When Marine Mammals Clash With Archaeological Heritage
Sea lion populations off the California coast bounced back after the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. NOAA/NOS/NMS/CINMS; National Marine Sanctuaries Media Library Off the southern C…
Tag: Indigenous
Native American Children’s Historic Forced Assimilation
Children arrived at school at different points in the assimilation process. Many still openly embraced their traditional cultures, including some of these Lakota children on the Rosebud Indian…
AES 2020 Abstract: Mediating Multispecies Relations Through Western and Indigenous Conservation
Western notions of modernity have situated human society apart from nature, which encompasses those spaces and beings that are unmodified and unsullied by human activity. The Western conception…
The Double Life of Coca
In Andean countries such as Peru and Bolivia, locals and tourists drink mate de coca, a tea made from coca leaves, to stave off altitude sickness. Calsidyrose/Flickr In…
Corporate “Sorcerers” Reveal the Magical Power of Capitalism
The destruction of forests contributes to widespread drought through atmospheric processes that can seem like sorcery. Pixabay/Pexels To Indigenous Marind communities living in West Papua…
Humans in 2019—From Discoveries to Disasters
This image shows various views of the pinky bone of a Denisovan-Neanderthal hybrid found in Siberia. Thomas Higham/University of Oxford Denisovan Deluge This year brought a host of…
How to Resurrect Dying Languages
Hawaiian language teacher Nako’olani Warrington instructs 9-year-old Maleka Benjamin at an immersion school in Honolulu. Lucy Pemoni/AP Photo In the 1970s, the Hawaiian language seemed po…
Restoring Dignity to Stolen Ancestors
A man stands on the farm in Sutherland, South Africa, where a medical student once unethically exhumed nine bodies for scientific study. Je’nine May/UCT Almost 100 years ago,…
Can This Indigenous Language Thrive in a Digital Age?
On any given day, people throng the busy market in Concepción, Paraguay. Shoppers peruse the multicolored array of fruits and vegetables and occasionally pause to chat with the…
The Hidden Color Code in Mimbres Pottery
The patterns in black-and-white Classic Mimbres pottery may have represented colors. phoca2004/Flickr Classic Mimbres pottery is famous and admired today for its beautiful, minimalist sty…
Why Are Languages Worth Preserving?
This illustration represents how Indigenous peoples around the globe, as highlighted by depictions of a few specific communities, are striving to keep endangered languages alive as dynamic source…
Ep #49: Intolerable Ads, Introvert Anthros, Irrevocable Ties & Indigenous Symbols: This Month on TFS
This month, Kylie [0:50] kicks off our conversation by reflecting on our blog about racism in sport and asks us about the ethics of ad targeting on social…
The Deep Roots of Navajo Country Music
[no-caption] Marcel Hirshegger/SAPIENS What is it about certain musical traditions that cause them to take root in communities far away from where they originated? Anthropologist Kristina…
A Tale of Two Ruins
I’ll show you a place, high on a desert plain / Where the streets have no name … —U2, The Joshua Tree, 1987 I recently flew over two…
Florida’s Indigenous Heritage Faces a Watery Grave
Six ancient Native American mounds lie in Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park near Tallahassee, Florida. Ebyabe/Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at The Co…
Stringing Together an Ancient Empire’s Stories
For centuries, Andean people encoded messages in intricate patterns of knotted and colored strings known as khipus. Thanks to the collaborative approach of anthropologist Sabine Hyland and others,…
Amazing triple set of resources on Indigenous waters: from Standing Rock to Australia (book + 2 special issues)
There are three recent (and really good) resources that have come out on Indigenous waters in the past several weeks: a book and two special issues, each below…
The Knotty Question of When Humans Made the Americas Home
Modern footprints in the sand echo far more ancient ones found on a beach off the coast of Canada. Joanne McSporran/PLOS ONE Humans have long found comfort on…
Archaeology of the 99 Percent
Using a remote-sensing tool called lidar, archaeologists can see what lies hidden underneath dense vegetation. This lidar image reveals the grand plaza of the Maya city of Tikal…
Why Navajos Love Their Country Music
Native Country Band at Windy Mesa Bar in Page, Arizona. Left to right: Errison Littleben, author Kristina Jacobsen, Tommy Bia, LeAnder Bia, Arlondo Bia. Doug Reilly When I…
How Skirts Are Changing Bolivian Wrestling
Martha La Alteña (right) and Susana La Bonita (left) wrestle in El Alto, Bolivia. Aizar Raldes/Getty Images This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republis…
Why Land Acknowledgments Matter
[no-caption] Fred Harvey/Library of Congress This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. In Toronto, before singing “O Canad…
Witnessing an Endangered Puberty Ritual
Yanesha’ women and girls participate in a right-of-passage ritual called ponapnora in the remote community of Puellas Yuncullmas. Anna Luisa Daigneault It was before dawn. I lay curled…