Movement or Diaspora? Understanding a Multigenerational Puebloan and Ndee Community on the Central Great Plains

Abstract

Many Indigenous groups in North America have long-held practices of using migration and movement in response to environmental and social changes. Diasporic communities, composed of migrants maintaining significant connections to their former homelands, were likely once common in refuge areas of North America, but not always recognized by archaeologists. Many Puebloan peoples in the Northern Rio Grande region of the US Southwest used movement as a way to escape Spanish colonial control after AD 1600, yet retained connections to their homelands. This Puebloan diaspora had far-reaching consequences for Native peoples across the Southwest and neighboring regions like the Great Plains. Here, we briefly summarize how diasporas are defined globally and the ways in which these definitions could shift to help us model diasporas in North America. Using the Pueblo diaspora and a multi-generational Pueblo-Ndee (Apache) community in the Central Great Plains as example, we explore the intricacies of identifying diasporas for North America within the contexts of Indigenous resistance and adaptation.