of the american journal of now biological anthropology and so I have continued. With with 2018 with the national trust for historic preservation for example to encourage the development of an empowered. Public engagement other public engagement with the senate communities who are empowered ah to shape the questions not the answers but to shape the questions of research is quite a lot and to improve the kind of research we do and. Um, to foster ethical research and as with recent work at James Madison's mon pilier to put descendants in the position of telling their own story. All that just evolved you know. 35:20.90 Michael L_ Blakey It's just about I think trying to be thoughtful about the encounters of my life and and to use once I wrote something something. Um, about how 1 chose should choose a research topic and I said something to the effect of it should be something you're interested in and that. 35:56.67 Michael L_ Blakey You're good at and thirdly that appears to be of some value to people beyond you know other than yourself. So Those are often principles that I I think about and that allow me to Um. Do the kind of work I do. 36:22.93 archpodnet Sorry I'm trying to write so many things down while you're talking. Um, okay and Chris at it thought obviously yeah, absolutely here. Um I'm goingnna yeah I'm going to do ah like a break outro. 36:28.48 Michael L_ Blakey Ah, that's okay may I step away for ah may I step away for 3 minutes okay 36:38.53 archpodnet Um, we'll probably I'll record another one um later that will be used earlier. Um, but yeah, so all right? Well on on that note we will be right back after a minute here wait one second sorry let me hit stop first. 36:38.69 Michael L_ Blakey Okay. 36:48.13 Michael L_ Blakey I'll be right back next? um.