Guerrilla History - Dinosaurs and Decolonizing Paleontology w/ Aline Ghilardi, Juan Cisneros, & Tito Aureliano

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we have a fascinating discussion alongside three wonderful paleontologists based in Brazil about efforts to decolonize paleontology and restitute stolen fossils.  These three have written some great articles on this topic, such as The moral and legal imperative to return illegally exported fossils, Colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of deep-time biodiversity, and Digging deeper into colonial palaeontological practices in modern day Mexico and Brazil.  This is a crucial conversation, and one which we feel doesn't get nearly enough attention even within political circles like the one we operate in.  #IrritatorBelongstoBr Aline Ghilardi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geology at UFRN.  You can find the work that her (and Tito's) paleontology lab does at the website en.dinolab.com.br.  Aline can be followed on twitter @alinemghilardi   Juan Cisneros is a paleontologist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Geology at UFPI twitter @PaleoCisneros.   Tito Aureliano is an Associate Researcher at DINOlab in the Department of Geology at UFRN.  His work can be viewed at the same website linked in Aline's bio above.  In addition, Tito and Aline co-run a multimedia science communication project titled Colecionadores De Ossos (Bone Collectors), which includes a YouTube channel, books, comics, and even a video game!  Tito can be followed on twitter @tito_aureliano   Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory

You remember Dinn-Vin-Bin-Bin-Boo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons

of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, joined, unfortunately by only one of my usual co-hosts. We are joined by Professor Adnan Hussein, who of course is historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing really well, Henry. It's great to be with you, and I'm excited for today's conversation. Yeah, as am I. we're unfortunately not joined by our other usual co-host, Brett O'Shea, who is host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast, as he is out on the road right now, and hopefully we'll get to hear more about those travels soon, and I know that we're looking

forward to having him back for the next conversation. But as Adnan said, we have a really fascinating conversation coming up, one that is at the intersection of many of my personal interests. Hopefully the listeners are also interested in the intersections that we'll be talking about today. But before I introduce the topic and our guests, I want to remind the listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making new episodes by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, gorilla being spelled at G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. All contributions large and smaller would allow us to do this show as we operate entirely on

listener donations. You can also follow us on Twitter and keep up with our latest releases at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-S-Skore Pod. Now, today we have three really excellent guests and a fascinating conversation. We're going to be talking about the intersections of paleontology, scientific colonialism, and cultural restitution.

Like I said, three topics that I'm very deeply interested in. I know many of our listeners will be as well. We are joined by, and I'll introduce them each in turn, Juan Cisneros, who is in association, professor in the Department of Geology at UFPI, one, you can tell us what that abbreviation stands for when it's your turn. We're also joined by Alini Gilardi, who is an associate professor in the Department of Geology at UFR-A-N.

Similarly, you can tell us what that abbreviation stands for, and Tito Oriliano, who's an associate researcher at Dino Lab in the Department of Geology at UFRAN. Hello, the three of you. It's really nice to have you on the show. Hello, this is great. Great to be here. Thank you for your presentation. We are delighted to be here.

Yeah, I'm excited about this conversation too. So let's do it. Yeah, absolutely. So I know the listeners may remember from a couple months ago, we put out an episode on decolonizing science with Sibu Biela. You should go back and listen to that episode if you haven't listened to it already. A lot of the concepts that we were talking about. talking about in that episode will come up again in this conversation, but we're going to be looking

at specifically paleontology here in this conversation. Before we even get into talking about some of the specific issues regarding scientific colonialism and cultural restitution issues regarding dinosaurs and in the Mexican and Brazilian context specifically, since this is what you've written about in a few of your publications, I want to ask each of you in turn, How you began to think about this topic, because I know speaking for myself and the listeners who have been listening to the show may remember that I formerly was a scientist myself before leaving the field, there's a big pressure within science to just stick to science and to leave out any sort of political interventions, to leave out any sort of political analysis when looking at your work in your specific field. Of course, this is foolish. You can't really do that because everything in the world is political, as I'm sure the listeners know. But there is this big pressure within the various fields of science to completely divorce yourself from any sort of politics and any relations between politics and your field.

So I guess we'll start with Elina and then maybe Tito and then Juan each in turn. I'm curious how each of you came to thinking about the political dimension regarding paleontology. because, of course, you entered the feel of paleontology, but you do write, and I'll cite a few of your articles throughout the conversation, and I'll link to them in the show notes for the listeners to check out. But, you know, how did you start thinking about those political connections, the weaving of politics in with these issues

when you're looking at dinosaurs? Okay, I would say that it didn't begin about thinking about scientific colonialism paleontologists, phonyontology. I've felt it. So when I cannot access causes from my own country, when the main language of science

is not my language, when I have difficult to assess information about science because it's behind the paywall, this is what colonialism feels like. So first of all, I felt it. I felt it as a student.

After that, I would say that, Well, I'm not only a researcher. I'm not only a professor. I'm also a science communicator. So when you deal with the public and you understand why science steal something so far from that, you start to see all the politics within it and how the colonialist process, well, just make this happen this way.

So before thinking, I felt it in many ways. But then, while working as a researcher, things got harder because, well, you got to teach about that too. And how do you teach about something that may cause a bias in the understanding of what you were teaching about? And these things just started bugging me. And that's when I started about thinking how we could work to solve things like that. Then research started to flow out. So that's my perspective. I'm interested about my colonies.

Well, I will certainly give an answer that you didn't expect. But there is a very strong connection between politics. and science, even when we don't talk about it. Like, when a person with my ethical background goes abroad to a northern country, like in Europe, and

we talk in front of hundreds of foreign researchers, and they pay attention to what I am saying, even if it is purely technical scientific stuff, there is some politics in there. Because this is not something that, this is not

something that was present in science like 100 years ago, at least broadly in the world. So when did I notice that? I keep on noticing that. There is a very strong racial, ethnical, barrier in science worldwide. What do I mean? I was born three years after the end of a dictatorship that ruined my country. And I dreamed of being a scientist. And I was born in the poorest area of this country. You know? Everything I have been through in my life was to try to develop a career

that was equivalent to what people were doing in countries with a very better background. Like in the United States, in Germany and so. one. And we grew up thinking on being Indiana Jones, and we traveled to several countries in South America, several areas of Brazil, and generally very wild and underdeveloped. We interact with the communities in there, and there are two ways. You discover yourself that you were eager of being the oppression. And then you discover, as you get more mature in a career, that you were the oppressive one.

And you discovered you were not that white as you think, as you thought you were when you were a kid. And then you try to change, to provoke a change in how science is made and how everything is going on. from community to, from the local communities to the scientific communities up north. So this is pretty much it. Before Juan Hobson, I want to make sure that I clarify something that I had forgotten to mention, which is that the three of you all work in Brazil,

the universities that I mentioned are all Brazilian universities. I realize that we had kind of neglected to mention where you're operating. Juan, I know you're from El Salvador originally, but when Tito is talking about being born just after a dictatorship, of course, he's talking about the Brazilian dictatorship that we talked about in our episode with Michael Fox about the rise of fascism in Brazil. So that was not the entirety of that conversation, but we did talk quite a bit about the Brazilian military dictatorship.

So if you want to know more about that, you can check out that episode. But I want to ground the conversation so the listeners at least know geographically where we're talking. Anyway, Juan, go ahead. I'm sorry for cutting you off. Okay, so, well, my perspective is from somebody that was born in a very small country in El Salvador, Central America, Cusination. We had a war there in the 80s, most of the 70s. We had guerrilla, like your podcast, actual physical guerrilla there. And also we have a film. racist government, whatever comes with that, with a full package. We had the full package in the 70s and the 80s.

And in my travel, I learned about archaeological discoveries that are so common in my country. In the Sabbath, we have Mayan structures, Mayan temples and some small pyramids. And at the same time, we hear a lot how many of the staffs found in these archaeological sites have been stolen and taken overseas to other countries. So that's where you get in contact with colonelists from the very beginning in your childhood. And when I came to Brazil, I thought things would be very different, but I just came to a country where you learned that all the fossils are also. of being stolen, taken to other countries. I didn't find something that different here. But that was my, that's my background.

I'm used to these issues and also to go to meet foreign researchers for a long time when I was a student and sometimes you notice that the researchers don't take you seriously. if you notice that your native language is not English or that you come from the global south. So those are the two big issues that I have seen during my career, during my life, conflict. And, well, at some point, you probably...

I never thought I will become interested in... and dealing with these issues. formally, as I am doing right now, but somebody has to do it. Somebody has to do it. Sometimes you need to limit your comfort zone and tackle these things. And I guess we are going to talk about that in a few minutes. But that's how I get into contact with science and politics. Actually, they contacted me if I could say.

Right. Well, that's very fascinating, and I guess, you know, one thing I wanted to ask is actually about your comfort zone for those listeners who, like myself, are complete novices when it comes to science and the kind of research that you do is maybe you could tell us just a little bit about the basics of how paleontological research is done. what do you do and study? And that might help clarify why it's so important where the records are kept and how they're acquired and so on. But, you know, you're all paleontologists, which means you're studying a very deep past through sources and evidence that remains in the earth and has to be, you know, prepared and treated. So perhaps you could just tell us a little bit what the basics are for those who are unfamiliar with how this scientific research, is conducted. Maybe Aline is the best fashion to conduct. Come on, you mentioned comfort don't, say it should be here.

Oh, it might fault. Okay. So what a paleontology does, we want to find evidence from ancient life form. So we look for fossils. And fossils are like book.

When we go to the field, to dig for Fosters, it's like when you go to a library and you look for books that can tell you a story. And if you find the write books, you'll find the information that you need to do that story. And that's basically what we do. So we need to learn about the rocks. We really, literally don't go anywhere. They go to somewhere very specifically where there are more chances to find those foster that you are looking for.

that can answer the questions you are looking for. So we need to learn a lot about geology and to know which region or in which places we have biggest chances to find these fossils. And we spend many hours walking without finding nothing. So more I need to be higher up to walk many hours without a good result. So the idea that paleontologists

begin to dig up, make a big hole and then find a fossilist or cartoon. It's not true. We basically walk a lot and most of the time we find often. And also most of the time we are just our office or in a lab doing loud work and also a lot of administrative work that has nothing to do with science.

but to answer your question our comfort sound is that we make questions about the ancient life and we go to the field to try to find for these objects that can give you those answers and basically our planet is like a big book where some of the cages

are not there anymore because erosion destroyed them or they were never written because there was not enough sediment to preserve those objects but that's what we do we try to reconstruct a story

that is it cannot be complete by definition but that's basically what we do so that's the that's the science that we that a paleontologist does without a conflict

without leaving the comforts. And then it comes to the reality. When you need more information to answer your questions, and you cannot access a paper because we have a firewall, or you cannot study a certain fossil because it's not in your country, it's in another country. It shouldn't be there. And maybe we need to clarify the real that fossils are unique objects.

well, fossil is not the same, like another one. A fossil can give you a unique answer. Because, why is that? Because we don't find, most of the time, we don't find a complete skeletal like you see in the movies. That happens one in many years.

Most of the time, we find a job or a tooth or a bond. And that very complete one that gives you more information is the water that you want to see to answer your questions. And sometimes that one is not here. It's in another museum in another country, so you need to go there to check exactly that one.

And that's the difference between paleontology and other science. It's not like, for example, if you are chemists, you study iron. Iron is the same anywhere. Hydrogen is the same anywhere. But a femur of a particular species of a fossil is not the same. It can be very different. So that's what we do, and that's why we value these specific objects, the fossils,

because each one is different from each one and can answer specific questions that we make. I want to make sure that Tito and Aline have the opportunity to also add in anything that they would like to on that question, but I want to emphasize the point and maybe throw in a little wrinkle to what Juan said. Juan said fossils are like books and the fossil record is kind of like a library and you know, you can sip through it. I think that there's another layer to this in which this is true, which is to say, if you go into a library, the resources that are available to you are curated in a very specific way. And depending on where you are, it's going to be curated in a specific way.

slightly different way, but I'm most familiar with the context of the United States, which is, of course, where I grew up. And if you look in libraries in the United States, what do you find is that the vast majority of the books have a certain, if we're talking about nonfiction books particularly, which of course is what I always read, but they have a very certain political bent to them. But even beyond that, the origin of these books is very specific as well. You very rarely see works that are written by writers in the global south, for example. It's not because there is not this knowledge in the global south. It's because these institutions prefer that knowledge from the global north for political reasons, for cultural reasons,

and also because they have this cultural supremacy feeling where they don't think it's worthwhile to even mind that information in the global south. The reason I bring this up is this kind of hits on the scientific colonialism topic, which we'll be talking about. And that's why I'm throwing this wrinkle in before I turned it over to Alina and Tito, which is that when we're talking about the knowledge that's found in these different places, and this is particularly true in the case of paleontology, because as Juan said, a fossil here and a fossil there, even if they're similar, they're worlds apart in terms of what you can learn from them and construct different paleo environments based on them. And you never know. It might be

one facet of a bone is slightly different between this one and that one, and that's all the difference in terms of determining whether or not it's the same species or genus or not. And so I guess what I'm driving towards is that it's not that there's not this knowledge in the global south. There is. It's not that there's not these paleontological resources in the global south in terms of the fossils that are present. And in terms of researchers, I know Alina, you've talked in the past

about the wealth of paleontologists in Brazil relative to Russia, which is where I live now, it's night and day. Russia back during the Soviet period had a lot of paleontologists and a lot of very famous paleontologists, which we could talk about some other time. But now, I believe last count, there was like five or six full-time paleontologists in the entire country of Russia. And Alina, you can talk more about the Brazilian context and how many paleontologists there are. But we don't think of the knowledge that can come from a place like Brazil or other places similar. And so I think that this analogy of saying fossils and books, it's very interesting because you also see this cultural supremacy and colonial mentality not only in the libraries, but also when looking at the paleontologic record in terms of the actual specimens, as well as taking

on board and focusing on the experts that are present within these other places outside of the global north. So I know that that was a pretty long-winded interjection, but, you know, feel free to disagree with me or agree with me or, you know, pause at something else or whatever. I found your analogy just perfect to explain it all. So I'll take it further. So going on the comfort zone is when you go to that library and you read the books that are available and you don't question yourself why other contents aren't available there. So being the comfort zone is just accepting it as it is and keep working.

When you go out of your comfort zone and you ask those questions, then dangerous comes because you're, you begin, to be seeing by the scientific community as someone who's asking not the right questions. You're going away from paleontology, you're stepping on politics, but let us know science in the beginning, it was all one thing. We divided, right? So all things are really entangled. And well, they were divided to be better understood that if we want a global view of science, we need to know all its connections. So going out of the comfort zone is really asking, who's curating this?

Why we don't have books about whatever place here? Why I don't read papers about these or that outer books of these or that outer? And curiously, me and the group of researchers led by Nussai Bahaja, we asked those questions about paleontology. So we looked globally at the paleontological data being produced and, well, we found that there was a bias. So there was the majority of data, paleontological data being produced, was from the global north and more interesting.

Even the data being produced about fossils and paleontology in general in the global south were being produced by the global north Alpers. something about 97% of all paleontological data was being produced by people in North America and Western Europe. So this is outstandingly not what we see in the fossil record, because most of the fossils are not concentrated in the territory. They are equally distributed gold volume. So what is going on? Are we curating this library of life, library of deep time wrong?

What is happening? And we torture the data till it answered us, what was going on? So we tested many hypotheses. What was thriving this bias and the understanding of the foster record? And this is important, let me emphasize here. Because when you have this bias, you understand about life in the past, about biodiversity sitting in the past is totally not what happened. So it's also biased. So it's important to understand what is causing so you can remove the cause to really see what was happening in the

past, right? So okay, our hypothesis is that politics may be involved in many ways. So perhaps because English is the main language of science, perhaps that was causing this bias and papers production, so data production, or perhaps the gross internal product of a country, or perhaps the poverty index. So we tried to correlate many aspects of economics to the data we were seeing from emerging from global paleontological data.

And the answer was that what correlate the most with this disparity and distribution of biological data being produced is the historical colonialism. So what happened is that most of the countries

that benefited and passed with historical colonialism and some of them there are still benefiting from new colonialism, they plundered fossils from global south and filled their museums

with tons of data. There are still being produced, they're still being published by them. And when this is not the case, they feel free to just go to other territories and take what they want and just published about it. Because Indiana Jones, right, there are no civilized people in southern lands according to them. So they feel free to go there and just take what they want. And this is how we answered this Croatian problem in the ontological things that have been produced globally.

And well, what we did next is what we are trying to do next, excuse, is with a conjoint group of scientists worldwide. Q in Brazil with Huan, for example, or with colleagues from Mexico, is trying to understand how this process work in different places. So it's because, as said, there are few paleontologists in Brazil, is that why most of the paleontological

data from Brazil are being produced by European or North American scientists, that is what is happening here. What we found, for example, is that that is not the case, currently answering directly your question now. We have more than 600 officially associated paleontologists to the Brazilian paleontological society. So that's a lot of paleontologists. And that counts only officially associated because you don't need to be associated to the local periodological society to be a paleontologist. So, okay, it's just to have a number. And also, the same pattern is observed in Mexico. You had

plenty of paleontologists there. But still, data from Mexican fossils are still being produced majorly from North American scientists. So there is something there that, okay, now we didn't try the problem. How can we solve that? We got to discuss it. We got to

find ways to turn it around. What we should do? And then I will leave my colleague to answer. Well, I know Agnon has the next question, but I do want to follow up with one excellent quote from a article that

Elina you and Juan co-wrote with the other collaborators. Listeners, like I said, I'll link this in the show notes, but it's titled Digging Deeper into Colonial Paleontological Practices in modern-day Mexico and Brazil. The quote that I want to say, which I think nails exactly what you're talking about, you said, and I think that this will lead into Adnan's question well as well. Within scientific colonialism, middle and low-income countries are perceived as suppliers of data and specimens for the high-income ones. The contributions of local collaborators are devalued or omitted, and the legal frameworks

in lower-income countries are trivialized or even ignored. In turn, colonialist nations owe their wealth to these extractive colonial practices that have existed for centuries, allowing them to accumulate knowledge, power, and financial resources. These extractive practices persist in the field of paleontology to this day. I think that that rather short segment really does a great. great job of summarizing what you were just saying, and I think really lays bare these relations that we see, which you were describing. But Adnan, feel free to hop in. I know

that your question is related to this as well. Well, yes, I mean, I was hoping the authors of these fascinating papers could tell us a little bit more about how scientific colonialism operates in the field of paleontology. We've been hearing a little bit about that, but I guess I would say that I've heard or I've gathered from, you know, my reading of these articles that there are several sort of ways in which that happens and that there are different kind of consequences. Some are ethical consequences and critiques of how it's being, you know, of how this field is being organized under scientific colonialism. Another is the legal kind of questions that have risen and attempts to protect, you know, fossil records by nation states where they've been

collected in response to that history of colonialism. And then thirdly, I think there's a scientific imperative. So maybe the conclusion, if you could go through some of this to show us how scientific colonialism is operating is why scientific colonialology is best. bad science. Because I think a lot of people would say, oh, yes, okay, these are ethical concerns. These are legal ones. You know, but I'm just a scientist and I'm just doing it, looking at the evidence and somebody wants to deal with these issues great, but that's not for me. I'm a scientist. I'm only interested in what these fossil records can reveal. But why is it that that is actually, and the way in which this whole knowledge has been

developed has actually distorted, as you say, in one of your articles, our understanding of the deep time biodiversity. How is it that this history and these bad practices have themselves affected the scientific kind of project? Because that to me is a very powerful, if you could explain that, a very powerful critique of what's wrong with the way this science is organized, what it has, you know, been doing, and how that it really defeats its own purposes on some level if it is unethical and distorted and distorting. So, you know, that's a big question, but perhaps you could help us understand these different layers of the critique you have in your work of scientific colonialism in paleontology. I would like to answer part of it and maybe something to my audio colleagues

I think it is colonial science is bad science and we have no doubts about it and why? Because these science is based on extractivism of specimens and because these people

don't know the field and when I'm in the field I'm meaning about the geographical region where these specimens come from. They don't know them, but they don't know them well as us. We know

the region because we live here and we visit often. We use it the sites often. So we know the context better than them. We know the context and because we know the context, we have more data to interpret those

specimens that they don't have. So colonial science is like tourist science, I will say. It's like tourism. You spend some time and a place. You don't see everything. You see only the places where people take you there. And you probably come back with a distorted image of the country. And that's what Colorado Science does.

Sometimes they don't even see the place. They just buy these fossils in an option and interpret the fossils in the best way they have, which is not the best way out of because they don't know where they come from. And the other problem is that these fossils that they used to do their science are usually the product of smuggling. And that makes it even worse because all the data, all the context is already lost. and it's important to see that paleatology is like

a forensic science so what we do is like shallow home we go to a place and we don't we don't only look at the body we look at the whole scene we look if the window is broken

if the door is open if there is a note there is somebody burn something but you know all the cliche all this stuff we look at all of that because all of that is going to give us answers to what happened there. And the colonial scientists, they already missed it. You already

missed it. They only look at their final product. They only look at their bodies. So they will never be able to tell you the whole story. And that's why it's bad. That's fascinating. And, you know, this is kind of what I was with my limited knowledge of the field. But what I was able to glean myself as a historian is thinking of this as a form. of history, right, of interpretation of records from the past, they have to be done with great sensitivity to the context. When you have people raiding, just as we have with antiquities in archaeology, when you have people that layers in the soil, where it was found, when it was found, with what else it was found, these are all kind of contextual factors that get broken apart

when you have people treating these just as objects of value trading and smuggling them or as prizes, you know, of imperial booty to take back to your, you know, museum to because you want something that looks visually very exciting, you want it to be displayed in your museum. But you've lost then how it related to other less fast, less visually attractive pieces maybe or something that didn't have the same value to. the imperial audience, but for scientific purposes are absolutely crucial. They have to be looked at very carefully. So when you have trade in antiquities or trade in fossils, you're applying capitalistic kind of motives and other sort of cultural factors that disrupts the actual evidentiary record. So it seems to me that's one real problem with these fossils being relocated around the world. How do you then put them together, you know, in a more natural and reasonable sort of way. Obviously, people in the localities know and can attend to

these. So local research, you know, needs to be, because that was one question that I had. You made a big emphasis in your studies about the lack of partnerships seemingly, it seemed that there were the lack of partnerships with local researchers. You mentioned this sort of tourist colonial sort of science. Others have used the terms that you introduced me to of helicopter, you know, or parachute science, right, where you just pop in and then you leave. So maybe you could tell us a little bit more what's at stake with, you know, what a good scientific approach is and why these collaborations with local researchers are actually crucial to doing good science in this. case. Now, you mentioned something, and probably my other friends will want to expand on that. But before I mentioned, why the importance of partnership is that you talk about the price of the fossils. And it's important also to clarify that in our country, as in most of the global south, fossils cannot be trade by money. You cannot sell for,

by fossils being Brazil in all Latin America and 99% of Africa and Asia is the same law. So, and when you put the price on a host economic price, what happens is that the people that extract these fossils to sell them, to sell them to the best buyer, they take only the visually most important one and they sometimes they miss or destroy the visually less important but sometimes

those are the ones that give you give us the answers and I wait to use the book metaphor again. Sometimes the book doesn't need to look nice to give you the right answer. It happens with fossils too. But if you want to sell a fossil, it must look nice. So this

author and and demand situation doesn't work well with it actually has a problem and in our country is illegal it's different from the laws in the UK where you can actually buy and so here you cannot do

so and I think we are right we shouldn't sell this so maybe my friend was to talk about the partnership? Why aren't they important? No, I want to add a layer of complexity to what you have said because there's an additional problem

because since people won the best price for the fossil, they usually modify it to get it well best worth in the market. So this causes sometimes probably that irritation. and this is a direct reference of a smuggled fossil from Brazil. One of the best named dinosaurs, by the way. The replanter irritated a lot, some paleontologists from Europe

because it was a modified fossil because, well, the seller tried to modify it to make it more expensive. So it was an irritation. Yeah, and what I want to go, is that sometimes this may cause a problem that less decades to be solved because sometimes the first person that studies that fosur does not realize

the fosur is, for example, a fengstite, so a composed fossil. And, well, science state that razzled as it is, and sometimes later on, decades over, another scientist, well, finally perceived, that they worked with a copacite fossil and you need to, well, rewrite all of that again. So sometimes this may cause us problems to science

that may last decades. And also just adding another layer to what Juan said, but now in the broader perspective, is that, well, even children can perceive the malefices of colonialist science, Colonialist science, because when I was a kid, I usually thought that there were only dinosaurs in North America. There weren't dinosaurs in the zoo, right? But why is that? It's because, well, they are describing dinosaurs there. And, well, we are not describing dinosaurs from Brazil

and not even communicating about that, because, well, they're being removed from your country, right? And, well, you were colonized since you were young because your perception of how paleontology is already distorted. So in the big picture, if you understand that paleontology ultimate quest is to tell the history of life through time, if you have a distorted view only tell in the history of the global lord, you are not perceiving the quest,

of paleontology. You're perceiving the quest of describing how life was in the global margin the vast. So this is why I said distorted view or were past. So you can have the small problems with local fossils and fossils that are destroyed and lost to science because of, you give a price to them. They are modified or in the big picture when you go away from your subject and try to analyze the whole quest of paleontology. It is also being, well, how do you say, being distorted by colonialism. That's what I wanted to say. Just to interject one quick thing, Alina, if you don't mind.

You mentioned about chimera dinosaurs and some listeners who actually read more about paleontology might have something in the back of their mind, like, you know, I recall something like that. There was a very famous example in 1999 of Archao Raptor, which was a very famous, yeah, a terrible travesty of, you know, bad science, like we were talking about where this supposed fossil specimen, I mean, it was real fossils, but this supposed. individual specimen, let's say, from China came out and was claimed to be like a transitional fossil between Theropod dinosaurs and birds, which I'm sure most of the listeners are aware that birds evolved from Theropod dinosaurs, but this was kind of like one of those missing

link type fossils, at least it was claimed to be. And National Geographic, which is not a peer-reviewed publication, mind you, but it is one that has a very large readership. National Geographic went ahead and published about this, you know, wonderful discovery. And later on, not much later, I mean, it was pretty much being refuted at the time by actual scientists in peer-reviewed journals. But it was a chimera that was put together from a primitive bird and a couple of different dinosaurs that were more or less just glued together. but the institution that was housing this fossil was really pushing for the publication because they thought that it would bring them renown and there was a lot of people who wanted to go

and see this missing link fossil but it wasn't a missing link it was just bad science it was a glued together conglomeration of multiple different specimens anyway I know that that wasn't like you know directly related but I know that I'm hoping at least that some of the listeners might remember them. Come on, this is cool new science. I'm just used to always going off on tangents on this show. I don't know how many episodes you've listened to, but that's like my contribution to the show is like taking us way off track.

I want to mention another one that also is a little bit off, but not so. It's the Pilbdown Man. Oh, of course, even more famous. Yes, okay. And that's also a very, very good example of colonial science, because that chimera, that camei, which was a mix of. of Neanderthal bonds and orangutan bones, was made specifically to show that the human beings

evolved in Europe and not in Africa was made for that, was made specifically to demonstrate because it was more convenient for the European, the Eurocentric way of thinking at that time that the homo sapiens evolved somewhere in the UK and not in South Africa. And at that time, or there was already known the Astrolopithecus from South Africa. Actually, it just came out a few years later, and they rejected all.

They rejected the South African signs because at that time was still a colony. Yeah, fascinating story. And I know that we talked, again, this is slightly tangential, but not really. we talked in the last episode that we did about decolonizing science, about how paleontology has a long history of eugenic roots. Paleontology and archaeology both have a long history of eugenic roots with many of the researchers doing their research with the explicit purpose of advancing their eugenic views and some of the most famous paleontologists of all time were

explicit eugenicists like Henry Fairfield Osborne. He was the director of the Museum of Natural History in the United States. Really, one of the most famous paleontologists of all time was a dyed in the wool eugenicist or Cope from the Bone Wars, Edward Drinker Cope, another, you know, very famously a eugenicist. These are some of the most famous paleontologists of all time, and they were doing it because their research was being done to advance their eugenic's views. Like, there is, you can't divorce these two things from one another. They are directly tied to one another.

The reason for a lot of their research was for this purpose. I'll fart to that too. Yeah. Well, I mean, those are cases where, of course, it's scandalous. And as scandalous to, you know, kind of contemporary scientists, they would say, oh, yeah, that's terrible. You know, but that's not good signs. We're doing good things. I don't know how many scientists would say that at none. I mean, maybe if you posed it directly to them, but they're not going to go out of their way to do. If they, no, that's right. I mean, they don't necessarily do the background, deep, dark history of their own discipline. But if confronted with it, they would say, well, yeah, that's bad science. And we don't want to do that. It distorts completely, you know, the outcomes. And we're not doing it for those purposes. But what I liked so much about your work, you know, Aline Tito Wan is all of you, the work that I read is how you're exposing something like what we could call a neo-colonial, you know, a scientific neocolonialism where the structures, maybe it's not the attitudes of the 19th and early 20th century in the high period of colonialism, but those inequities and structural, you know, different.

of power and of economic force and the legacies of history is still having all kinds of consequences on how this discipline is proceeding and the knowledge that it's producing. So perhaps you could, you know, tell us a little bit more of the ways in which this imbalance is affecting the discipline. You know, in addition to the fact that English and, you know, French and other European languages, but especially English as the dominant research language, the funding, of course. But I guess one component, I'm wondering, is there really a discourse of kind of what I think of as neo-colonial or, you know, neo-imperialist sort of discourse we saw, for example, the way in which, you know,

recent wars were justified by, you know, we're doing this for the benefit of these poor suffering people or, you know, there was a kind of humanitarian dimension that was ideologically used as part of the justification. Is there some kind of a parallel in the sort of justifying this kind of relocating of a lot of this fossil record to European or North American research institutions and museums and so on by the kind of claim that, well, we're helping to preserve. this, you know, material because if it's just left to the unfortunately, you know, kind of local circumstances of political instability and economic deprivation and all of that, you know, you know, this could be, this could mean that the scientific work really won't be able to be achieved. I mean, is there similarly that kind of discourse that is popular among global North scientists? I want to throw in a wrinkle onto what Adnan is saying because this underscores something

that I've actually seen when I, again, listeners, you know, I'm somebody who does look at paleontology on the side. But one of the things that I've seen that actually is similar to what Adnan is saying. And I bring it up because you're all based in Brazil is the burning down of the National Museum in Brazil in what, 2018, if I remember correctly. I've seen some discourse regarding that in terms of, oh, look at all of these specimens that were lost, as if it was the only museum in Brazil and, you know, all of the specimens that Brazil ever had were housed there, and therefore it's justified to extract all of the cultural history and cultural relics and, you know, natural history from Brazil because there was

this instance of where the National Museum burnt down and unfortunately destroyed many of those aspects of, you know, Brazilian culture and Brazilian history. But I just wanted to throw that in there as a specific example as you go ahead and answer the question that Adnan had posed. I think there are two things here. One is that sometimes people, most of the types people don't even talk about these issues. They just ignore completely any kind of justification of political dominance of our sides because they don't think it's necessary to talk about it. And because paleontology is more in the biological and geological sciences, I mean, what I mean is away from human science.

People don't think, most people don't think there is a necessity to talk about the social implications or the political implications of what we do, which I think is crap. It's very wrong. but that's one of the biggest problems and when you go to a science meeting you don't hear too much people talking about how paleontology affects society or politics they just don't

people don't think there's a necessity to address this and I think that's the main sort of the problem and nobody learns about colonial science at the university not us, we don't learn I think there should be a composer

lecture on colonial science in paleontology degree is any other degree in biology or geology etc but we don't have it and I think that's a big mistake most people ignore

the darks have their own history so that's one and the second regarding the museum Yes, we have heard a lot of people about the waiting, about that, because the museum was burned, and that's the only museum in Brazil, and because also Rio de Janeiro is the only city in Brazil. And so we cannot trust you the fossils.

And come out, and we can make a big list of museums that have been burned also in Europe or that have been destroyed by flooding or, even by wars the original Spinosaurus skeleton Yes, of course And you know, in that museum was also a Brazilian crocodile from the mildine. They started together

with the Spinosaurus. So it's a very bad analogy. I mean what happened in Notre Dame, it didn't happen in the global south. It happened in a rich country. And we can give

many examples of museums with lots of problems in the north and actually they have more problems because these are older museums made from wood architecture which is not the main construction means in Brazil he'll in between

made with bricks and cement much more difficult to catch fire so we hear that but it's bad for them to use that kind of argument because it's easily demolishable.

It's easily we can demonstrate easily that forces actually are in a higher risk in a museum in the global art than in the salt. So you're suggesting that the treasures of the Louvre should be relocated to Brasilia. If they want to make those arguments,

I'm joking, of course, but that's a great point. It's not a bad idea. Yeah. Before adding complexity to that An argument in opposite direction Tito has something to say about museums in Brazil Actually about Brazil at all Because people

Eat our country is like Very small It's like the size of Uruguay or the size of Spain Like a little tropical paradise You know but it's immense continental yes it's not as big as Russia and Canada

but it's larger than the United States if you don't count Alaska so it's really big and we have several states there and each one with each state with its own web of federal public universities there and each one of collections

and basically each one of collections and basically each one has a laboratory working on paleontology, almost all of them. Alina one and some colleagues made account of over 80 collections of paleontology across the country from the northern Amazon and museums, not only laboratories. So it's a huge, if you count the number of researchers they told, she told you, So it's a scale that most people don't have access to that. It's like in China.

People don't imagine how many researchers are there in China, how many institutions are doing research there, and most research are still being published in Chinese because people don't do effort to learn Chinese to access those papers and so what. So they have the bias of only those papers that are coming. out in English. It's a stereotype at view of what Brazil is, of what

Brazilian science is, basically is that. And also I must add that people in Brazil doesn't know about this richness too, because sometimes media wants to drive what we think about ourselves.

For example, usually media is eager to explore disasters as a source of news, right? But, okay, so the National Museum fire was in media all over the goal. But, well, why not talk about the extraordinary museums that are all over Brazil? So media is not interested in that. This distorts reality in the perception of people.

So even people in Brazil, me, Juan, and other people were fighting sometimes in the Internet trying to explain people from Brazil, saying that Fosters from Brazil should be out of here because our museum caught fire. And suddenly these people were surprised by knowing that there were plenty

of museums in Brazil, at least one per state. And suddenly they changed their mind. So oh, Nakhis, I didn't know that this nice museum was available for me to visit. So sometimes it's because of media-driven

type of communication. And that's why science communication done, not only by the media, not only by journalists, but also by scientists, it's very important because we are not driven by people buying the news. And okay, so I mentioned I wanted to add another type of argument to what one said, is that museums, what we do when we are driving most of important. and foster material and artifacts to Europe or whatever global lord. What do we do is creating a cycle of dependence. Why is that? Because, okay, the Louvre is famous because it's a wonderful collection. And people want to visit the Louvre.

And when they visit the Louvre, well, they not only pay the entrance, but they buy stuff. They are staying in the hotel. They're buying something in the restaurant nearby. well, they are moving the local economy. When you don't have museums here in the Global South with these extraordinary specimens that attract visit tourists, well, you don't move local economy. You don't attract investment to the local museums.

So they can get better infrastructure and, for example, not caught fire. So this investment, this money is going out of Brazil. So people are visiting things from Egypt, things from Brazil there in Europe, and are leaving their money there. And here, meanwhile, the local museum is working with, well, less fossils, not those very impressive fossils, and people don't want to visit, because it's more interesting to visit the Louvre. So what I usually said, we need to break that cycle.

when we fight to maintain those spectacular and interesting fossils here we attract people to visit them here not only tourists but also scientists that come to Brazil and move the local economy and that's the main reason why most of the global south countries have a legislation protecting fossils

because they understand this can have a connection return to the own country, not only a scientific return, but also an economical and educational return to the local community. So locally, this foster will help to educate, to build the body of new scientists and new teachers that we will use that as a tool for teaching, but also produce science, produce papers, high-impact papers, besides move in the local economy. So that's why global south countries are interested in protecting that.

And that's why global-lawed countries are interested in stealing that. Because they are interested, you know what, and taking that, producing manufactured products with our fossils, with our artifacts, and selling those manufactured products back to us in the form of books, in the firms of papers, in the firms of vaccines, in the firms of whatever it is. And we are paying double the price to access that knowledge. So this is not fair. That's why breaking the cycle of,

oh, things are more secure in Europe, things will be a better study in the global art than in the global salt because they have better, whatever, a better synchroton equipment, a better telescope, whoever, they have better equipment there. No, we have to break that cycle because with those

materials here, we'll bring local investment in science. We'll disappoint, we'll be high, we'll be producing high-impact paper that will bring money here so we can build better so we can

work in a form and better science and so on. So that's the main point of that. Yeah, that's so interesting. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, go ahead, Henry. Oh, I was just going to underscore, uh, with a specific example of the diversity and, and scale of Brazil.

So like Tito and Alini were mentioning, there's, geographically, it's huge. And I know that in the previous episodes about Brazil that we've talked about how by many metrics, Brazil is the most diverse population. in the world by many metrics. But even in terms of climate and geology and it's incredibly diverse, I know that, as you mentioned, there's a lot of stereotypes about Brazil in the global north. And I know that a lot of people get this view that Brazil is just like the Amazon with a couple of cities here or there.

But, you know, it's super tropical and very rainy and rainforests everywhere. but I know Alini and Tito, I know that you do a lot of your field work in northeast Brazil, which is not like that at all. Perhaps you can describe what, you know, the field conditions are like in northeast Brazil versus that stereotyped image of Brazil that a lot of people have, just as a brief aside. Colonization started, the European colonization started here in northeast Brazil, and therefore we have very few tropical. rainforests here in the Atlantic forest, there are very few left.

But the wild areas you go, to see them in the Brazilian outback, here we call it Sirtel. And actually, it is a very dry area with very cool resources and a steel medieval, Edmund is going to like it, because there is still remnant. there are remand traces of medieval culture here the music the xelobraphs I don't know how to say it the art

the art made in wood to create poems that can be told by sounds and so what and people leave you still in some part in mythology and religion is really present and there is a smaller

European influence here you have more influence of indigenous cultures and a lot of African cultures here and the interesting thing is that most of the fossils that was mobilized from Brazil

comes from this area in the Out Bay Araripa Plateau from which I have some unsuspects so for me this is a personal matter because there's part of my family came from one side of the border, and part of the family came from the other side of the border, and I have both indigenous ancestry, black ancestry, and European ancestry, and all from surrounding areas of this plateau. I even have the name of the plateau

in my great grandmother, Ararica. It's like one of my surname. So this is interesting, because when we think of Brazil, you don't think about, you don't think about the desert, a huge outback and this is the context here. Yeah, that's fascinating. It seems that Brazil, Mexico, there are a number of places in the global south where the paleontological record is so significant.

And what I've learned from your discussions today and also your writings is how much this process of big science in paleontology is structured. by these inequities of global north resources that are just reminiscent of whether it's, you know, big pharmacy, you know, exploiting, you know, plants and, you know, substances and local knowledge of how to use them for pharmacological, you know, purposes to exploit that resource, but with no concern and regard. for the intellectual and cultural knowledge and property, you could say, cultural heritage, intellectual heritage and property of the indigenous peoples. And so this is such a disturbing. I mean, we like to think science is this objective, you know, inquiry.

It's not subject to these kinds of political forces. But in your studies, you've done a very thorough job of looking at the literature, the paleontological literature, how the studies, you know, are done, who's doing them, where they're being conducted, and with what evidence and where the evidence is located. So this is a very forensic kind of analysis of, you know, this whole discipline and how it's structured. So I guess my question is, since you've exposed these inequities, these practices that

are affecting, you know, the discipline, you know, what's been the response in the paleontological community to your exposure of like these systemic sorts of problems? Because although I noticed that you did have a disclaimer saying that you didn't want to impute any, you know, particular motives in various cases of individual authors and researchers, the perspective overall, however, is pretty damning of the discipline you're studying people's studies and analyzing, well, are they following, you know, kind of ethical practices and procedures, which is very common in human research, you know, research ethics now has become a big, you know, part of appropriate academic practices if you're working with human subjects, if you're studying indigenous

community, if you're anthropologist, if you're doing surveys, if you're doing surveys, you have to go through a process of justifying the approach and the practice, is it going to be, you know, safe for the people? Are you being ethical in how you're treating? But I think this may be a foreign concept for a lot of scientists who think that this doesn't have anything to do with the peoples, their localities, the countries that's just there for the fossil records, wherever they can be obtained. So how are they responding, you know, because this really, in some sense, threatens the dominant position of certain key institutions and researchers in the community if you're saying this isn't being done the right way. So what have you experienced in that regard? Well, we messed with something that nobody was messing. people. And it was this for me was a calculated risk.

I knew that some people will fight us, which is happening. And at the same time, I knew some people will support us, which is also happening. So, yeah, we have been criticized by the people in the status school that had been saying that we have

disturbing, we're creating a big noise, we're just a bunch of whatever, not doing real size, but just sell those signs, and we are criticizing things, but we are making similar

mistakes to those, to those that we criticize, etc., etc. That was kind of the expected reaction in many ways, because as I mentioned at the beginning our size didn't have the tradition of talking about this

because it's not a human size okay so we don't need to take care about social and politics that's not like that and we do real pure science most people in our community think that way and I

hope I think that after our work we have, we touched some people and they started to rethink what they are doing. Even if they are saying, I feel that some people are thinking of what they are doing. And we managed to put a big mirror in front of a lot of people. And, but yeah, some people didn't like it. And not only outside, but still inside. isn't it like Alini, Tito, anything to add?

Yeah, and that happens because names emerge, right? When you look at the data, there are some country names in the top of the list of colonial practices. There are some altars names in the top of the list of recurring colonial practices.

And well, they didn't feel too well about it. So, as you, Juan mentioned, that was, well, we could foresee that. But what I couldn't foresee, for example, was people from our own country going against us. I couldn't foresee that. But there is only, not only the colonial issue, but there is only the, what do we say here, the coronavirus. so local asymmetry of power between regions and those people felt they have seen themselves in the mirror

because here in Brazil we do have for example Lortese because it was still the poorest region from Brazil the southeast region is the richest one whereas São Paulo in Rio de Janeiro most of science investment goes to down most universities are there most museums are there There's inequality in the distribution of, well, resources. And people from there usually come here to take fossils and bring there to study.

So they felt their reputation was also damaged by that. So I didn't foresee local backlash. I foresee our international backlash. And, well, but about backlash, well, I'm a science communicator, right? So I was used it to that. But it was a very strong backlash from international scientific community. And one thing that I wanted to add to the topic before, the beginning of your speech, Adnan, you said about it's a type of cultural violence,

and it is what it is. For example, people are dealing with fossils. long before the Western science was invented. So in prehistoric people were finding fossils and they were trying to develop theories to explain those things. And here, and North East Brazil in the Rieper region, from the region we specifically studied it

in the study you guys read, well, people there have their own explanation about the fossils. imagine a place in the middle of the outback of the Brazil and suddenly you find fishes and the stone what could that mean that perhaps in the past this dry region was a colossal sea in the past and they were they added that to their imagination

so here and this region there is this story in the mythology that this sit film which is the name for the outback here the siftan, it was a sea, and it would be a sea again. And the indigenous people of the region of Araripi, they have an explanation about why it isn't a sea nowadays. They say a stone snake just is sleeping under the plateau and is avoiding the sea to welcome out.

And that's why you have the fossils, right? so when you take those fossils that are part of this cultural idea of how the place was created you are doing a cultural violence to those people and you cannot ignore that when you are paleontology because those objects despite your interests in sciences purely paleontological they have a cultural meaning to those people too and so people that don't leave here, don't know that. They just go there, see a bunch of people they think

are, well, poor and underdeveloped, and they, well, they develop themselves a totally stereotypical understanding about that. Take those things away, and that's it. So that's

the first time when we are screaming to the world. So your science is stepping on a cultural background also that we cannot ignore we cannot ignore the social aspect of science because science is also social

science is also about politics as we mentioned it's also economics is also everything else is connected and dangled and we cannot separate those things in our minds to better understand perhaps but in the real world we cannot put science in the background

One thing I want to turn us towards for a little bit is law, and specifically because you have written about how laws in Brazil and Mexico have essentially codified that these fossils should be part of their national cultures, Mexican culture, Brazilian culture. And despite these laws, we still see the illegal export. one could say stealing and I will say stealing of these fossils including very significant fossils we're talking about you know Ubiurjarra for example

I know this is probably an example that you'll bring up at some point we already mentioned Irritator which like I said is the greatest named dinosaur of all time in my opinion especially if you add in the species name listeners you can Google that if you want In any case, what we have here is a situation where some countries like Brazil and Mexico

are implementing laws that should protect this sort of peritage. And yet we still see the circumventing of these laws and the circumventing of the cultures of the people present in order to enrich the institutions in the global north. And I'm going to single out Germany because Germany has a very long. history of doing this. And because I lived in Germany for three years, so I'm always happy to make fun of them or criticize them because I, you know, saw firsthand all of these things that, uh, you know, we discuss. But, you know, uh, this is, this is something that we have there. So I, I don't know who would like to take this question, but can you describe

kind of what the, the laws are that are being put in place to protect this cultural heritage in terms of fossils, you know, what are the laws that are going into place? What are the sort of restrictions that are put in place? And how are these sorts of laws still being circumvented by countries of the global north? And what is the justification given for the circumventing of these laws like, you know, the Karls Rue Natural History Museum? I would like to talk about this. you know, there is no way to understand this laws without knowing what colonialism is. Because our laws, Brazil, Mexico, all Latin America, Africa, Asia are basically the same. And what we have in common is that we all have been colonists, all have been colonists.

So these laws were made to protect our heritage, not only fossils, but we're not only fossils, but archaeological objects, biological richness, art, etc. So what we all have in common is that we all have been colonists. And the laws in the countries that have been colonized

are also very similar. You can sell everything, you can buy anything. And why is it that? Because they are used to buy things from others. They used to buy the prices from our countries. So in the global north, they are not that, they are not so concerned to protecting their heritage with their laws because they can buy our own, our stuff. They can buy our stuff. They have money and they can buy our stuff. And one of the characters, one of the main features of colonialism that defines it is that is the lack of the disregard of the local laws,

of the laws of the countries that are seen as suppliers. That's one of the main characteristics. That's one of the main features. So our laws are basically made to protect our heritage. And as I was saying, one of the main features of colonialism is to see. circumvent or disregard or minimize local laws, the laws of the countries that are the suppliers. So some colleagues, some people in our field even openly are ag or apologize breaking our laws.

Because they are in a position of power, you know, they are in a position of that they can say that. I wonder these people could also apologize breaking their laws of their own countries. Well, I, yeah, that's a very interesting issue. Both you and Aline mentioned that you were surprised by or you've observed that there is a paleontology, you know, there are members of the Brazilian or local paleontological community that don't stand by some of these. concerns and critiques that you've been making about these problems in colonial and, you know, neo-colonial forms of the scientific discipline. And it, you know, reminds me a little bit of the kind of classic structures really of colonialism. This is no different, really, in some ways,

and also in the post-colonial condition that we hear of those who, you know, are tied by their interests and through these networks to the wider metropole and depend on the metropole so that their interests are more tied to being connected with cosmopolitan metropolitan global north science because that's where the access, that's where the resources, that's where the recognition and the connections to being part of the broader community come, come from. from because those are in the control of others. And so maybe it's not so surprising that there would be, you know, even if we use basic dependency theory, I mean, there's going to be classes of people that are going to fall on the side of protecting the larger neocolonial global

economic structures here. In the same way that they, you know, they do in the larger economy, they do so also in the scientific and intellectual and academic realms. And that's what we need to think of, the culture industries, the knowledge industries, those economies, they may have some specific and individual features that need to be appreciated, but they are also subject to the broader structural positions. And so maybe that's, you know, it's disturbing, but it's maybe not in the analytical sense so surprising because that's the position that they inhabit within the structures and within these networks. But if we're ready, I know you've been so generous with your time and illuminating in your analysis.

But before we, you know, kind of conclude, perhaps Henry, you know, you have a comment you want to make before a final question. Yeah, I'll just hop in and I'm going to be brief because if the listeners want the more detailed argument of what I'm asking you, it's in your paper. So if they want to see you answer this in a written format, they can. I just think that we're having a good time and we've got a good camaraderie going. We're all in agreement here. And so I think that it might tease out a little bit more venom in the refutations of these arguments. But in that article that I had already mentioned, the title of which, again, was digging deeper into colonial paleontological practices in modern-day Mexico and Brazil. There's a section titled, In Defense of Scientific Colonialism and Paleontology and Beyond. And we've talked about a few of these justifications to defend scientific colonialism. But there's a few that we haven't really touched on yet. And so in brief, I'm just going to read them and read the defenses. And if you want to pick the holes in any of the topics that we haven't already covered,

because we've already hit at least three of them, probably more like four, we'll feel free to. And then Adnan can hop in with the closing question after that. But as I mentioned, the section, so again, listeners, if you click on the link that I'll put in there, it's section 6 and defense of scientific colonialism and paleontology and beyond. And then there's subsections for each of these specific arguments that are made. 6.1 is fossils should be considered global heritage, not national heritage. This is one that we haven't really talked about yet. So maybe that's one that we'll focus on.

But I'm going to keep hitting all of the rest of these and then I'll let you go and take them however you want. 6.2, host countries do not have adequate facilities or personnel to store fossil objects so they are safer in Western museums, which we've talked about extensively. 6.3, there is a lack of local scientific expertise, research, education, and investment in science in lower-income countries. 6.4, there is a disinterest in fossils among the local community. 6.5 specimens are lost to science if they are not collected and studied. 6.6, laws are too complicated or difficult to access. And 6.7, which is almost the most laughable to read, commercial exploitation of fossils aids science. So, like I said, we've covered

about half of those already pretty extensively in this, but there's a few that we haven't really talked about. So I'm just going to unleash the three of you to chat about some of those justifications for the maintenance of scientific colonialism, and then Adnan can close us up with a final question. The first one is something else, because, for example, let's use an analogy, fossil fuel was also made when there was no country borders. So I would should consider one thing for fossils and another thing for fossil fuels. So that doesn't even make sense. So, Fossils also have an economical interest as Consul Fools have economical interest.

That's why we should consider well political borders when discussing about them as we do with fossil fuels because they may change the reality of a country where they are found. The product of that science should be borderless so should be accessible to all. Since I produce science, since I produce a content

a book and paper about that, that should have no faultiers, right? The next one that we didn't really talk about is that there is a, quote, disinterest in fossils among the local community. How can you be interested in something if you don't know that something exists in the first place? So if the local community, to make the local community become interested in something,

we must have the fossils here, not in Germany. They must be here. so people can see them realize they can see them sometimes they can touch them some places can be taught so people need to be able to have a contact with a fossil

in their place of origin so they can realize what happened there what lived there and also because that will be proud of that gives you a sense of your land

is important because nice creatures, giant creatures give here in the past so it's cool to be here could be part of this and if you take the fossils from these people, how will they learn those things?

They won't learn them going to see a in the London and Stuttgart they won't do that. They have to sit them in their own place because that's where they can do it. And that's how we make people be interested.

And they are interested. They are, they are, they are interested. They are, why you, what you've demonstrated, once you put them in contact with some of these heritage, you can see, you know, the fire the eyes. You can see this is cool.

This is something that I want to learn. This is good to know about things. But the forces need to be here, not somewhere else. That's how people will learn. that's how people be appreciated. That's how people will love and take care

of their heritage. And it is their heritage. And I'm going back to one of the previous questions. The definition of heritage is that you inherit something. So if your culture didn't exist at the time a dinosaur was walking there, it doesn't mean the dinosaur doesn't belong

to your country. Your country inherited just in the same way that the UK heritage of the Stone Age, even if the UK didn't exist at the time in Stone Age was built. That's the concept of heritage. In heritage, you have to protect

how to protect also. So the Coliseum was built before Italy existed. It was not such a concept of Italy there. But it's an heritage. It's important to mention that

different from our cultures like Germany, where the general population doesn't show much interest in paleontology, they told me that. German paleontologists told me that they were disappointed that people were not. We were receiving a German class here in the interior of Brazil in the southeast, and they were overwhelmed to visit a small town with a cool museum there full of fossils in the countryside of

Sao Paulo. And there were many things with the dinosaur paleontology deal, like a nice bridge store and restaurants. The capital of the dinosaurs in India. Yeah, and there is also another

town and the other town had every feed with dinosaur deems. And the local people loved about dinosaurs. And you see, local really, poor people going to the museum, because museum are free, you have coffee for free, you know, and they don't see that in their European countries. So they were overwhelmed. And one thing that's very interesting, that science is

entangled in Brazilian culture. We like science. We were one of the countries of the greatest amount of science communicators, science channels on YouTube until the past years, and even paleontologists that are science communicators as well in Portuguese. We were off the countries with the greatest channels. Even some colleagues from France and Germany were asking advice. Until recently, the biggest paleontological channels focused and communicating paleontology were from Brazil. Yeah.

And about liking sciences, science, Brazil is the country with the larger cover of vaccination ever. So, Brazilians are into science. they're into science communication so it's not a real thing telling that well you shouldn't keep fossils in Brazil because people aren't interested in them there

it's not based on stereotypical knowledge about resilience that Brazilians only like football and some but this is stereotypical yeah start that happened in Samba they had a dinosaur purine yeah we have a

Curney, the dinosaur parade, it's amazing. And we have a scientist in Selma like Bertrandutz and scientists. Exactly. So this is totally stereotypical. Go out of the argument. You sound totally lazy when you tell people something like that. It's people that are probably not with a good intention, distorting reality to build an argument to justify Christ.

or prejudges or racist, which is a very taboo word. People don't like to say that they are racist, but most of them are racists. In between holes, environments, we felt microphones, and journalists, they say bad feeds to you, very racist feeds to you. You don't know and journals and the youths. Yeah, in the backstage, we read and listen to very old stuff. and they benefit from that since most people never talk to a Brazilian before they just consume

action movies about Bang Bang movies in Brazil and they think it's just that the culture is just violence and party and sex and that ends up adding us into a lower category of humans we are dehumanized

And that's the whole cultural thing that we need to change. We need to humanize people that are usually dehumanized first before we start building up better connections to north-south, you know? We need to humanize. What I will tell them is just come visit Brazil. Let's go to Sosa, the cat calls the dinosaurs. I would love to. Believe me, so would I.

Sounds fascinating. Sorry, Juan. Go ahead. Just a final thing. Because we have been getting some criticism that we don't want foreigners working here. We heard that. We heard that. And it's not that.

We welcome international cooperation. Well, we are asking people be fairing that cooperation. Cooperation must be both ways, must benefit both parties, and must respect their love, Joseph. They will expect us to respect their own. So that's how you do science. You do it with cooperation. You don't do science alone. You cooperate with everybody.

Any count is welcome to work here. But it must offer equitative. fair cooperation, a fair benefit for both parties. That's important. Brazil is a big country, the size of Europe. There are forces for everybody, but cooperation needs to be fair. That's what we want. That's a perfect transition to what I wanted to ask you about.

It leads directly. since you've been very clear about the critiques of what's wrong in the practices of this discipline, paleontology, in your studies and in our conversation, my final question for you all was just what recommendations you would make to improve the discipline of paleontology and to decolonize in some sense this scientific discipline. Yeah, look for cooperation, look for partnerships, fair partnerships, try to think about

how am I going to collaborate, how am I going to benefit, not just what am I going to take away from there, how am I going to do something positive there, and why? Why is that important? Because if that happens, then the benefit goes both ways. And, you know, I wouldn't like to put myself as an example, but I have been cooperating with foreign researchers for 30 years here. And when I came here, there was not even a lab. I had to make a lab. But we have been cooperating for a long time.

And we have now published a lot of papers. and have a museum that didn't even exist at the other time. And lots of local people are now in a position to appreciate to learn and to love things that they didn't even suspect that they existed here. And it's probably, it was all I can add, but I think it can be done. It can be done. We can work all together.

with any country that comes with researchers from any country that come with good intentions and offer a fair partnership, a fair cooperation. Some people are capable of doing that. Some people are not capable of doing that, as we all know. But I am very positive that the younger generations are less biased about this. it's easy to talk with John Edgar people about these things and I think probably Aline and Tito

will I wouldn't hear what they say about that No, what you said is just perfect but we should add something that was damage that was done and we should also do something about that that's where it enters the restitution so things that

got stilled, got plundled, got plundered from the Global South. When Global South institutions, when Global South society, people, they ask for the restitution, repatriation of cultural items, any items, they should be restituted. And I know another fear from people,

from Europe especially, is that their museums, their institutions, will be emptied. after that. Well, we don't need old fossils. There are fossils that are more important than others for us, for the understanding of our history, of our culture, and also has more scientific significance. So, we don't want them all. We don't even have, well, place to bore them all. So they should hesitate when we ask some items. to be restituted, they should restitute that.

And we can also exchange material. So, for example, if they are interested in Brazilian fossils, let's do it the right way. Let's talk about it, not by fossils from disregarding the laws of other countries, disregarding local specialists and their knowledge. So restitutes is another way to try to will make the damage lesser than it was in the last setteries. So first, horizontal cooperation, restitution when possible, and maybe some practical attitudes, such as paying attention when publishing papers,

for example, if the provenance of the fossil is well, explained and well-documented if it is following the laws of the original the source country right another thing even if the material you cannot

access easily in the internet and here's answering one of the and every concerns for example the law is too complicated well you you have political societies you have colleagues you can you have the entire Brazilian law

for three on online. And you can translate any time you just with the press of a button, of a finger. But anyway, you can ask a colleague from Brazil. You can ask the local opinion to launch the society. It's not that hard, right? We are not savages. We will answer. And, well, so guarantee that the law is respected. And we should demand that from the scientific magazines. We should demand that from editors, from pure viewers. And what else? I think Juan is right.

Perhaps talking about that with the younger generations will promote the larger and significant change. Because we need to think about the future. So, okay, we can restitute this now. And what about the future? What happens in the future? Because we have a systemic problem with epistemic racism, where we still have the European white man as the center of the universe

that is the model of the whole society, the world society. And we need to talk about that as you guys do in the Gerea podcast, as we are trying to do in our science communication channels because younger generation people got to know, understand that this exists, there is an epistemic racist

and that is affecting all the layers of society and how we can change that. So you guys are part of the change. And thank you for opening the space for us. You know, any final words on your part? Oh, okay. So, now, all right, all right. Alinda said, my friend.

Yes, but the poor thing here is we must improve diversity. in this Aces. If we improve diversity, the diversity of voices, more people like me, more people like a lady, more women, more black people, more people from all, different people and more from indigenous peoples and everything. If you have different voices in science,

you have different insights, and we could even more the advance of science. The advance, we have the golden age we have now in paleontology. It's not just a consequence of time of investment or so on. It's a consequence of the improvement of the diversity, especially the contributions to the global. So different people now have voices and we need to improve even more. Absolutely. I know that about what two years ago, there was a book that made some relatively major waves

in certain communities at least titled The Brutish Museums. It was by Professor Dan Hicks talking about the Benin bronzes and other stolen artifacts, such as, you know, those that were stolen from Nigeria and the like. And it did create some waves in people saying, hey, we do need to have cultural restitution. But it's important for people to take away from this conversation that it's not just these artifacts that were produced by people themselves to document their own history. Of course, the Benin Bronses is an egregious example of colonialism and science and cultural violence against a people and stealing of their history. And of course, I highly recommend everybody check out that book. But what you should get from this conversation that we had is that it's not just these sorts of artifacts that were produced by human hands that constitute cultural history and culture more generally. It's important that we also, you know, think about how can we decolonize these components of paleontology, things that were around long before humans were around, much less things that were made by humans.

You know, how do we try to preserve that cultural heritage for the people of the area where these things come from? Like Juan had mentioned earlier, these are inherited by a people. it's the people's responsibility to preserve, to take care of these artifacts, to learn from them. It is part of their culture. And so I hope that that came through in the conversation. I know also that there was an effort to, there is an effort to bring Irritator back to Brazil. I know there was an open letter, which I had signed at one point. I don't know if that's still an open letter that people can sign onto or not, but if one of you can tell everyone how they can get involved with the effort to bring Irritator back to Brazil.

I know that we had kind of alluded to it, you know, at some parts, but Irritator is this really fascinating dinosaur that is now in Stuttgart, you know, like it's very far removed from where it was originally found. So if one of you could just tell the people what the status of Irritator is at the current time and if there's anything that they can do to get involved in the push to, you know, restitute it back to Brazil. Well, the letter, there was an open letter. It was our initiative.

We got 2,000 signatures there. And in the next days, it's going to be addressed to the Minister of Science and Culture in the state of Baden and Gutenberg in southern Germany. It's the state where Stuttgart is, what the Museum of Sturgat depends on. And it's also the same state where the more famous cousin, Ubirajara, was also stored in the past. And I say the past because it's now in Brazil. So we are using the same strategy we used for the Ubirajara dinosaurs.

And for the people that doesn't know what Ubirajara is, just type Ubirr belongs to B.R, any social media, You will get lots of information about that dinosaur. So irritator is going to irritate the sea soon at Hopsi. And I think it's going to work. We are going to rest it to this dinosaur. It's a very cool dinosaur. And that's what I was passing the ball to Al-inianito

because I think they know more about that dinosaur. But yes, if you want to help, you can use. the hashtag Irritator belongs to BR, BR, Brazil, not Britain, of course. And I hope this strategy works

again. The tape a way that is going to be useful for, not so of this, but for several other restitutions that are in the ORIS. I am very, very positive. I'm very optimistic about that. And I want to encourage

the people to Google Irritator, just to see what it looks like, but Alini and Tito, can you just briefly describe like 30 seconds? What is Irritator? I think I want to encourage as many people to look it up as possible because it really is a fascinating specimen. It's smaller than T-Rex. It looks like a T-Rex. It's a Knieper dinosaur but with very powerful arms, three fingers, and the lungs nought like a crocodile or like a bird. Yeah, like a herald. Yes. So it was a fish-eating dinosaur. that was capable of opening the lower jaw like a palika to bait fish. And while it was also capable of swimming in the shallow waters,

so just take a look at it because it's a really cool dinosaur and one of the most complete known spinosaurids for those dino fans around there. I know Spinosaur is the favorite dinosaur, but a ton of kids around there and young adults and adults as well. and irritator is similar to Spinosaurus but a bit smaller

and it lived in a lagoon here in artist Brazil and I want to take the moment to invite you really invite you to join the discussion in the social medias the letter was closed we are currently curating the signatures

and the letter will be sent soon to the minister so how you can help you can draw the dinosaur, you can share your thoughts about the dinosaur always using the hashtag Ibidator belongs to BR. So you will find if you search in any social media, if you search for the hashtag, you will find already a lot of content about it. And also throw on your thoughts about colonialism and science when using that hashtag too, because it serves like a place

but we can commonly discuss this topic. So feel free to join us in the discussion. Yeah, really outstanding conversation. I really enjoyed it. I want to thank all three of you, again, for coming on to the show. I'm going to have each of you tell the listeners how they can find you and your work, both in terms of this sort of work, you know, talking about decolonizing paleontology, as well as the more paleontology,

paleontology side of things. I know, for example, your work on paleo histology, just it's right up my alley. I know, I told you this before we hit record, but like really is tying together two of the things that I really loved and studied before I exited science. But again, listeners,

our guests were Juan Cisneros, Alini Gilardi, and Tito Oriliano. Thank you very much. Can each of you tell the listeners how they can find you in your work? you can find me on Twitter in Talio dot Cisneros and also on Blue Sky just Cisneros

in blue sky Cisneros C-N-E-R-O-S and otherwise if you type Ubirajara or irritator is probably you will find one of us three of all of us at the same time you can find me a Twitter and Blue Sky with Tito underlined Oreliano.

Or you can look for our idea and I need to you to add to the description of the podcast because it's in Portuguese, Collecioladores de Osses. If you add this name, the name of our studio, you're going to find the Instagram, videos, shorts on YouTube, into documentaries, and the list is long, like over 250 videos, so on. We also do this typecom to games so you can find our game on Steam if you search for a Dino-Hauser.

So make sure you take a look on that. And to find me on social media, my name is complicated, so I'll make sure to ask at Nana and Manbreet to put it on the description of this podcast. So it's at Alini M. Gilardi. In

any social media, you can find me with that. And also in our YouTube channel, so me and Tijo are together. and all those scientific communication afforded. I will wait for you all there, and it will be a pleasure to talk to you all. Absolutely. I highly recommend everybody to check out all of those things. I'll have links to all of that in the show notes.

Adnan, how can the listeners find you and your other podcast? You can find me on Twitter. I still want to call it Twitter. I think X is kind of silly, so Twitter, let's just stick with it. at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N, and you can listen to the M-A-J-L-I-S, a podcast about Middle East, Islamic World, Muslim Diasporic History, Culture. It's on all the usual platforms, and I've followed you all three on Twitter, and I thank you so much for joining us and educating us about these important topics about paleontology, scientific, Catholic colonialism. I've learned so much from this conversation and from your work. Thank you. Absolutely. Listeners, to remind you, our co-host, Brett O'Shea, was not able to make it today, but you can find all of his work at Revolutionary Left Radio.com. As for me, you can find me on Twitter at Huck, 1995, H-U-C-1995, the Stalin history and critique of a black legend translation that Salvatore Angledi Morrow and myself did of Domenico Lassardo's classic.

work is now available. You can get it from pretty much any bookstore. I'm highly recommending people to call their local library and request them to stock it. Helps everybody. It'll be freely available to people in your community and, you know, it also gets another copy out there. So, you know, just look for that. You can find that on my Twitter as well. It's probably pinned in my bio. And of course, you can help support guerrilla history by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, Gorilla is spelled G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history, no underscore in the Patreon. And right now, Adnan, you and I are doing a little mini-series for patrons, specifically on the religious cultures of the medieval Mediterranean. So listeners, if you are interested, can find that mini-series.

We're going to be doing episode five of it very soon, I think. And you can follow Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-R-I-L-A-U-R-R-I-L-A-U-Score pod. And until next time, listeners, Solidarity. Thank you.