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…
Tag: Indigenous
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…
Observations on Rastafari Cosmopolitics from the Caribbean
Rastafari-grounded and Caribbean imaginative reinventions have long influenced the evolution of Caribbean ethnography. They could inspire a decolonial anthropology for this century. “I am Ethiopian j…
Resisting Indigenous Erasure from Alcatraz Island to Elizabeth Warren
A critical look at anthropology and 50 years in the fight for Indigenous sovereignty (1969–2019). Indians must be redefined in terms that white men will accept, even if…
Ep. #34 Knowledge Making: Emma Kowal talks Indigenous health care, difference & genomics
“A lot of what individual white anti-racists, as I called them, but also the broader policy frameworks are struggling with is the question of how do we enact…
How Traditional Knowledge Opens Nature’s Medicine Cabinet
A natural pharmacist at a complementary medicine clinic in Trujillo, Peru, displays a plant tincture. Jane Palmer Under the clear, moonlit sky of Friday, July 13, 2018, Elide…
A New Generation is Reviving Indigenous Tattooing
Nahaan, a Tlingit-Inupiaq-Paiute tattoo artist, inks a woman’s face. Nahaan To celebrate her graduation from the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Alaska Native Studies program in 2012, Mar…
Why the Myth of the “Savage Indian” Persists
Media portrayals of “good Indians” and “bad Indians” have shaped the minds of generations of Americans. Harold M. Lambert/Getty Images Peter Pan, the beloved children’s classic, is sure…
New Book – Our history is the future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance
Nick Estes has been writing about Indigenous resistance at Standing Rock in powerful ways, so his new book coming in just over one month’s time is one I…
North Sentinel Island and the Right to Be Left Alone
North Sentinel Island Vivaswa/Shutterstock This article originally appeared on The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. John Allen Chau knew he might die. The 26-year-old U.S…
What Google Maps Don’t Show You
When I was a boy, my father and I used to plan road trips together. We would go to our local American Automobile Association (AAA) office and get…
Nuclear State, Nuclear Waste
Nuclear State, Nuclear Waste: Emily Simmonds on Canada as a nuclear nation & ongoing colonialism through uranium mining.
Waste colonialism
Waste colonialism refers to how waste and pollution are part of the domination of one group in their homeland by another group. The concept has been gaining traction…
The Skeletons in the Museum Closet
Museums are full of wonderful things. From the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian Institution’s natural history museum to the Folsom point at the Denver Museum of Nature &…
Why Are So Many Guatemalans Migrating to the U.S.?
On May 23, a bystander filmed 20-year-old Claudia Patricia Gómez González after a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot her in the head. The young woman had recently crossed…
The Oldest True Stories in the World
Australia’s iconic Opera House is lit up with an art installation called Songlines during a festival in 2016. For Aboriginal Australians, songlines are memories of routes through landscapes—which…
The Mastodon in the Room
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Humans may have been in North America much earlier than previously thought. Here’s the evidence: chipped rocks, crushed mastodon bones, and reliable da…
How an Archaeological Experiment Revealed California’s Ancient Past
San Nicolas Island, the most remote and one of the smallest of California’s Channel Islands, is more than 60 miles from the mainland. The seas around the island…
Why Are Some Caves Full of Shoes?
I’ve spent a good chunk of my life hiking the U.S. Southwest, and I’ve kicked my share of sharp rocks and prickly cactuses as I’ve walked across hot…
The Incas’ Knotty History
Khipu in the Museo Machu Picchu, Casa Concha, Cusco. Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at Aeon. The Inca Empire (1400–1532) is one of few ancient civilizations that …