Learning Worldviews

  • Recognize that culture influences how we interact with others by:
  • Comparing direct and indirect communication styles,
  • Analyzing the role of context in communication, and,
  • Relating the impact of power and status to communication.
  • Synthesize the role of consultation in federal relationships with tribes.

Go to... Different Understandings of Respect

Part 1: Indigenous worldviews

  • Identify cultural logics of Native American social structure and its distinctiveness to Euro-American social structure: time, logics, and community.
  • Explore the mechanisms of American Indian conservatism.
  • Apply Native point of view to think of ancestors in new and culturally relevant ways.

Part 2: Western worldviews 

  • Describe the historical and social constructions of the scientific world view and scientists.
  • Analyze the impact the Enlightenment had on Western world view, especially regarding attitudes toward the dead
  • Synthesize the scientific perspective’s attempts to categorize people (race definitions) and the marginalization that results from such views.

Go to... Worldview Comparisons

  • Explain what led to the rise in collecting amongst anatomist and anthropologists.
  • Evaluate some of the ethical implications regarding working with current anatomical collections.

Go to... History of Collecting and Collections

  • Analyze the role of tribal sovereignty in contemporary tribal communities
  • Recognize the specific legal and political relationship between the federal government and federally recognized tribes.
  • Compare and contrast federal vs. non-federal recognition and its impact (benefits and consequences).
  • Analyze the trust responsibility of the federal government to tribes.

Go to... Sovereignty and Stakeholders

  • Define and explain what human subjects and informed consent
  • Compare and contrast these terms from a scientific perspective and US indigenous perspective.
  • Discuss shortcomings in protocols that don’t consider the dead.
  • Compare and contrast definitions of a body in different cultural, social, and scientific contexts
  • Explain how the dead can be harmed
  • Discuss how a definition of a burial ground might vary depending on cultural beliefs
  • Compare and contrast legal definitions and community definitions of burial grounds

Go to... Working with People and Human Remains

  • Define what NAGPRA is, what it does, what it represents
  • Create a timeline of the history that led up to NAGPRA (not just something that happened in 1990)
  • Identify the materials covered under NAGPRA
  • Summarize changes in the NAGPRA regulations

Go to... What is NAGPRA?

  • Create an outline of the legal framework that underlies the United States federal heritage preservation program
  • Explain the roles, responsibilities, and rights of the partners in the process
  • Compare and contrast the general concepts of “benefit” and “harm” in relation to NAGPRA, who benefits from it, who is harmed by it

Go to... Stewardship and Heritage

  • Demonstrate that repatriation is a broader multi-national issue that extends beyond Native Americans and the US
  • Examine repatriation laws/actions in countries outside of the US
  • Contextualize the right of other cultural groups to repatriate

  • Use ethical principles to identify the complexities of ancient DNA research and the values of each stakeholder
  • Apply the ethical perspective of principlism to the DNA research cases
  • Different ethics perspectives– e.g., Society for American Archaeology, American Journal of Physical Anthropology

Go to... Relatedness, DNA, and Tribal Citizenship

  • Assess various definitions of “good”.
  • Describe the origins of the bioethical concept of do no harm.
  • Evaluate the potential for harm in research and what factors mitigate harm.
  • Compare cross-cultural perspectives on what constitutes harm and what is good.
  • Identify the unexpected possibilities of harm in a research project.
  • Demonstrate how knowledge creation can be oriented toward communities first.
  • Enact responsibility as a researcher toward communities.
  • Incorporate and validate indigenous worldviews in research.

Go to... Do No Harm

Go to... Do Some Good

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1449465, 1540447.

NSF Logo