Collective understandings of who we are and how we got here help to anchor us as human beings to the planet. What is remarkable is the diversity of thinking on these matters and how difficult it is to reconcile different points of view. The Canadian geographer Cole Harris argues that the single most important insight to guide us in our encounters with the “lifeworlds” of the distant past is recognizing the existence of localized fields of knowledge that enabled those who possessed them to live in particular places. For the most part, these fields of knowledge have been lost or greatly altered as Europeans introduced their institutions and values on a global scale, but surviving evidence allows us to imagine how these long-ago societies operated and why their localized fields of knowledge remain relevant today.

THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF NORTHERN NORTH AMERICA

Aboriginal peoples maintain that their ancestors have inhabited the Americas since time immemorial, and they are correct in this assumption. While we can pinpoint, sometimes to the very day, the arrival of many of the first Europeans, the appearance of the first humans in the Americas, as everywhere, is shrouded in the mists of time.