Science Friday - Shinnecock Nation, Marsh Science, Weekend Stargazing. Oct 15, 2021, Part 2

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

On Long Island, A Tribal Nation Faces Growing Pressures The Hamptons on Long Island are known as a mansion-lined escape for wealthy New Yorkers. But the area is also home to the Native residents of the Shinnecock Tribal Nation. An estimated 1,500 Shinnecock members are left in the U.S., and about half live on the Nation’s territory on Long Island. As with the rest of the island, Shinnecock Nation is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Receding shorelines threaten to eat up three-quarters of its territory by 2050, adding to the existing threat of development from the Hamptons. This issue of climate change and its impacts around Long Island is the subject of the new podcast, “Higher Ground,” from WSHU Public Radio in Fairfield, Connecticut. One of the stories told in the podcast is that of Tela Troge, Shinnecock tribal sovereignty attorney and kelp farmer, who lives on Shinnecock territory in Long Island.  Tela talks to Ira about seeing climate change and development affect Shinnecock land with her own eyes, and her venture into kelp farming as a tool for nitrogen sequestration.      The World According To Sound: Listening To Lightning There is more than one way to listen to a bolt of lightning. While you can pick up the boom and rumble of thunder with your ears, if you tune in with a radio receiver, you can hear an entirely different sound: an earth whistler. When lightning strikes, it releases electromagnetic radiation in the VLF or Very Low Frequency band, which runs from 3 Hz to 30 kHz. This falls within the human range of hearing, which spans from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. However, we can not hear whistlers with our own ears because the radiation is electromagnetic, not physical vibrations in the air. We can, though, capture the electromagnetic radiation with a radio receiver. Radio operators have been picking up the strange twanging of lightning ever since they started trying to tune into man-made signals. They dubbed the eerie electro-magnetic disturbances in their headphones “earth whistlers.” People first heard earth whistlers back in the 19th century. The electromagnetic radiation from lightning interfered with telephone lines and crept into phone conversations. You’d be talking with someone and hear these bursts of energy, like little phone ghosts.  Today, we know earth whistlers are made by the interaction of lightning with the planet’s magnetic field. There are over a million lightning strikes in the atmosphere, which means there is a nearly constant chorus around earth.  The whistlers in this piece were provided courtesy of NASA and The University of Iowa.  The World According to Sound is a live audio show, online listening series, and miniature podcast that focuses on sound, not story. Producers Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett create intentional, communal listening experiences as a way to “reclaim autonomy in a visually dominated world that is increasingly fracturing our attention.”  This recording is part of their next listening series, an immersive listening party where audiences from all over the globe will be invited to experience a world of sound together, beginning in January 2022. You can get a ticket to the series here.      Save The Wetlands, Save The World In Rising, the Science Friday Book Club pick for this fall, author Elizabeth Rush writes frequently of marshes. Rush explores the disappearing wetlands of Louisiana’s hurricane-battered coast, the San Francisco Bay Estuary, Staten Island’s newly abandoned flood zones, and other marshes around the country. But why, scientifically speaking, are wetlands such a feature of the conversation around coastal resilience to climate change and rising seas.  In a recording with a ‘live’ Zoom audience, SciFri producer Christie Taylor speaks with wetland ecologists Marcelo Ardón and Letitia Grenier about the resilience and adaptability of marshland, how climate change and sea level rise threatens them, and why protecting and restoring tidelands is good for everyone.      Widening The Lens On A More Inclusive Science In 2012, the Obama administration projected that the United States would need to add an additional 1 million college graduates in STEM fields per year for the next ten years to keep up with projected growth in the need for science and technology expertise. At the same time, though, native Americans and other Indigenous groups are underrepresented in the sciences, making up only 0.2% of the STEM workforce in 2014, despite being 2% of the total population of the United States. Why are Indigenous people still underrepresented in science?   In this re-broadcast of the 2019 conversation, Ira speaks with astrophysicist Annette Lee and anthropologist Kim TallBear about the historical role of science and observation in Indigenous communities, and how Western scientific culture can leave out other voices. They also discuss the solutions: What does an inclusive scientific enterprise look like, and how could we get there?      This Weekend, Take Time For The Moon This Saturday marks International Observe the Moon Night, a worldwide astronomy education event encouraging people to take time to look at the moon—through a telescope, if possible. Around the world, astronomers will be setting up public telescopes and encouraging passers-by to take a look.  Dean Regas, astronomer at the Cincinnati Observatory, joins Ira to explain how to get in on the lunar-observation action. They also talk about other astronomical events, including the ongoing Orionid meteor shower and an upcoming partial lunar eclipse on November 19.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. St. Louis Public Radio, Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. The Hamptons, way out on Long Island, are known as an escape for wealthy New Yorkers, but they're also home to the Shinnecock tribal territory. There are about 1,500 Shinnock left in the U.S.

About half live on the territory on Long Island. Generations alive today say a lot needs to happen to rebuild the relationship between the tribe and suburbia and the impact on the environment. That's J.D. Allen, host of the podcast Higher Ground from WSHU Public Radio. The podcast is an exploration of the impacts of climate change and development on Long Island. And it takes a look at what communities there are doing to keep up with their changing environment. Three quarters of their territory could be lost to sea level rise by 2050, and more frequent extreme weather will accelerate that process.

This has really been at our front door for a lot longer, I think, than the rest of the population. And so we're really forced to spring into action to mitigate and adapt. One of the stories told in the podcast is that of my guest, Tila Troj, Shinnock Tribal Attorney and Kelp Farmer based on Chinnacock Territory on the south shore of Long Island. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Nice to have you. Can you begin to paint for us a picture of why the Shinnecock Nation land is so vulnerable to climate change?

Sure. So Shinnecock Territory is a peninsula. We are surrounded on all sides by water. We have about 900 acres of our ancestral territory remaining, and we're a frontline community is seeing a rapid loss of territory due to rising sea level water. Cynicac Nation has experienced a loss of our territory due to climate change, due to rising sea water. We're facing issues of saltwater intrusion.

that's rapidly eroding our shoreline, and we're seeing nutrient overloads, which is rapidly depleting our traditional way of life, including our aquaculture trade, which we depend on for sustenance and sustenance. What is your agriculture trade? Tell me about that. So historically, Shinnecock have depended on the water for shellfish, for fishing, for whaling, And today we see that 99% of the marine life has died, and all of it is tied to excess nitrogen in our water from lack of residential and commercial wastewater treatment as well as lawn fertilization. And so what are you doing to combat that? Is there something you can do in that water system? So we are taking the approach of growing sugar kelp, which is a native species.

that has the ability to extract excess nitrogen, as well as carbon from the water. And so we're looking at a situation where we're going to be farming the sugar kelp. And our first season, we're looking to farm 10,000 pounds of sugar kelp, which could remove up to 36 pounds of nitrogen from our water from Shinnikak Bay, which we depend on the most for fish and shellfish, as well as recreate some of the habitat that's been lost to hurricanes and storms,

such as Superstorm Sandy. So you can make a business out of farming the kelp, but what do you do with the kelp? How do you sell it? So one of the main things that we're looking at doing is turning the kelp into a fertilizer. So historically, the Shinnikok people used kelp, as well as, fish for fertilization of our crops. And that's one of the first things that we taught the European settlers. We noticed that they were starving. They didn't have any food. So we showed them how do

use seaweed to help cultivate their crops? And seaweed is actually also a really good insulator. So we've always used seaweed to insulate our homes. And so that's something else that we taught the European settlers had to do. But we're hoping to replace the fertilizer that is used to artificially maintain a lot of the college campuses on Long Island, the golf courses on Long Island, as well as the homes, their mansions really of millionaires and billionaires that before the COVID-19 pandemic, you know, they really only lived in for a couple of months out of the year, yet had maintained year-round these vast lawns. And so what was happening was a lot of these folks were shipping in fertilizer from New Jersey and, you know, they're crossing over the George Washington Bridge. And it

just had this huge, huge impact. And then the fertilizer was running off into the water and contributing to this nitrogen overload that in turn kills all of the marine life. So, We're hoping to use our sugar kelp as fertilizer to kind of reduce that carbon footprint and locally grown organic product rather than just a chemical pollutant. So how long do you think it will take for you to see an effect on the nitrogen levels around you? We're hoping that by 2025 we can activate a network of farmers, large enough to produce 200 million pounds of seaweed that will sequester 12,350 tons of CO2 and 412.5 tons of nitrogen each year. And that's the rate that we need to go at to really

begin to mitigate the problem. I know if you look, if I look at the map of Long Island and I see you're on Chinnecock Bay, which leads out right into the Atlantic. ocean. I imagine that the sea level rise along with the hurricanes that come by every now and then must devastate and just eat away at the native lands there. It is. It's absolutely devastating to the Shinnecock territory. We've lost a lot of our ancestral land to colonization, to land theft, to the state of New York violating federal laws. But now we're in this crisis where we're seeing our territory and our livable land just be completely, completely lost to the sea. And we have estimates by FEMA that by 2050 up to three quarters of our territory could be underwater from a combination of

storms and rising sea levels. Do you think that the kelp farming can actually hold back the sea a bit? We hope so. We're using it in conjunction with other methods. We recently completed a coastal rehabilitation project where we are utilizing other techniques such as oyster reefs, but we're hoping that by creating these kelp farms, we'll create a habitat where oysters can return back. President Biden just declared the Beconic Bay, which is another body of water that surrounds our territory, a federal disaster zone because of the loss of 99% of the marine life there. And Shinnecock Bay is, it's not in any better shape. You know, 99% of what lived there no longer can exist. So we're hoping that the kelp forests, the kelp farms can bring back these marine bivalves that function as natural filters, as well as hurricane protection to protect the shoreline.

And it's not just our shoreline that we're protecting. It's all of Long Island and all of these ultra vulnerable communities that are right up on the water. I had no idea how bad the situation was. 99% gone. Yes. We're in a true crisis. Are you getting any support from the non-native residents of the Hamptons who live in those giant mansions? We are hoping that they will support us by purchasing our fertilizer. We also have a really strong partnership with the sisters of St. Joseph who have a nunnery out in Hampton bays. And so we are seeing a lot of support from environmentally conscious neighbors. Well, as someone who grew up on Long Island and knows a lot about what you're talking about, I wish you great luck.

And I hope it'll be more than luck that you get in assistance. Thank you so much. Tila Troj, Shinnecock Tribal Attorney and Kelp Farmer based on Shinnecock Territory on the South Shore of Long Island. And if you're interested in learning more about climate change and its impacts on Long Island, Check out the Higher Ground Podcast from our friends at WSHU Public Radio. Have you ever heard lightning? And no, I'm not talking about thunder.

Here's something very different via a soundscape from Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett of the World According to Sound Podcast. When lightning strikes, it releases electromagnetic radiation that can be picked up by radio operators who call them Earth missiles. There are several million lightning strikes. today on the planet, which means there's a constant chorus of whistlers in the atmosphere around Earth. These sounds are part of a communal listening series. The World According to Sound is hosting this winter. For information about their 80-minute binoral events, visit the world according to

sound.org. After the break, we're going to put on our waiters and explore marsh science and why rising seas threaten the wetlands we need. Change is happening faster, and we're preventing or restricting the ability of these ecosystems to change or to adapt. Very important stuff. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. It's book club season, and that means book club captain Christy Taylor is here to modulate the medium and shepherd the conversations we've been having about the climate change-centered book Rising Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush. Hey there, Christy.

Hey there, Ira. Okay, what are we going to talk about today? Ira, I have just one word for you, and that's marshes. Marshes, marshes, marshes, marges, reminds me of that old sitcom, you know what I mean? I have that problem, too. But we really need to talk more about marshes, specifically coastal wetlands, just like the ones we heard about in Long Island.

In Rising, Elizabeth Rush talks a lot about them, how they collect and sequester carbon, how sea level rise makes them rot and disappear, and how we need them to protect the coast from flooding. You know, anyone who's ever lived through a hurricane has an appreciation already, and I can attest to that. Yeah, for sure. And the thing is, a coastal marsh is also really complex.

Here's a short excerpt from the book about a marsh in Rhode Island. It gives you a good idea of how much there actually is to understand about these ecosystems. Elizabeth writes, Jacob's Point, like all tidal marshes, contains three distinct zones. low marsh, high marsh, and an upland area at its farthest inland edge. Every day, the low marsh is covered in salt water twice and also uncovered twice. The high marsh slips beneath the salt only in storms. Along the point seaward edge, plants and animals have adapted to live with the tides,

while upland, the opposite is true. Think of a tidal marsh as, like all wetlands, a transitional region, where distinctions blur and the entirely wet world morphs into the almost entirely dry. one. Wow, that's a great quote. Yeah, it really is. So to wade in, as they say, to Marsh Science, I grabbed some experts from opposite coasts, Marcelo Ardon, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, and Letitia Grenier, a scientist with the San Francisco Estuary Institute's Resilient Landscapes Program. And just a quick note that this interview was recorded in front of a live Zoom audience. You'll hear a couple audience questions along the way. But first, I asked Lettisha to

tell us more about the specific marsh ecosystem she worked in, and what exactly makes it tick? Tidal marshes are the most important ecosystem you've never heard of. Often we drive by them if you live near the coast and so many of us do, and you don't even think about them. They're pretty flat. And what's really important about them is they do so many things for people and also for nature and wildlife. They lie between high tide and low tide. So they actually are tidal. The tide goes in and out of than every day. And it comes via this network of channels that's a lot like the arteries bringing blood into your body and muscles and then taking it away. So they're very connected to the ocean and to the land. They're really half of each. And what they do for us are things like sequester and

store carbon. So they're actually helping mitigate climate change. But they also protect the shoreline. So they're helping us adapt to climate change by absorbing water, reducing erosion. If you have a big tidal marsh in front of your shoreline, you can actually have a much smaller. levee behind it than you would need to have if you didn't have that marsh there. They also have lots of important species in them, endangered species, especially in California, and they make food. That's a huge thing. They make tons and tons of food, which feeds fish and other kinds of sea life, and that feeds people and even more wildlife. So they're kind of, I think of them as the refrigerators of California where we work. And Marcello, meanwhile, in North Carolina, you're working

in a very different kind of coastal wetland. It's actually a freshwater. ecosystem, but tell us about sort of your area of study. Yeah. So I love that description that you just read from the book talking about the low marsh, the high marsh, and the upland. We started studying upland forested wetlands. And here when we say upland, they just mean they're a little higher elevation. And so we don't have the influences of those tides that you have in the marshes. But what we've been seeing is that that line that separates the forest and the marsh has been shifting. We've been getting, you know, sea levels are rising. The soils, these wetlands are getting saltier.

And then we're having more storms as well. And so we're having these forested wetlands are turning into marshes. In some cases, and in some other cases, we don't really have that marsh state. basically these forested wetlands get swallowed by the, in our case, in the sounds, the estuaries. So we have a loss of all of these ecosystem services. So if forest wetland turns into a marsh, maybe that's not as big of a deal. But when you have a forested wetland turn into open water, then you're definitely losing a lot of those ecosystem services. Well, and you're already referring to something that Elizabeth talks about in this book, which is the migration and transitions of marshes and wetlands to different kinds of marshes and wetlands and ecosystems.

And I wonder if you could talk more about that process, both how a marsh can change under rising seas, but also how in some ways that change isn't always bad, perhaps. I guess one way that I'd like to think about it is these marshes and these wetlands and the mountains, and the, and the sea level are kind of dancing, right? They're kind of doing this back and forth. If you look over a long enough period of time, you know, we know that sea levels have been higher in the past than they are now. They have retreated and now they're kind of moving back up again. And so you could imagine these marshes and these wetlands dancing and going back and forth as these changes have been happening. So these changes are not new. What I think it's important to remember is at sea levels are rising at rates that are faster than at least the last 2,000 years.

And so when you have these changes happening at a faster rate, it means that these wetlands don't have the time to migrate as they migrated in the past. And the other problem is that we've put barriers that prevent this movement as well. We've built roads. We put agricultural fields. We put golf courses, marinas, all these different things. So change is happening faster and we're preventing or restricting the ability of these ecosystems to change or to adapt to this, which kind of gives it a double whammy and we end up with dead trees standing in the water. Letitia, anything to add there. What's amazing about tidal marshes, in addition to all the things I said before, is that they're super resilient. So if they have enough material, that those

remember those arteries I was talking about where the tide comes in and goes out of the marsh, that will actually bring in sediment. So dirt in water is sediment. So we'll bring in that mud. And as the tide gets to the high tide and then it turns around, it has to stop. If you think about it, the tide comes all the way up to high tide. It stops and then turns around it goes out. And in that moment of stopping, the water velocity is zero.

And the sediment falls out of the water and lands on the marsh. And so if there is enough sediment in your water, your marsh can build itself up quite rapidly with sea level rise. The challenge is where are you going to get that sediment? And actually a piece of that is the marsh plants can actually make their own sediment, which is very cool. But in our estuary and along most of California coast and really most of the coast of the world, we do need that inorganic sediment, that mud to build up the marshes. And the issue is that we've interrupted a lot of how sediment flows through our ecosystems with our dams and our other water projects that have changed how sediment moves.

And so we don't have enough. So we've actually done the research here in San Francisco Bay to figure that out. And we only have 40% of what we need for our marshes to last until 2100. But there are many things we can do to create enough material for the marshes to build up. But it takes really decades with all of our environmental regulations and landscape modification to get the sediment in the right place to be able to do that. So that's why we have to plan ahead. We have another question from John in Forks, Washington.

And John, why don't you go ahead and ask that question? Here in the northwest and in Alaska, we have ghost forests that formed as the result of subduction zone earthquakes. This is the extreme of rapid, if in frequent change. Do they provide any insight into the ability of habitats to respond to such changes? Yeah, that's a great question. So, yeah, so what we mean by ghost forests are these, you know, basically a place where you had a forest, and for some reason you've had rapid mortality of the trees there. In some cases, you have the marsh vegetation coming in,

and so you can see the dead trees and kind of the spartina or the cord grass coming in. In some other cases, you just have the water coming in. You know, I've read about these ghost forests in Alaska that I have to do because of the earthquake and subduction. Honestly, I don't know that much about them. They seem really interesting. And it might be a good place to study what, as you say, a very rapid change because the changes that we're seeing, for example, here in North Carolina, that change happens a little bit slower than what is probably happening in Alaska and other places in the northwest. But absolutely, that's a great question. And I would love to fly over there to check those out.

We have another question from our audience from Kay. Go ahead, Kay. Hi, my name is Kina. And what I wanted to know is that I had read a couple days ago that there was a major oil spill off the coast of California. Are there land stewardship policies in place right now to protect and restore a marsh? I can understand reforestization projects, but how do you protect a marsh? Yeah, great question. There's a lot of activity in California preventing further drilling on that. the coast for exactly this reason. Despite everybody's best efforts, accidents happen. And the more

infrastructure you have out there that's got oil moving around, the more problems you could have. In terms of marsh restoration, it's a pretty, historically it was a pretty easy process. You would go to a place that's at the right elevation and has tide, and you would simply open it up to the tide. Most of these places have been diked for agriculture. And if you open a place that's at that right elevation and the tide comes in, honestly, nature does the rest. is kind of amazing. The seeds are often there. They get brought by the tide. The sediment builds up. The animals come. We've had wildlife returning to restored marshes in five years, endangered species in these marshes very, very quickly. Now, that was the past when sea level wasn't rising so fast.

In the future, we're going to have to think about how to bring enough sediment to those marshes to keep them around. Marcello, there's restoration happening on the East Coast, too. How is that going? Is that something where we can see a difference between like the, quote, original marshes and the restored marshes in terms of how they function? There's a fair amount of restoration in the East Coast as well. And a lot of the things that Petitia was talking about are things that we're facing as well. There's been a fair amount of restoration of marshes that have happened in the coast of North Carolina and South Carolina and Georgia.

I've been involved in restoration of forested wetlands as well. And again, it's hard to do, but it's definitely not impossible. We've also been working on restoring wetlands that we have here in North Carolina called Pococon wetlands, which are also forested wetlands. Their peat wetlands, their soil is very carbon rich. They have been drained. And what we're working on is just raising the water table. So it's relatively minor restoration and that all you're doing is putting water control structures.

And by racing the water table, you decrease the greenhouse gas emissions, again, helping to mitigate climate change. So there's definitely lots of opportunities for restoration and lots of benefits that can come from them. Just a quick reminder that this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We were talking earlier about how marshes can adapt and migrate as long as, there are no barriers in the way of them moving? Listener, Rebecca has a question, though, about those barriers. Go ahead, Rebecca. Hi, I was wondering, is there at least a conversation about dismantling some of these? Is it happening or is it even being contemplated? That's a good question. I think there are areas that are being improved. So in a lot of cases

where you've got a man-made barrier, it's eroding or falling apart or, you know, it needs improvement. And usually what's behind it, people aren't ready to let it go yet. So certainly we've gotten rid of barriers when it's time to restore the wetland behind that and turn into tidal marsh, then we might take down that levy entirely. And that's certainly happening. But where there's a Walmart parking lot behind it, and certainly if there's a neighborhood or a road or the footing to a bridge or a sewage treatment plant or Google, those are all things that are right behind the levees in San Francisco Bay. People aren't ready to have that be a more natural space. So what we can do, though, is it replaced that with what we call hybrid structures instead of all gray, they're green gray. And so they may have like a long, it may be a levy with like a very shallow slope. And that slope can have a wetland on it. Sometimes we put treated wastewater to feed that wetland and the water gets cleaned up. And we've got a wetland that's supporting wildlife and sequestering carbon. So there's these new ideas about how we can make these sort of hybrid measures around the shoreline. There is quite a lot of talk about managed retreat, which is people actually moving back away from CISO.

level rise. And there is one instance of that happening in San Francisco where they're having really intense erosion around a piece of the water treatment system, and they're actually going to move everything back and let nature take its course and change the shoreline in that area. That's pretty rare. There's a little bit of that that's happened in Louisiana where there's some real extreme examples of wetland loss. And mostly people aren't ready yet to let go of land. On the other hand, I think thinking ahead is really important here. And the way I think of it is we, we, retreat when we restore a wetland, so we know how to do that, maybe we can start retreating for parking lots and places that people aren't emotionally attached to. And then we could use that

space for these really beneficial ecosystems that would really benefit everyone behind them. And then way down the road, we can think about the places that are really harder for us to deal with because it is very painful to think about moving a neighborhood, for example. So as we wrap up, Letitia, Marcello, is there anything that you still want from lawmakers, from policy? I think we need to regulate sediment. It's a precious commodity that we're given away for free. It's not good.

And we need to actually be able to regulate that migration space. So the place where the ocean and the wetlands want to go as sea level rises, there's no government regulation of that space. And that's a huge problem because it can be developed. It's actually just as precious as the wetlands themselves at this point. So we do need some legislative change. Yeah, that's a great answer. I think I got to fully agree.

A lot of these wetlands in North Carolina are sediment star. We don't have enough sediment, so that's why our marshes and a forested wetlands aren't keeping up. And we don't have good ways to either regulate or just even think about how these things are changing and how they're likely to change in the coming decades. And so we need better ways to think about it. I don't interact as much with policy, right? I do think there's like a philosophical change of how we think about these systems. It's hard when, you know, the U.S. legislative system has a lot about how to control land.

It has less about how to control water. Wetlands are stuck in between. So we need to think more about how do we legislate these systems that are in between. that they've changed. Well, thank you both. That is all the time we have. Leticia Grineer co-directs the Resilient Landscapes Program at the San Francisco Estuary Institute.

And Marcelo Ardone is Associate Professor at the College of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University. Thank you both for being here today. Thank you. This was great. Thank you so much. And thanks so much to all of our listeners for coming here today and all of your really amazing questions.

We had far too many to actually ask. We would be here for 17. hours if we did. But thank you all so much. I'm Christy Taylor. Thank you, Christy. That really was a terrific story. For the full video of that event or to sign up for one of our upcoming live tapings on Zoom, visit our website, ScienceFriiday.com slash live stream. After the break, Dean Riggas has us looking up from meteors, the moon, and more. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. When you look up into the night sky, you see all of those constellations. And maybe as a child you were taught stories that went with them, Andromeda, chained to a rock, Hercules, slaying a lion. But even as the Greeks

and the Romans looked to the stars and told stories about them, so did indigenous people around the world. In North American communities, the stars hold bears and sweat lodges, thunderbirds, and a lot more. And some of those stories are also part of how indigenous people made sense of the world around them, a kind of science separate from, but with some similarities to the study of nature by Europeans. In honor of Indigenous People's Day this week, we're replaying this story from 2019, when producer Christy Taylor went to Canada to get the story, starting on the shore of Lake Winnipeg in rural Manitoba. They're coming out. It's starting to come out.

It's a freezing cold night in Manitoba, and we are waiting for the stars. It's early May, but I'm wearing three sweaters, and I'm huddled next to a campfire, listening to a man named Wilford Buck, tell us stories behind constellations that I've never heard of until tonight. And that's called Bagu Ingezek, the hole in the sky. And the hole in the sky is they say is where we come from. Wilford is Cree, from one of Canada's largest First Nations groups, and he's telling us stories from indigenous communities across Manitoba. He calls this tipies and telescopes.

It's a coming together of far-flung indigenous teachers, community leaders, local youth, and one science reporter from the United States, me. It's a weekend of stories, ceremony, and astronomy. Telescope about Venus. Telescope about Mars. Wilfred is telling star stories, but also tales of science. Take the peculiar path Mars takes through the night sky, because the Earth orbits the sun faster than Mars does. When it does that, it looks like Mars does a circle. in the sky, then it continues his journey.

Retrograde motion. So they call it Ketan Pampano. Circles back. And another name to have for it is Musa-At-Sach. Moose-A-Tzak. Moose-A-Tzak. Moose spirit. Because what happens is when a moose

is startled, it'll run and it'll run in a big, huge circle. Then it'll come back, then it'll continue his journey. Three days and 2,000 miles later, I'm in Ottawa. At the Canada Science and Technology Museum. We have here then the wall called One Sky,

many astronomers, five different languages here, French, the Ojibwe, and Dakota Lakota and the Cree languages. David Pantelone, curator of physical sciences, is showing me around. Here, you can hear more star stories told by Wilfred and other indigenous elders through headsets. This time, they're part of the space exhibit, alongside a hundred-year-old refracting telescope and displays about radio astronomy.

The constellations themselves are painted gorgeously on one wall, moons, fissures, thunderbirds, and the hole in the sky where we come from. And here's a question Dave I get sometimes. What is a series of star stories doing in a museum devoted to technology and science? People are surprised, but then it makes sense. Oh, of course. Cultures would have different constellations and different stories and different worldview based on this massive canopy from horizon to horizon every night that unfolds before our eyes.

Because a story about how Mars circles around in the sky like a startled moose is an instrument of astronomical observation, just like the telescope that also sits in this museum. In 2008, Canada began a major effort to right the wrongs of colonization, recognize the rights of indigenous groups, and shape a new relationship of respect and partnership, a process referred to broadly as truth and reconciliation. At the museum, this took the shape of a conscious effort to include indigenous culture and technology in the story of Canadian science.

So as much as there's this idea that's embedded in the identity of science itself, that science is all rational, science is immune from culture, that that's simply not true. The museum was so serious about getting the details right that they brought in Lakota astronomer Annette Lee as a co-curator. Science itself actually is not separate from culture. It came from culture, and it came from a specific culture, and that's Western European. What Annette means is that our very picture of what science is has been shaped by Western European history and the biases of that culture. But science is also something anyone can do, and Annette says everyone has done it. Just closely observe the world, organize and test what you learn, and transmit it to future generations. That indigenous cultures have done so without test tubes doesn't make them unscientific, she says, just different.

On the day I visit the museum, a group of students from nearby Gloucester High School is there. They're all indigenous. Tonchi, John Hedjic, St. Nacho, and Rivier. Hello, I'm Jordan, I'm Métis from Red River Nation. I use layland pronouns because I'm too spirited. Hi, my name is Jesse. I'm from Northwest Angle 37, and I'm Bear Clan. At the museum, they explore the concept of Bonne.

At the museum, they explore the constellations as newcomers. They rotate the images of the sky to see the stars overhead on the day and the time they were born. A turtle, a spider, a thunderbird, and a marauding bear named Mista Moskwa. One student, Jesse, tells me the stories she's reading on the walls aren't ones she ever learned growing up. I'm 18 and I'm learning this now, and I still don't know anything about it. I feel like I know more about, what is it, Greek or Roman, that their concept is. constellations and I do my own. Wilfred says Jesse's experience is common.

It's actually a direct fallout from the ways in which colonizing Europeans killed indigenous people and weakened their ties to their culture. In more than 14 years of collecting star stories in Manitoba, Wilfred's only found two dozen. Every visible star in that sky had a name, had a story, had a sacred story attached to it. And due to the historical trauma of our people, we lost anywhere from 75,000, to 85% of that knowledge. At the museum, none of the students, all 17 and 18 and thinking about the future, thought they wanted to be scientists.

And I'm talking about nerds. I'm talking about students who said that they loved learning about botany, medicine, engineering, or even designed whole science curriculums for kids at summer camps. Jessie and her classmates are exactly the kinds of students you would want pursuing STEM degrees. And yet, I don't want to do Western science. I don't have to write everything down on. the time because it's the most annoying thing and I'm not good at writing everything down. I keep it in my head because that's how, that's how, like, it's in my blood to do that, you know?

In 2012, the Obama administration set a goal of increasing STEM college graduates by one million to meet growing need in the next decade. But how do you recruit that many young scientists? And how do you invite everyone, like Jesse, who feels left out? In Canada, David Pantelone, the museum curator, says broadening the image of science, and who does it is a first step. Give credit to more non-Western scientists, both past and present, and look beyond the stereotypes of lab coats, test tubes, and particle accelerators. When you find out what science really is, you know, observing, making, doing, asking good questions,

sharing with people, being embarrassed about not knowing something, failing. And you even hear that, like you hear that from kids and you hear that from Nobel Prize winners. For both Annette and Wilfred, bringing star stories to the mainstream halls of Canadian science museums isn't just about sharing indigenous knowledge with Western visitors, or even about expanding the vision of what science is. It's also about the future of indigenous communities, still recovering from the damages of colonization. In both Canada and the U.S., indigenous youth have the highest suicide rate of any other racial or ethnic group. Indigenous communities have also been hit hard by the opioid epidemic, and young indigenous people also have high rates of homes. homelessness. Literally and figuratively, Annette says, youth are leaving. There's a lack of hope. That's part of what the star knowledge brings, this sense of purpose, this lifeline that each person

is connected to the bigger whole, the universe, right? The stars. So Ken's stories about the stars bring broken communities back together. For Wilford, that connection to his history was a key part of his thriving. As a teenager, his family scattered by poverty, he was homeless on the streets of Vancouver. Until, Kree elders invited him and other youth to come back to Manitoba to learn about their culture. I found a piece that was missing in my life. I found something that made sense to me. I found something that was ours, was in New York, was Kree. And it was a sacred thing. And it was a powerful thing. It was a journey that led him ultimately to the stars.

That was Cyfrice Christy Taylor in a story from 2019. And you can see the Cree, Ojibway, and Dakota, Lakota star maps, and hear more of Wilfred's stories on our website. It's sciencefriety.com slash stories. For the rest of the hour, things you can see in the sky this weekend, including a beautiful meteor shower and an international observe, the moon night. Here to tell us more is Dean Regis, astronomer at this Cincinnati Observatory.

Always good to have you back, Dean. Oh, good to be with you today. All right, we're in the midst of a meteor shower now. What is it? How can people see it? Well, this is one of those meteor showers that's not exactly one of the best of the year. That's for sure. It's one of those that, I don't know what's going on, but there's like meteor showers get hyped all over the place. And the big ones are usually the Leonids, the Perseids.

And then we've got the Orionids coming up. Now, the tricky one with the Orionids is that we're going to have a full moon on the 20th of October. So the full moon's kind of going to wash out a lot of the meteors. So I'm kind of rating this one as a, I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to get up and stay up late for this one. But the full moon will be out there on the 20th, which is kind of a nice thing to see. So I'd rate the Orionids so-so on my scale of things to do in the night sky. Well, let's talk about the moon because Saturday is International Observe the Moon night, right?

Oh, yes, absolutely. And this is this worldwide event. It's basically an education event all around the world. People will be setting up telescopes in public places. So you might be out walking around on Saturday night and you might see a telescope set up there. and people are given free views of the moon. And this is something that, boy, I've done so many years, it is so fun to just set up a telescope in the,

in the darndest places where people aren't expecting, and they have such great reactions to seeing the moon in a telescope. It's really, it's really inspiring to people. And when you can see the light go through the telescope, hit their eyeballs, and they just light up. It really is like the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie. And they like, so it's a, this great event. that they do all around the world.

So check the website for International Observe the Moon Night and see if there's a viewing spot near you. Sing it, Dean. Oh, you don't want to hear that. It's an old Perry Como song. Is this a good time? Is the moon in the good phase to observe it? Absolutely, because you don't want to look at the moon

when it's a full moon. That's too much in a telescope. In fact, you can kind of get like temporarily blinded from that. You look at it, you're like, So you don't want to look at a full moon in a telescope. It is, yeah, best when it's halfway lit up or close to first quarter. And so it's going to be a little past first quarter on Saturday. But that's when you can look along the edge of the moon called the Terminator.

That's where the light meets the dark. And that's where you can see all these great craters, mountains, valleys. And you get that real feel for the texture of the moon. Wow, I'm going to get my telescope out on Saturday night. Make sure it's a dark spot if you can, right? The best way to observe it. Absolutely. Yeah, the darker, the better, but it's one of those things that the moon is so bright that even viewing the city is pretty awesome. And most people have never looked through a telescope before and just having that experience is awesome. Plus, there's some side shows. Jupiter and Saturn are up in the sky right now, too, which look awesome in a telescope as well. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Let's look ahead to next month because there's another lunar event in store, right?

Oh, yes. This is one on my list. Lunar eclipse is happening on the morning of November 19th. It'll be visible all across the United States from coast to coast, and it is going to be almost a total lunar eclipse. And so I know this is going to be kind of out there that it's like, oh, it'll be a partial lunar eclipse. And when you have a total one, it starts to turn those eerie colors, the orange and red and gets that nickname of the blood moon.

So this one's not going to be quite 100%, but it's going to be pretty darn close. And so I'm expecting to turn a little shade of gray and maybe a little rosy color. So it should be a fun event starting in. Depends on what part of the country you're in for the East Coast, it's after midnight. For the West Coast, it starts just before midnight. Wow. And it's a good time to get the telescope out then also, I'm sure.

Yeah, that's a good one to watch. And it's one of those things where you just kind of kick back and watch. And it's not real fast. So it takes a couple of hours to go through all. the different phases of it. I really like seeing it when it starts. It just starts right on time and then hang out as long as you can and watch it change colors. I know you've always been a big believer in amateur astronomy, but can regular people really make scientific contributions? Oh, absolutely. And we've been seeing this a lot lately. We just had another amateur astronomer document something running

into Jupiter. So this is a meteor, asteroid, comet, something like that that ran into Jupiter. And this is something that amateurs do a lot. They can monitor the planets pretty well compared to even the professionals. And just recently was the story that I read about was an eight-year-old girl in Brazil is now the proud discover of 18 asteroids. So at eight years old, with 18 discoveries. And boy, that makes me feel like, what am I? doing with my life. I haven't discovered one and she's already up 18 on me. And now I hear there are rumors abounding that you will be the astronomer in residence at the Grand Canyon. Really? Yes, I am so excited. This is a program that they just started to kind

of highlight the dark skies and the national parks are really trying to make this effort to get people out there to do some stargazing. And so I'll be the second astronomer in residence, which means I get to live at the Grand Canyon right on the rim for a month and show people views of the stars, the planets, and more. So I'll be bringing some telescopes. I'll set up right there and do education programs and Facebook lives and videos. And I'll be there for the lunar eclipse too. So people can tune in as I hopefully have clear skies there in view. And then I'm going to even do some education, some programs down in the canyon at Phantom Ranch.

So I got to get in some shape, Ira, and be able to climb down there and more importantly, climb back up. But I am so excited about this project. And the parks are really, you know, just to be able to live at the Grand Canyon for a month is awesome. And the parks are really going out of their way to make the dark skies better for the public. And people can come out and say hello to you, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Just say, yeah, I heard you on Science Friday.

I heard you're going to be over at the Grand Canyon. Just stop on there. I'll be at the South Rim. and pretty much any clear night, just look for the guy with the glasses by the edge of the canyon with a telescope. Huffing and puffing is why up and down. Hopefully I get back up.

That's the down part I hear is easy. But anybody have some advice on Midwest training to go to Grand Canyon. I need some help. Well, Dean, we wish you all that great luck there. And thank you for all this great advice and good luck at the Grand Canyon. Oh, thank you guys.

And everybody out there, Keep looking up. Dean Riggis, astronomer at the Cincinnati Observatory. And that's about all the time we have for this week. If you missed any part of the program or you would like to hear it again, yes, subscribe to our podcasts, or now you can ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. And please say hello to us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. We'd like to hear from you, even email.

The address is SciFri at ScienceFri.com. Send feedback. tell us what you'd like us to cover. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.