Indigenous Science

Watch the TED talk: "The case to recognise Indigenous knowledge as science" by Albert Wiggan.

Albert Wiggan, an Indigenous Australian, emphasizes that Indigenous science is science in this TED talk delivered in Sydney. Watch the video in a class context if possible. Describe his perspective on Indigenous peoples’ authority as scientists. What does he say about climate, politics, and capitalism?  

Indigenous people spent thousands of years developing knowledge about landforms, climates, plants, and animals in their environments. They represent the first ecologists in the Americas. Ecological knowledge held by Native people can assist in current debates about climate change, resource depletion, and management. Check out this site at Yale University about ecological knowledge. Consider the term ethnosphere, introduced in the article. What does this term make you think about? How can viewing the natural world as an ethnosphere help people understand ecological relationships using multiple epistemologies? Research how the term Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) has been used, and in what contexts. What do museums need to know about and do with this kind of knowledge? 

Insert Vine Deloria conversation Where Did the Buffalo go 

Students are sometimes surprised to learn how much science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) knowledge ancient Indigenous people have developed and used. Ask your students to research examples of Indigenous people developing and using specialized knowledge that we think of as a part of STEM training and practice. For example, check out work done by some of California’s Indigenous tribes along with Kent Lightfoot of the University of California at Berkeley. Research what it takes to build earthen structures like the mounds in the American Midwest. Explore plant domestication in the Mississippi valley developed by ancestors of todays federally recognized tribes. What other science and engineering work by Indigenous people is informing Euro-western scientists? 

Go to the website of Native Skywatchers, a project developed by Annette S. Lee. Dr. Lee is an astrophysicist, artist, and educator who identifies as Lakota and works closely with Ojibwe communities in Minnesota, with whom she collaborates to bring sky knowledge to audiences. Explore their website to get a feel for the projects that Dr. Lee and her collaborators bring to the public. Star maps created for Native Skywatchers include constellations that include stars common to the constellations associated with Greek and Roman mythology that are still referred to today. Regardless of what constellations are called, and which stars they include, constellations add cultural information to what skywatchers across the world see. Watch The Skies through Native Eyes, with Annette Lee and Neil de Grasse Tyson as they explore Indigenous Astronomy conversationally. For more in-depth knowledge about the importance of the Moon, The Douglas College Department of Astronomy has a resource on the web as part of an open text for an astronomy class that will direct you to more material associated with Indigenous Astronomy. In your class, ask students to explore information about the Moon, cyclical time, and scientific knowledge. Discuss the following: How does Indigenous sky knowledge reflect scientific principles as you understand them? What did you learn about astronomy from searching through resources provided in the links included in the Douglas College course? What did you learn from Dr. Annette Lee that you had never thought about before? 

Archaeologists also know that people of the past included sky science in all manner of daily life. This knowledge includes creating astronomical alignments and viewing sight lines in planning and building native communities and structures, acquiring or growing food, and managing travel and exchange. Research Scientist Elizabeth Watts Malouchos, from the Illinois Archaeological Survey, talks about astronomical alignments for sites in southern Indiana in this virtual lecture. After watching the film, hold a discussion about how lunar cycles and other astronomical observations support Indigenous ideas views about cyclical time reckoning. 

Repatriation of human remains depends on the ability to identify and understand skeletal and other biological remains. Repatriation offices need experienced osteologists to assess the number of individuals in collections. They also need to determine age and sex of individuals, especially if tribes who will receive the remains have different ways of treating or burying individuals. Currently, many of the osteologists who work with repatriating collections are not Indigenous themselves, and gained their expertise working on remains that were recovered archaeologically, or through medical programs. Ann Kakaliouras is a biological anthropologist who has studied and written about bioarchaeology and Native Americans. Ask student to read her article and develop their own discussion questions: is there an ethical dilemma in training students to identifyremains with the expectation that this will eventually facilitate repatriation?  

New directions in research will likely involve Indigenous and non-Indigenous scientists working together to answer specific questions posed by tribal scholars (This article by Teeter, Martinez, and Lippert may be useful). For example, the Shawnee Tribe, headquartered in Oklahoma now, ranged across the upland south in a region known for archaeological sites and material culture known by archaeologists as Fort Ancient. Although the Shawnee eventually lost their pottery-making expertise, they retained traditions that involved vessels that would have been ceramic. To learn more, they created a project to regain technology and expertise in ceramic production. They involved members of all three federally recognized Shawnee tribes (adding the Absentee Shawnee and Eastern Shawnee) and archaeologists to study tempering clay with shell, building vessels, and assessing the origin of shells used in Fort Ancient ceramics using scientific analyses. The Shawnee Tribe Cultural Center featured an inaugural exhibit on Shawnee pottery, From Ancient Hands, and a web resource to accompany it, all emanating from collaboration directed by the Shawnee. Ask students to search tribal cultural center and other museum websites for additional information about collaborative work driven by questions framed by Indigenous scholars. Have students report back to the class about these projects, noting the kinds of questions that tribal scholars are asking.