Who decides identity?
One of the most moving messages at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) comes from the exhibit that focuses on identity. Curators assembled a series of large black and white images of contemporary Indians, each set against a bold backdrop of greens, reds, blues and yellows. You’re greeted by a flattened Rubik’s cube of faces and colors. Continue reading
Visiting the archives
When you visit the Smithsonian museums (and there are a lot) you see only a fraction of the objects from the huge collection. The remaining artifacts are placed in storage, and in the case of the National Museum of the American Indian, an entire warehouse is stocked with the collection amassed by George Gustav Heye (1874-1957). Continue reading
Returning the bones
My foray into Native Science has been honed by my research in how mass media communicate science, health, the environment and risk. What intrigues me is how–when issues impact indigenous communities—science and ideologies unfold. Continue reading
Jews and Indians refused citizenship
I ventured out to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC because the exhibit on propaganda came up during a staff meeting at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) this week. Kevin Gover, NMAI’s director, said that the special exhibit on propaganda spelled out the fundamentals of mass persuasion effectively. Gover added that you could replace “Jew” with “Indian” and the meanings would remain unchanged. Continue reading
Sifting through the blogosphere
I entered the blogosphere for selfish reasons: to crystallize my thoughts while working on Native science at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) this summer. Turns out few writers have taken up the gauntlet, although there are bloggers about science communication and there are bloggers about Indian Country. But I’ve found no one (so far) who has bridged the two, which I’m attempting to undertake with humility.
Levi Strauss ad from 1954
“We are defined by outsiders”
Indian maiden
I recently attended a meeting of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association—a group of scholars engaged in literature, history, politics and sovereignty issues that impact Native peoples—and learned that identity is a hot topic in publishing circles. Continue reading
Don’t step in the dog poop
Helicobacter pylori
Regionality and context are at the heart of indigenous science. But when you examine what scholars assert constitutes sound theory building, the universality of a theory’s applications are at the center of sound science. If a theory shape-shifts as a result of context, we deem it a poor theory. Continue reading
A question of context?
Scholars have been ruminating over Native science, wondering how to position it with—or against—Western science. But as one colleague at the National Museum of the American Indian recently told me, “Once you label something as Indian science it becomes a little less.” So why can’t Native science just be called….science? Continue reading
Repositioning Science
To frame the query as “What is Native Science?” is to separate one aspect of native knowledge from another. The more time I spend talking with experts who study Native America in Washington DC, the more clear it becomes that science isn’t separate from art, culture, language, history, astronomy and story-telling.
Kennewick Man reconstruction by National Geographic
The separation is one imposed on Indian communities from the outside. And it seems that they have been resisting this segmentation of knowledges. For example, when Pacific Northwest tribes asked for the return of the Kennewick Man skeleton, the tribes were disparaged as “anti-science.” When Wisconsin Indians resisted building a copper mine on their homeland, they were judged as “backward,” and when California Indians protested the building of a Banana Republic store on sacred burial sites in Emeryville, an archaeologist defended the action, saying, “time marches on.” Continue reading
The thieves get the machine but not the operating instructions
Stephen Loring is talking about fish. He’s telling me about an adventure in Labrador, where a crew of indigenous women, huddled together, cook fish heads. One cook pulls out a head and begins to show Loring each bone she yanks from the skull. And then she begins naming them. One by one, bone by bone. There are a lot. Continue reading
Cynthia (Ištá Tȟó Tȟó) Coleman Emery's Blog 
