Hearing Indigenous Voices
The 27th of May to the 3rd of June is National Reconciliation Week in Australia. Reconciliation, for anthropology, includes reckoning with the discipline’s colonial past, and confronting the…
Tag: Indigenous
What Clam Thermometers Tell Us About Past Climates
It’s mid-August, 2017, but the temperature in Unalaska, one of the Aleutian Islands that trails off of the western Alaskan coast, is a brisk 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Christine…
Archaeology’s Search for History Hidden in Ice
When Ötzi the Iceman, the most complete Neolithic mummy ever found, melted out of the Tyrolean Alps in 1991, the field of “ice patch archaeology” was born. In…
Western Science Is Finally Catching Up to Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Indigenous groups in northern Australia have observed—and even indicated in ceremony and story—kites and falcons, or “firehawks,” deliberately transporting lit sticks in order to spread fire. …
How Natural Birth Became Inaccessible to the Poor
[no-caption] Michelle Jones/SAPIENS Pilar* gave birth in a private, “humanized” hospital in Mexico City that takes a holistic approach to health and combines world-class medicine with the…
Whose land is it anyway? Open access book on decolonialism in Canada
This is a fantastic, and timely, open-access book from some of Canada’s leading thinkers on Indigenous relations to land, law, education, and much else. There’s no simple…
Transcontinental Travel—2,000 Years Ago
Two thousand years ago, a sophisticated people lived in the rolling hills of the greater Mississippi River drainage in North America. Most of their sites are concentrated in…
How Ursula Le Guin’s Writing Was Shaped by Anthropology
In creating other worlds, Ursula Le Guin showed the power inherent in constructions of culture and new realities. Marian Wood Kolisch/Flickr This article was originally published at The…
How Canadian bureaucrats make state territory in the name of ‘restoring’ Indigenous rights
I’m quite happy that some recent work of mine is now out in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers.[very happy to send copies to anybody with…
How Archaeologists Uncover History With Trees
In the fall of 1282, a young carpenter went to his favorite stand of juniper trees in southwestern Colorado. That stand contained a large number of tall trees…
Unraveling an Ancient Code Written In Strings
This khipu, which was made before the Spanish conquest of the Incas, was probably used for accounting, as indicated by the knots in the cords. Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images…
The Untold Story of Japan’s First People
The Ainu, the Indigenous people of Japan, have fought Japanese domination for centuries. As this century unfolds, their efforts are finally paying off. Chris Willson/Alamy Stock Photo Thi…
Were Peace Medals the Price of Loyalty?
Gift-giving is common to all human societies; it’s one of the behaviors that makes us human. We give gifts to celebrate holidays, birthdays, and weddings, not to mention…
How Vulnerable Are We to Collapse?
Research findings on three early Native American cultures from the southwestern United States show how each responded to environmental challenges in different ways that dramatically altered their…
Can Medical Anthropology Solve the Diabetes Dilemma?
Social factors contribute to a person’s risk for developing diabetes and shape choices surrounding the management of the disease. Nivaldo Júnior/ALES/Flickr Mary (a pseudonym) was 18 year…
Confronting Cultural Imperialism in Native American Archaeology
Two Native American students conduct research in Petrified Forest National Park in June 2015 as part of a field school project. Fort Lewis College’s Archaeological Field School Back…
The River is in Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community – Elizabeth Hoover
This title isn’t out until November, but it’s never too soon to pre-order. From the University of Minnesota Press website: Mohawk midwife Katsi Cook lives in Akwesasne, an…
The Revolutionary Power of Andean Folk Tales
Andean folktales—such as those recounting deals made with merpeople in watery underworlds—are not as innocuous as one might think. James Brunker/Magical Andes Photography In the 1700s, an…
The Many Hands Shirt: Reuniting a Family and an Heirloom
In late 2013, I got an out-of-the-blue call from Stella Iron Cloud, a member of the Oglala Lakota (a.k.a. Oglala Sioux) Tribe of South Dakota. She asked if…
Culinary Catalysts and Scientific Shifts: Peruvian Quinoa in the Age of Genetics and Gastronomy
Chef Maguiña with Adam Gamwell. Property of Adam Gamwell. This episode of This Anthropological Life presents a little differently from our normal episodes. The Society for Applied Anthropology…
Culinary Catalysts and Scientific Shifts: Peruvian Quinoa in the Age of Genetics and Gastronomy
Chef Maguiña with Adam Gamwell. Property of Adam Gamwell. This episode of This Anthropological Life presents a little differently from our normal episodes. The Society for Applied Anthropology…
Pandora’s Brew: The New Ayahuasca Part 7
Conclusion: It’s all fun and games… As I mentioned in the first post of my series, anthropologists and ethnobiologists have played an outsized role in studying and popularizing…