Native cartography: a bold mapmaking project that challenges Western notions of place ‘More lands have been lost to Native peoples probably through mapping than through physical conflict.’ Maps have been used not only to encroach on Native Americans lands, but to diminish their cultures as well. With every Spanish, French or English placename that eclipses a Native one, a European narrative of place and space becomes further entrenched. In an effort to help reclaim his region for his people, Jim Enote, a Zuni farmer and the director of the {*style:<a href=' A:wan Museum and Heritage Center{*style:</a>*} in New Mexico, has organised a unique project intended to help bring indigenous narratives back to the land. Partnering with Zuni artists, Enote is working to create maps that evoke the Zuni’s sense of place, which prioritises storytelling and shared knowledge over plots and boundaries.
The book that fights sexism with science When young men and women come up against sexist stereotypes masquerading as science, Angela Saini wants them to be armed with the facts. “I call my book ammunition,” she says of her 288-page prize-winning work Inferior: The True Power of Women and the Science that Shows It. “There are people out there who insist that somehow the inequalities we see in society are not just because of historic discrimination, but also because of biology – the idea that there are factors within us that will cause men or women to be better at some things than others.”
Taking Cactus Portraits In the Summer In Arizona – A. D. McCormick Just about nobody goes to Phoenix in August if they can help it. When I arrived, the temperature had fallen to 110 degrees Fahrenheit from close to 120 several days prior, and it was all the locals were talking about: “You’re lucky you weren’t here last week.” I enjoy the heat, and one of my favorite sensations is stepping out of air conditioning into unreasonably hot weather. Visiting Hong Kong in the summer, emerging from the airport at night into the tropical humidity, is like entering the body of an animal. The air is so viscous and saturated, so full of flavor, it hangs on you.
Knowledge of different cultures shakes up psychology 2 clicks The academic discipline of psychology was developed largely in North America and Europe. Some would argue it’s been remarkably successful in understanding what drives human behaviour and mental processes, which have long been thought to be universal. But in recent decades some researchers have started questioning this approach, arguing that many psychological phenomena are shaped by the culture we live in. Clearly, humans are in many ways very similar – we share the same physiology and have the same basic needs, such as nourishment, safety and sexuality. So what effect can culture really have on the fundamental aspects of our psyche, such as perception, cognition and personality?
Scientists reveal 10,000-year-old mummy is Native American ancestor Scientists attempting to map out the historical migrations of North and South America by analysing ancient bones have revealed that a 10,000-year-old skeleton unearthed in a cave in Nevada is the ancestor of a Native American tribe. The iconic skeleton, known as the “Spirit Cave mummy”, was reburied this summer by the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone people in Nevada, bringing closure to a decades-long legal dispute with anthropologists who fought for it to remain on display in a museum. DNA painstakingly extracted from the ancient skull proved the skeleton was an ancestor of the tribe and discredited a longstanding theory that the individual was from a group of “Paleoamericans” that existed in North America before Native Americans. The full genetic details of the skeleton, which is the world’s oldest natural mummy, are published as part of a wide-ranging international study of the ancestry of North and South America.
Taking Notes By Hand May Be Better Than Digitally, Researchers Say Laptops are common in lecture halls worldwide. Students hear a lecture at the Johann Wolfang Goethe-University on Oct. 13, 2014, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images hide caption Tripping on Peyote in Navajo Nation In 2002, on assignment for Discover Magazine, I participated in a peyote ceremony of the Native American Church. I’ve been recalling this extraordinary experience lately because I’ve been in contact with the man who arranged it, psychiatrist John H. Halpern, an authority on psychedelics, whom I met while researching my 2003 book Rational Mysticism.
Ants Among Elephants by Sujatha Gidla review – life as an ‘untouchable’ in modern India Not long ago, at a conference that brought together academics, writers and artists in Kochi in south India, the historian Vivek Dhareshwar unsettled his audience by saying that there was no such thing as caste – that it was a conceptual category the British used to understand and reduce India, which was internalised almost at once by Indians. “Caste” was not a translation of “jaati”, said Dhareshwar; “jaati” was a translation of “caste” – that is, the internalisation by Indians of the assumptions that the word caste involve meant they took its timelessness and authenticity for granted. Dhareshwar seemed to be implying – forcefully and outlandishly – that caste was at once a colonial inheritance and a habit of thinking, whose provenance no one felt the need to inquire into any longer. This was deeply nervous-making. There was one sense, though, in which Dhareshwar’s talk was necessary.
Two Spirits, One Heart, Five Genders Those who arrived in the Native American Garden of Eden had never seen a land so uncorrupted. The Europeans saw new geography, new plants, new animals, but the most perplexing curiosity to these people were the Original Peoples and our ways of life. Of all of the foreign life ways Indians held, one of the first the Europeans targeted for elimination was the Two Spirit tradition among Native American cultures. Equality Is Not Enough: What the Classroom Has Taught Me About Justice Imagine this situation: A classroom of students is settling down to work on a writing task. All of a sudden, one student exclaims, “That’s not fair! Why do they get to listen to the instructions on the headphones!
Indigenous Religious Traditions Few could have anticipated the cultural genocide that would take place for decades in the form of residential schooling. The path to such extreme cultural assimilation began in the late 1600s when John Eliot erected praying towns for Natives in an experimental effort to convert the indigenous peoples to a lifestyle of Christian beliefs (2). With the ideological belief of white supremacy, manifest destiny, and xenophobic perspective, President Ulysses Grant created a policy to set aside funds for the creation of educational facilities to be run by church and missionary society on Native reservations. The policy rationale became known and understood as ‘Kill the Indian and Save the Man.’ Religion and refugees are deeply entwined in the US Robert Bowers lashed out at what he believed to be a Jewish plot to bring more refugees and asylum seekers to the U.S. before allegedly murdering 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Bowers’s claim that HIAS, a prominent Jewish humanitarian organization, was bringing migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala northward to commit violence was false. But it is true that many religious communities in the U.S., including American Jews, have long supported refugees and asylum-seeking migrants who arrive in the U.S.
El Norte review: an epic and timely history of Hispanic North America The subtitle of Carrie Gibson’s book is The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America. El Norte lives up to it. These 437 pages are an important correction to centuries of American history which have mostly neglected the vital role of Spanish pioneers (and Native Americans) in favor of settlers from England, Ireland and Scotland.
The Simplest Explanation Of Global Warming Ever Earth energy budget diagram, with incoming and outgoing radiation (values are shown in W/m^2). Satellite instruments (CERES) measure the reflected solar, and emitted infrared radiation fluxes. The energy balance determines Earth's climate. Let's play pretend for a moment. Pretend, if you can, that you've never heard about the idea of global warming before.