Book: Rediscovering Turtle Island by Taylor Keen, Cherokee Nation

Book: Rediscovering Turtle Island by Taylor Keen, Cherokee NationKeens major project in Rediscovering Turtle Island is to explore the urban world of Cahokia and the thousands of earthworks that appeared long ago across ancient North America. He hopes to unearth cultural meanings that would enrich modern Indigenism. And we can also wonder whether this collection of ideological convergences will appeal to Keens peers among contemporary Indigenist culture makers. To be sure, the project of spinning vanished empires

Keen’s major project in “Rediscovering Turtle Island” is to explore the urban world of Cahokia and the thousands of earthworks that appeared long ago across ancient North America. He hopes to unearth cultural meanings that would enrich modern Indigenism. And we can also wonder whether this collection of ideological convergences will appeal to Keen’s peers among contemporary Indigenist culture-makers. To be sure, the project of spinning vanished empires from shadowy evidence would seem a challenge to align with Indigenist decolonizing bonding narratives. “Rediscovering Turtle Island” might well succeed in edging Indigenous America toward that kind of communion in the course of generating cultural momentum, as Keen hopes, for creating “a true Indigenous esoteric tradition.” And we have already seen the authority of Vine Deloria’s legacy in shaping the ideological trajectory of Indigenous archaeology – Keen’s book will surely further advance that intellectual heritage. It is possible that among adherents to racial Indianhood, the growing interface between archaeology and Indian Country will become a project of borrowing from archaeology to promote Indigenous worldbuilding, bending the moral arc of that universe toward a segregated field of study. And this would, in turn, likely colorize the fragile trajectory of the developing analytical study of oral tradition, maybe even steering that world toward the misty shores of a neverland Atlantis.                             Roger Echohawk (Pawnee)