This session explores how ethical commitments shape and transform Indo-Pacific archaeology. Praxis is understood as the critical application of theory to action, generating new knowledge and socially engaged narratives of the past. We position ethics, gender, community, and ethnicity as central to theoretical work, examining archaeologists' responsibilities regarding power, accountability, and research consequences for people connected to past and present. These dimensions raise fundamental questions: who leads research, whose perspectives are acknowledged, and how power circulates within archaeological practice. We invite contributions demonstrating how engagement generates theoretical insights: collaborative projects with local communities reframing chronology and material culture; analyses of gendered experience challenging models of social power; studies revealing how plural ethnic histories reshape theories of identity and cultural interaction.

Topics include (but not limited to) community-led methodologies, feminist and queer perspectives, decolonial approaches to heritage recognition, ethical cultural resource management, positionality and reflexivity as catalysts for innovation, Indigenous knowledge systems, human remains treatment, power dynamics within institutions, collaborative dating frameworks, ethical curation practices, and community archives. Overall, the session seeks case studies and conceptual papers showing how reflexive, community-engaged praxis produces theoretical innovation and socially responsible scholarship where intellectual rigor and ethical commitment are inseparable.