- Yes, there is conflict…
- Going to school has established my credibility to protect our areas.
- In order to be able to achieve something you need your credentials.
- You need to know the other side. Then you become the bridge.
- But it’s hard. You live here your whole life and someone from New York comes over and tells you how to grow your rice…
- I was an ACES student. You go to work, flip the switch, and go into work mode.
- Geology is about the worst. You are dealing with a graying workforce and you stick out.
- Yeah, you can get a degree in electrical engineering, but who is going to hire you? That’s why they call it the golden handcuff. Should you work first or go back to your tribe right away?
- Those that broke out and survived should find a way to give back to the community. Use technology. It gives them the ability to contact others for the support they need.
- There is a downside to being educated on the reservation.
- What are you leaving, what are you taking with you?
- You have to be able to blend in well and be rooted at home.
- I come home to get regenerated.
- Tenure rates for Native faculty are not good because they have spent time in the community doing work.
- Students don’t see many Native professors now. If they don’t get tenure, what do the students think?
- Is there something we can do to give Native Science street cred?
- I am currently teaching Native students science courses. Sometimes we have debates within the school of how much culture we can infuse. Biology and Chemistry worked on the res. Some students got very interested, but we need more role models.
- What opportunities are available? We need to work very hard to create those opportunities.
- On the community side, we need to have jobs for them to come home to.
- We have the problem of students not wanting to go away.
- Reality is that they all have ipods and smart phones.
- I don’t think we lose culture when we do this.
- There are programs that are good at building pathways and bridges.
- GEM scholars at Purdue – they start vey young
- We need a direct pathway to college and back to the reservation
- MS-PhD
- McNair
- SACNAS
- Science and traditional ways are really connected. My father published stories. He published stories so the knowledge would be preserved for the young. I helped him interpret some of those teachings. A lot of Native people give thanks for clean water, clean air, things they can learn. Knowledge has to be retrieved.
- This is science.
- Science is good.
Issues related to sharing traditional knowledge vs knowledge protection
- It comes down to credibility – protecting cultural sites.
- Grandmother said – don’t put pen to paper, you can’t trust people
- Native people have developed a spatial analysis with land and culture. We need to establish a way to protect that.
- We don’t want to write our knowledge into a database because it can be stolen
- Potential solution: What if you identify people who hold the knowledge and share that?
- At USGS, when we are out working with someone from a tribe, if the tribe doesn’t want it known we don’t write it down, because if we write it down we are obligated to publish it.
- I am a biologist working for a tribe. Working with the tribe is fantastic. We have shared values. Through federal agencies there is a lot of money available if tribes are a partner.
- Scientists and tribal people can accomplish a lot if they work together
- The use of traditional Cultural Property is under federal protection. There are specific ways of documenting it to conserve the landscape
- I wouldn’t worry about them acquiring our knowledge so much. If you want to learn something, it takes a mentor and it takes a long time. It has value.
- I don’t think Western Science sees it that way.
- Western Science doesn’t see a worldview, connections, continuity. They are missing so much in not opening their minds.
Thoughts on blending traditional knowledge and mainstream math and science academics and careers
- To get a peer reviewed paper out you have to throw away the interesting things
- We don’t have a way to communicate our knowledge. There is no venue for that
- It is hard to quantify traditional knowledge and put into Western terms
- Lack of respect for traditional knowledge: i.e., depression study – asked elders cause of their depression – they said “No Moose” – moose repopulation program started – decrease in depression rates – but this wasn’t allowed as a dissertation topic
- A body of science literature is not necessary – does it work or not? (they spent $100,000’s to figure out wild rice fluctuates. Any old man can tell you that.)
- Western science doesn’t respect our own ability to observe
- International Global Climate Change only accepts data from peer reviewed journal articles – they don’t accept Native knowledge
- I am working with a local tribe and would like to talk to them about traditional names for landmarks which have not been named on official maps on BLM lands. The tribe seems open to it, but my advisor says the only thing that is important is the science. Yet he is able to write on his grant that he is working with a Native student and with a local tribe.
- I work with Leech Lake tribal archaeology. I found wild rice in pots that was able to be dated. It is 3000 years old.
o I don’t think science and traditional knowledge are enemies. Most scientists I work with are interested in traditional knowledge.
- Science is a good partner. If we have a future, it is there in the past.
- There are published accounts where Native Knowledge is discounted until published in a Western journal. We (academics) will grab a paper off the internet and cite the person as being an expert, but won’t count the Native American who has been there and made the observation.
- There is an assumption that math and science didn’t exist before the White man came. They haven’t changed that opinion, we know better.
- In the past Western Science was “done to” Natives. That is where the resistance comes from.
- Who is driving the science?
- In participatory programs, where is the benefit to the people?
- There are negative and positive aspects. 9.9 out of 10 times nothing ever comes back from the study.
- How do you establish a value you can quantify?
- Education is a problem for scientists. There are differences in approach.
- In Western Science a hot topic is biomimicry — maybe other species have solved this problem. Emulation has been going on in Native Science for ages.
- People who came up with the kayaks did it some way.
- In our academic world how do we come to some way of recognizing these results that don’t fit the scientific method? How do you make that mesh?
- How was your response in naming the landforms?
- Give a presentation to the elders. And schoolchildren.
- We must work together for the benefit of the land.
- Ecologists are very much interested in this.
- The way I was taught was by living it every day.
- Most archaeologists prefer to work with places that have established protocols.
- Wild rice was established by both Euro-Americans and Native Americans and has been used here for a long time. What can we do to promote its use again?
Talking about Native Science and Traditional Knowledge
- Defining Native science – what is it? Is it an overall term? Is there enough overlap between knowledge of different communities?
- How do you collect the knowledge at a landscape level?
- Take wild rice for example. If you ask people in the tribe:
- Some people say it is variable from season to season
- Some people say it is declining over time
- Stories are at a smaller scale
- Should Native Science be approached from a local or global epistemology?
- Get students to focus on local problems to see global ones.