Talk:Paulette Steeves

Several NPOV issues.

This article makes several claims that are sourced from the subject herself, and fails to acknowledge the fringe nature of the claims in the "Research" section of her article.

Problem #1: "Steeves dissertation "Decolonising Indigenous Histories: Pleistocene Archeology Sites of the Western hemisphere" was the first thesis using Indigenous method and theory in Anthropology within the United States."

The source for the claim is an interview with Steeves in the Vancouver Sun, and it is not clear what is meant here by "Indigenous method and theory". Her dissertation, available below, claims that the history of the claim of recent peopling of the Western hemisphere is shrouded in racism, and that the claim continues to be racist, with those who question it being subject to ridicule and harassment.

She quotes Foucault and makes a few vague statements about how it is necessary to accept indigenous oral histories as evidence, but it is not clear what makes this an "indigenous method and theory" beyond the fact that she has decided to make the claim.

[1]https://rdcu.be/c0xyH

Problem #2 "Steeves' research focuses on the Pleistocene history of the Americas. Her research argues that artifacts and sacred sites show that Indigenous people were in North America more than 130,000 years ago. Her research decolonizes historical narratives about Indigenous people and settlement of the Americas. Steeves' first book, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere was published by the University of Nebraska Press in July 2021."

It is true that Steeves' published material makes this claim, but the way this is currently stated does not acknowledge the overwhelmingly negative reception that her claims have received from scholars, and it also understates her claim.

Steeves maintains a list of sites she believes to be pre-Clovis, and even claims that one is 1.3m years old, which is older than the generally accepted date for the origin of anatomically modern humans. If these were, as she claims, the ancestors of Native Americans this would also imply the acceptance of the widely discredited multi-regional theory of human evolution. Some of the papers she cites to claim early dates for these sites are preliminary reports that were later retracted after confounding factors were discovered that led to a high probability of the sites having become contaminated, while a smaller number of the scholars agree with Steeves about the early date, but these claims have also been widely criticized within the field.

Every peer-review I have found of her book criticizes her claims.

Examples:

"Since the 1960s, the peopling of Australia has been systematically reconstructed with more than one hundred dates with a radiocarbon age of 45,000 (Mulvaney and Kamminga 2020). In contrast, 1,500 archaeologists in Arizona and all the universities in North America that have an academic tradition of over a century focusing on the peopling of the Western Hemisphere have not found any 30,000- or 45,000-year-old sites. Pleistocene scientists are constantly reevaluating sites and seeking new genetic, linguistic, environmental, and archaeological data that can offer a better understanding of the past. While scientific scrutiny should never be lowered, it can be interwoven with other historical narratives, conducting research with and by Indigenous populations, as is encouraged in this book."

Sánchez, G. and Martinez-Tagueña, N. (2022), The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere by Paulette F. C. Steeves Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. 326 pp.. American Anthropologist, 124: 638-639.

" The most controversial aspect of Paulette Steeves's book is her claim that people have been in the Western Hemisphere prior to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, >23,000 cal BP), and perhaps as far back as 100,000 years or more. Many archaeologists, particularly those studying the earliest human inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, will focus on Chapters 5 and 6, in which Steeves summarizes findings from more than two dozen sites that report early occupations. Additional data and references detailing Pleistocene-era sites from both Western and Eastern Hemispheres fill the appendix. Many of these sites will be familiar to archaeologists; they include several that have some level of acceptance within archaeological circles, including Monte Verde, Chile; Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania; and Cactus Hill, Virginia; as well as more controversial sites such as the Cerutti Mastodon and Calico sites in southern California. In Chapter 7, Steeves draws on paleogenetic and linguistic research as well as oral histories to further argue for a deep Indigenous presence in the Western Hemisphere. With this wide array of information sources, and with a narrative written in an engaging and often very personal register, this book will find a broad audience outside of academia and will likely convince many that people were living in the Western Hemisphere prior to the LGM. Archaeologists, particularly those engaged in Pleistocene-era research, are far less likely to be convinced by the author's short site summaries, and the cursory discussion of genetic and linguistic studies will not sway many already familiar with the literature."

Sanger, M. (2022). The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere. PAULETTE F. C. STEEVES. 2021. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. xxvii 294 pp. $65.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-4962-0217-8. American Antiquity, 87(3), 627-628.

Less serious problems:

#1"Following completion of her PhD, Steeves was hired as the interim director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Native American Studies Program." Far from an unbelievable claim, but the source included in the article is a blog from a private high school regarding her visit to the institution. This claim should probably be backed up by something from the university, but I've not yet found one.. Her website repeats the claim, but her LinkedIn strangely does not, despite having numerous other jobs listed.

#2"Her research decolonizes historical narratives about Indigenous people and settlement of the Americas."

This is stated as a factual claim. The source, an interview Steeves gave to a student paper, just says that the *intent* of her research is to "write a decolonized history".

#3 "SUNY Binghamton GSEU Professional Development Award, 2013."

Again, it's not unbelievable that she received this award, but the only source presented in the article is her own website.

Suggestions:

Claims with flimsy sources or sourced to Steeves herself should be removed unless better ones can be found. I'm less sure how to handle the section regarding her research. She is still publishing in peer-reviewed journals, even if she is getting an overwhelmingly negative response, so her work cannot reasonably be called Pseudoscience under the standards of WP:FRINGE/PS, but the current phrasing fails to address the controversial nature of her claims. The section that says "Her research decolonizes historical narratives about Indigenous people and settlement of the Americas." even adds a positive framing to her position, even though it's not clear what exactly this phrase even means. The source appears to just be a profile and interview with Steeves by a student newspaper in which she states what she believes to be the goal of her research, as opposed to stating the direct factual claim that she successfully "decolonizes historical narratives".

Chilltherevolutionist (talk) 11:10, 28 November 2022 (UTC)