Abstract:

This essay presents Robert Beverley's 1705 The History and Present State of Virginia as a case study of the role Indigenous ancestral remains serve for both colonial attempts at control and as teachers for current anticolonial scholarly approaches. Analyzing his depiction of Powhatan ancestral remains, this piece first argues that Beverley presents Powhatan ancestors as solely bones, that is, as transferable and general "objects" that serve as a synecdoche for removed Indigenous populations at large. However, despite Beverley's brief and abstracting descriptions, I argue that these moments continue to register the prolonged attention and ongoing care that Powhatan relations undertake for their ancestors, underscoring the presence of what I call testimonies of remaining care. These testimonies, I argue, break apart settler erasures by attesting to the kinship that always continues to surround Powhatan ancestors. Reframing texts like Beverley's as narratives that depend on Indigenous life rather than death, this article demonstrates how ancestral relations testify to the structural grounding of Indigenous communities and care work to narratives that seek to obscure them.

摘要：

本文以罗伯特·贝弗利 (Robert Beverley) 于 1705 年撰写的《弗吉尼亚的历史与现状》作为案例研究，探讨了土著祖先遗骸在殖民控制尝试和当前反殖民学术方法的教师中所发挥的作用。这篇文章分析了他对波瓦坦祖先遗骸的描述，首先认为贝弗利将波瓦坦祖先仅视为骨头，即作为可转移的一般“物体”，作为广大被移走的土著居民的提喻。然而，尽管贝弗利的描述简短而抽象，但我认为这些时刻继续记录了波瓦坦关系对其祖先的长期关注和持续照顾，强调了我所说的持续照顾证词的存在。我认为，这些证词通过证明波瓦坦祖先始终存在的血缘关系，打破了定居者的抹除。本文将贝弗利这样的文本重新构建为依赖于原住民生命而非死亡的叙述，展示了祖先关系如何证明原住民社区的结构基础，以及如何关注试图掩盖原住民社区的叙述。