Tag Archives: stereotypes

The Grass Dancer

Posted on December 1, 2014 by Cynthia Coleman Emery

I love the book, The Grass Dancer. Each story in the book kidnaps you on a journey through Indian Country, crossing over metaphysical and spiritual boundaries. The book won the coveted PEN-Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction. The author, Susan … Continue reading →

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Learning from Ferguson, Part I

Posted on November 30, 2014 by Cynthia Coleman Emery

One important lesson we can learn from the anger and violence waged lately in Ferguson, Missouri, is how we look at core problems. My pledge this November has been to write 30 blogs about issues through the lens of American … Continue reading →

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Magazine takes Redskins to task

Posted on November 28, 2014 by Cynthia Coleman Emery

The New Yorker magazine’s latest issue hit subscribers and newsstands this week with a cover that takes the Redskins football team to task. Titled, First Thanksgiving, the cover—a painting by Bruce McCall—shows a trio of Native Americans arriving at a … Continue reading →

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Thanksgiving: what’s the point?

Posted on November 27, 2014 by Cynthia Coleman Emery

Sometimes folks who know my Osage and Sioux ancestry ask if we celebrate Thanksgiving. Sure, I say. My family, my mother’s family, her mother’s family—all through the generations—have shared supper with friends and relatives, thanking the creator for the harvest … Continue reading →

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Let’s start from the beginning: Indigenous voices in climate change

Posted on November 23, 2014 by Cynthia Coleman Emery

Perhaps we need to take a step back and re-think what we mean by climate change. And global warming. Let’s start with the row about science. After many fits and starts, science is finally being heeded in public discourse. In … Continue reading →

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Black Hawk’s Skull

Posted on November 8, 2014 by Cynthia Coleman Emery

Science is often deployed to meet political ends but we don’t always recognize when. Phrenology emerged as a pseudo-scientific way to define race through empirical means. Scientists used painstaking measurements to show how the landscape of the skull—its ridges and … Continue reading →

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Science and Trust: What’s Rational?

Posted on November 5, 2014 by Cynthia Coleman Emery

The disenfranchised among us have a history of distrusting science. Some scientists just don’t get it: how can you overlook evolution? Climate change? Diabetes? Native Americans—and African-Americans and Hispanics—can point to specific examples when the mantle of science caused harm.

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Dammit, Jim, I’m a Doctor, Not a Scientist

Posted on November 4, 2014 by Cynthia Coleman Emery

The refrain from the original Star Trek physician, Bones, has arisen like Lazarus from the mortuary of old TV shows. But this time it’s politicians. When asked their opinions of, say, climate change, politicians of late have demurred. “I’m not … Continue reading →

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Reconciling Faith

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Cynthia Coleman Emery

Is it true? One of my students asked me if it’s true that American Indians don’t believe in the land bridge hypothesis. The student is enrolled in a critical race theory class, taught by an American Indian scholar, who told … Continue reading →

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You name it, you own it

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Cynthia Coleman Emery

When a 9200-year-old skeleton was uncovered along the Columbia River in 1996 scientists and journalists dubbed the ancestor Kennewick Man. Local tribes bristled at the naming, preferring to call the skeleton The Ancient One, or Oyt.pa.ma.na.tit.tite, according to scholar David … Continue reading →

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