In an era of rising authoritarian and anti-democratic movements globally, participatory archaeology needs to move beyond self-congratulatory ideas about its inherent goodness and take seriously archaeologists’ potential role as social and political mediators in a complex democratic discourse. The challenge lies in resisting both external and internal pressure on democratic discourse, while maintaining an inclusive, democratic and multivocal debate about heritage, identity and belonging. Drawing on experiences from Indigenous and particularly Saami archaeology, participatory archaeology in Scandinavia can become more self-reflexive and purposeful. Our subject’s strength is that it provides specified and tangible topics and arenas for democratic discourse, building social cohesion by discussing and tolerating diverse perspectives. The aim should not be consensus about heritage and the past but dissensus and communities of disagreement. Such an approach contributes to a cognitive heritage preparedness that transgresses the preservation of predefined physical heritage values, constituting a ‘small win’ to the ‘wicked problem’ of sustaining open, accountable and transparent discussions in the face of totalitarian narratives and aggressive “alternative facts”.
