Science Friday - Widening The Lens On A More Inclusive Science. Sept 6, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: September 6, 2019

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 percent of the STEM workforce in 2014, despite being 2 percent of the total population of the United States. Why are indigenous people still underrepresented in science? 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? Learn more about the efforts in North America to recognize indigenous astronomy. Plus: After Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahamas, Florida braced itself for a brutal start to hurricane season. The storm didn’t cause catastrophic damage to the state this time, but Florida is just beginning peak hurricane season—and its nursing homes, which care for over 70,000 people, may not be prepared. Caitie Switalski of WLRN tells Ira more in the latest "State Of Science." And writer Annalee Newitz talks about the Trump administration's decision to roll back lightbulb efficiency standards, and other science headlines, in this week's News Roundup.   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 Ira Flato. Later in the hour, we'll be talking about indigenous peoples and science. But first, this week, as many of the Democratic presidential candidates talked about their climate policies and the need for energy conservation in a seven-hour marathon on CNN, the Trump administration announced that it would be rolling back energy efficiency requirements for standard old light bulbs. Those requirements originally set up during the Bush administration were aimed at pushing the country away from energy inefficient incandescent lights and towards better options like LED lights. Joining me now to talk about Trump's push to renew a 180-year-old technology, plus other short subjects in science, is science journalist and author Annalie Newitz. joins us from San Francisco. Welcome back. Hey, thanks for having me.

Nice to have you. So what do these new rules say? What's the big, one? what are the big effects on consumers here? So these are rules that were set to go into effect in January of next year. And what they would have done is extend the energy efficiency requirements from not just the kind of typical pear-shaped incandescent bulbs that we think of as screwing into our light sockets, but also all kinds of other bulbs that are used in industrial applications, kind of funny-shaped bulbs that are used in chandeliers that are sort of candle-shaped. So basically it would have swept all other light bulbs that are not standard-sized into these already existing energy efficiency requirements. And what the Trump administration has said is that it just didn't make economic sense to do that

right now. So is this going to go through, this undoing of that law? So there's already been a lot of pushback. There are consumer groups such as the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, which have said that this is probably going to cost consumers as much as $100 a year because we will be able to buy these more energy inefficient light bulbs. And also there are states like California that are setting their own standards. And there are a lot of groups that are going to sue because one interpretation of the laws around this is that you can't actually, the government cannot rule back energy standards.

So that may be a big point of contention in the courts. I don't know. I can't really see people saying, oh, great, incandescents are back. You know. Yeah, I mean, and these are standards that are intended to help us stay abreast of recent technological developments in light bulbs. You know, once we have better, more efficient light bulbs, the idea is to push the marketplace toward them. I don't see a Wi-Fi chip in an incandescent bulb anytime soon. You don't want your smart incandescent bulb.

Okay. Let's move on to other news. I know you're an archaeology geek, and there's some big news this week about. the Indus Valley civilization. Tell us about that. That's right. So let me set the scene for you. About 4,500 years ago, this incredibly sophisticated civilization rises up in the Indus Valley, which is this beautiful, lush, long area, river valley, kind of at the northwestern border between India and the southern border of Pakistan today. And it has at least a dozen big cities for the time. I mean, they're not Mumbai.

buy, but they're big for the era. And they have a sophisticated writing system, which we haven't yet deciphered. They have trade between cities. They're trading with Mesopotamia. And most important to me, they have a sophisticated plumbing system and public fountains. So this is a very, very advanced civilization. They have plumbing, you know, centuries before the Romans and their alleged fancy plumbing. But what happens is about a thousand years after the civilization rises, suddenly people just leave. All these beautiful cities are abandoned. And we think that now probably what happened was there was climate change, rainfall patterns changed. It just became more difficult to farm.

The rivers changed course. So the mystery has been when those people left, where did they go? Where did this urban diaspora take all of those people? And now, thanks to an intrepid group of scientists, we have sequenced the DNA from one skeleton from one of the biggest cities in the Indus Valley civilization. So are you ready for the solution to this mystery? I have my drum roll app here ready to sound. Go ahead. So what they found is first they got 61 skeletons, took little pieces of each one and powdered the bone and tested each of those 61 samples.

One of them turned up positive for DNA. And the DNA matches closely with the DNA that's common in people who live in South Asia today. So modern day people in India are related to this one person from the Indus Valley civilization. So what that suggests is that people from the Indus Valley, when times got hard, the climate changed, a lot of them journeyed South. And they brought their culture with them because what we see at the Indus Valley are kind of the beginnings of Vedic culture. which eventually gets popularized as Hinduism and Buddhism all across South Asia and Southeast Asia. So this is kind of the birthplace of all of these important cultural movements and ideas. And now we have at least one hint of where they all went.

So it's a pretty cool week for me as an archaeology geek. But don't you find it interesting that they have 66 skeletons? They only found it in one skeleton, that link? Yeah. Yeah, so this is part of the tragedy of people who are excavating in the Indus Valley because the climate conditions there vacillate between extremely dry and very wet, and it's just terrible for DNA preservation. And it's also actually terrible for all kinds of preservation. A lot of these cities are highly eroded, and so that's added to the mystery of this civilization, because there's just a lot of it that's gone because of climate. Let me jump to my last story here.

is a story about testosterone and empathy. That's a really interesting connection there. Tell us about it. Yeah, so there's been a kind of longstanding idea that people with elevated levels of testosterone just aren't capable of experiencing human empathy as well as other people. And partly this was based on just the kind of usual pseudoscience. And part of it was based on a study of a very small number of people, just a little over a dozen and people that suggested that people with elevated testosterone couldn't read other people's

emotions. And so a group of scientists said, hey, why don't we actually do a real scientific study of this? So they took about 650 people, all men, and tested to see if when they had a testosterone patch on how they scored on tests, common tests of human empathy. So they had a group that didn't have elevated testosterone levels, and they had a group that did have this testosterone patch. And what they found was there was no difference between the two groups. So what that means is if you're a person who has elevated testosterone, it is not going to interfere with your ability to love other people and perceive their emotions. All good to know. Good to know that.

Yeah. Thank you for that. I only knew it's science reporter and author based in San Francisco. Have a good weekend. All right. You too. Thank you. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO.

St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. As Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahamas, Florida braced itself for a brutal start to the hurricane season. Of course, good news. The storm did not end up causing catastrophic damage to the state. But for the next month, it's peak hurricane season. And Florida's nursing homes, which care for over.

70,000 people may not be prepared. Katie Swadolsky is the Broward County Bureau reporter at WLRN in South Florida. She has been covering the hurricane season. She's here to fill us in. Welcome to Science Friday, Katie. Hi, Ira, thanks. So how are the nursing homes in Florida supposed to be prepared for the hurricane? They're supposed to be able to have enough fuel for a generator and a generator that can power the facility for 90s. 96 hours after a state of emergencies declared and after a storm passes. That means they have to be able to keep the inside of a nursing home or an assisted living facility at or no higher than 81 degrees inside. And how many nursing facilities actually meet that standard now? Well, that's a loaded question.

And I think the loaded question of preparation is sort of lies on the state of Florida for not heavily enforcing timelines for when this needs to, all be done. So you have most of the nursing homes and assisted living facilities in the state have needed time extensions to get this done. And over the next several years to get everybody up to speed, it's going to cost roughly $120 million regulators are estimating. So there's a good chunk of them that are prepared now, but there's certainly more than 70 nursing homes and assisted living facilities that didn't feel safe enough for Hurricane Dorian and they evacuated. And so that's their plan now is we'll evacuate instead of upgrade? Yeah, I mean, for the time being until they can.

And now to get a time extension, you have to have some sort of temporary generator in place. But that's not the same as having these heavy-duty large generators with enough space to store fuel for them to keep AC on. And in Florida, when it comes to hurricane season, if the power goes out, that means your AC goes out. And that is life-threatening. You know, it would just seem obvious that it's going to cost more in the long run not to back up, not to have a generating system because they're going to be doing multiple evacuations over the years. Well, especially with stronger storms, more frequent storms, and slower storms, like we saw with Dorian sitting and hovering right next to us and battering the Bahamas for two days. You know, you would think this would be a big political issue. Seniors are consistent voters.

the children of the people in nursing homes also vote? Has it become one? Yes, and I think there's definitely more of a congressional movement than a local movement, but you've seen a congressional consortium for safe seniors. They've come out with a hurricane guide specifically for nursing homes and assisted living facilities, sort of with generator questions, and that question of preparedness is somewhat different to every facility, based on the number of beds they have, who is running. the facility and how many people who have loved ones in these facilities are calling and

asking questions about the generator and fuel and air conditioning. And so Hurricane Dorian, as we say, mostly skip Florida, but Florida is heading into the peak hurricane season. Do they have a sense of preparedness for that? You know, everyone's got emergency plans. They have to have a quote-unquote emergency plan on paper. and most of the nursing homes and assisted living facilities in the state are ready. They do have the generator power to cool everybody down for 96 hours.

But if you look at what happened two years ago when we had Hurricane Irma, 12 deaths that were ruled homicides because of heat-related causes, it didn't take 96 hours for that to happen. Yeah, yeah. All right, Katie, thank you very much. Thank you, Iris. Katie Swadowski is a Broward County Bureau reporter. at WLRN in South Florida. After the break, indigenous people have been observing the world for thousands of years.

We may feel the culture of Western science is still leaving them out. What do we do about that? We'll talk about it after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flito. When you look up into the night sky, you see all those constellations. Weren't you taught as a child what the stories behind them were?

Andromeda, a chain to a rock. Percy is staring down a sea monster. Hercules, slaying a lion. But even as the Greeks and the Romans look to the stars and told stories about them, so did indigenous people around the world. In North America communities, the stars hold bears, sweatlages, thunderbirds, and 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 similarities to these scientifics. enterprise built by Europeans. So is there a way to connect the two? Well, in Canada, science museums and indigenous educators are using star stories as a bridge. Science writer producer Christy Taylor went to Canada to get the story, starting on the shore of Lake Winnipeg in rural Manitoba. We're coming 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 Onigizek, the hole in the sky. And the hole in the sky, as 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 tipis 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. Tell us more 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. great motion. So they call it Ketan Pampano. It circles back. And another name they have for it is Moosa Hatzak, Moosea Atsak, 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, mini-astronomies, five different languages here, French, the Ajibwe, 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 David gets 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, and 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 cultural, 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 all of it. 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. Tanshi joined Hendrix Dishnakshu and Riviera.

Hello, I'm Jordan, I'm Méti from Red River Nation. I use laylam pronouns because I'm two-spirited. Hi, my name is Jesse. I'm from Northwest Angle 37, and I'm Bear Clan. 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 Mosqua.

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, their constellations than I do my own. Buford says Jesse's experience is common. It's actually a direct fallout from the ways in which colonizing your 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 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 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 all 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, 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 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 same. 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. In New York, I'm Christy Taylor. And you can see the Kree, Ojibway, and Dakota, Lakota, Star Maps, and hear more of Wilfred's stories on our website at ScienceFriady.com slash stories. We want to talk more about indigenous knowledge, science, and culture, and if you would like to join the discussion, please, give us a call. 844-724-8255. 844-724-8255. You can also tweet us at Cy Fry. And to begin that conversation, let me introduce two guests.

Dr. Annette Lee, who you just heard in that piece, Associate Professor of Astronomy at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. She describes herself as mixed-race Lakota. Dr. Lee is director of the Native Skywatchers Research Program. Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Lee. Hello, Matakuasen. I'm here. Thanks, Ira. Happy to be here.

Thank you. Thank you for coming. Dr. Kim Tallbear, an associate professor and Canada Research Chair of Indigenous Peoples. technoscience, and the environment at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. She was also a citizen of Assisiton-Wapiton-O-Yete. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, nice to be here. Let me begin with a submission we have from one of our listeners

who herself is an indigenous scientist. I always get a bit frustrated when I hear definitions of science that exclude indigenous knowledge and native ways of knowing and understanding the universe. I'm an indigenous scientist, and I value empiricism, experimentation, data, observation, and objectivity just as much as my non-indigenous colleagues. However, as an indigenous scientist, I never forget about the importance of spirit, dreams, visions, and intuition as tools for attaining scientific knowledge. To be clear, I don't think that Western scientists are somehow above all of this. I just think that they're not as likely to admit that

native ways of knowing are just as valid as the methodologies they've been taught through a Western worldview. Thanks to Linda, an ethnobotanist from the Mill Lax Band of Ojibwe for her submission that was on our Science Friday Voxpom app. Nice. Yeah, Linda just referred to the indigenous quote, indigenous ways of knowing. What are these in that? Well, indigenous ways of knowing are different in Western science in a few ways I can point to.

one is that we have four parts of being human what you know what does what is what is being human mean so in a native way of knowing we have our bodies our minds our hearts our spirits our bodies our minds our hearts our spirits and in western science it's really very much focused on just the body and the mind and that's where it stops it leaves out the other half, the spirit and the heart. Another way that indigenous knowledge is different is that there's a very deeply embedded idea that we are related to all living things, that all living things have spirit and we are all related. This includes things in nature, trees, rocks, stars, and people, animals, right?

And I would say the third thing I could point to is that in indigenous ways, of knowing there's a strong concept that we can practice logical thinking, observation, measurement, prediction, but there's always a space for the mysterious, the unknown. That's a part of it. I'm Ira Flater. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking with Dr. Annette Lee and Dr. Kim Tallbear about indigenous ways of knowing. And then when you said that science is inseparable from culture, what are some of the places where culture is affecting how we do science? Well, I would just look at many examples.

I mean, we could look at historical examples, like when we used to think that the Earth was the center of the universe, right? And everything that happened with Galileo, how he was put on trial and thrown out and restricted to not do any more research. people like Bruno were burned at the stake for believing that stars had planets going around them. So this idea that science is embedded with culture and beliefs that are strong at whatever particular time. Now our society today is full of technology and science. And so we are just saying instead of just looking at science that comes out of,

one particular culture, Western European culture, that's very good and very strong, and we can do a lot of incredible things. We can send people to the moon. We can send spacecraft to Mars. We can use the Hubble to look back 13 billion years in time, right? We love this kind of science. But what we're simply saying is that

that just comes, it has grown out of one culture and that there are many other cultures that are part of this planet and that those cultures have also done science and so we need to widen what we mean by science and you know if you think about the definition of let's say physics

it originally meant the philosophy of nature this relationship with nature why can't all cultures have a way of having a relationship with nature right and contributing to the conversation contributing to the body of knowledge. So that's simply what we're saying that there's engineering, there's technology,

this ingenuity. How many people alive today could make a means of a transportation, for example, a canoe out of a birch bark tree completely? Or make their home out of a buffalo, right? There's so many examples or indigenous cultures have made contributions, but with our history of colonization,

somehow we just got trapped, we got stuck on one way, one particular culture's way of doing science. And now it's time to widen that definition, to let other cultural contributions join our human resources. Interesting, interesting aspect. Yeah, and we do have, as you mentioned, We certainly have precedent with the history of science about how our cultures have influenced the progression of science. We're going to take a short break and come back and talk lots more about this.

Our number 844-724-8255-8-4-4-Sy-Talk. You can also tweet us at SciFri. Talking about indigenous science, maybe you are part of that movement that is interested in indigenous science. give us a call 844-724-8255. You can also, as I say, tweet us at SciFRI. We'll take a break and come right back and get to the phones also. Stay with us. This is Science Friday.

I'm Ira Plato. We're talking this hour about science and specifically how science can be more welcoming to indigenous people and cultures that have been building other systems of knowing for thousands of years. With my guests, Dr. Annette Lee, Associate Professor of Astronomy

at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. She's also mixed race Lakota. Dr. Kim Talbert, an associate professor and Canada Research Chair of Indigenous People's Technoscience and the Environment at the University of Alberta in

Edmonton. Let me begin with you, Dr. Talbear, you come from anthropology. How do you point that lens at the culture of science itself? Because you know, I'm listening to these stories being told and they have sort of a familiar ring that I've heard in other cultures before. Like, Like the Chinese and herbal medicine and all kinds of things that used to be denigrated years ago.

Now we're taking other looks at them. Well, I'm an anthropologist of science, and I wrote a book called Native American DNA, Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. So I study as an anthropologist, genome scientists, who are largely, have been straight white men. So I'm not really looking in my anthropology at indigenous cultural practices around science, although certainly I have had to look at that as I examine the culture of genome science. So, you know, I can sort of address both of those issues, but definitely my lens is focused on looking at the cultural biases, quote-unquote,

of Western science. So I can give you a couple examples of that, if you like. Absolutely. So one of the things that I learned in spending so much time with genome scientists, and particularly those who look at human migrations, they're really obsessed with the Bering Strait. They're obsessed with that particular. geographical trajectory into the Americas. They're obsessed and shaped by, I would say, an immigration

narrative. We often hear this inappropriate, overly generalized claim that we in the U.S. are a nation of immigrants. Well, of course, that's not completely true. It forgets indigenous people and it forgets enslaved people who are forced to come here. So that's one bias that I think is shaping their overattention onto migration narratives versus, say, looking at trade routes and other kinds of travel routes within the Americas that indigenous people undertook because they were trading with one another and relating with one another. But non-native genome scientists have been overly interested in how people got here from the quote unquote old world. And that terminology, old world versus new world, that's a biased terminology. Old to who? New to whom, right?

The other way is they assume a certain set of ethics that are not universal ethics. So for example, In Western bioethical practices, the bodies of our ancestors, dead bodies, human remains, are not considered human subjects. They're not subject to human subject ethical guidelines. But in our indigenous cultures, there's still a sense of a vibrancy or a life force. And so we have a different ethical relationship to our ancestors' remains. There's more of a sense of they're still with us. Their presence is still with us and vibrant and must be respected. That kind of worldview is not written into the federal.

bioethical guidelines in terms of the way that genome science gets done. And then there's also these kinds of, all of these ethics are what I would call biased value choices. And there are a focus on some narratives and not others, some histories and not others, some worldviews and not others. Well, let's get our listeners in 844-724-8255. Let's see if we can get a question in from Florida. Lodina.

Hi, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, hello. Go ahead. I was moving and I'm hearing all the great steps Canada is taken towards incorporating indigenous people into science and just to, I guess, get students involved. But I wanted to know if the U.S. has taken any steps or have they tried to incorporate it in schools because I felt like my education was very Eurocentric. And everything that I know outside of what was taught in school is pretty much. much of what I looked up on my own as far as history and science is concerned for groups of people that you don't see in your textbook going to school.

Good question. Annette, Kim, would you like to respond? Sure. I would say we're trying. Canada's definitely taking a leadership role in this effort. But in the U.S., for example, I started a revitalization effort called Native Skywatchers back in 2007. And so we basically started the idea of like, let's, we've lost a lot, but we haven't lost everything. So let's start with our own communities and remember this star knowledge, Ojibwe and Lakota, Dakota. And so we began to talk to elders. we began to make resources. So we made the star maps,

Ojibwee Gisikanang Masen again, right? We now have four star maps, three indigenous and then the Greek star map. We have workshops, Native Skywetters, teacher and community workshops. So we've created workbooks and lesson plans. So you could even go to the website

or come to a workshop. I think that this is one example, and there are many examples that people are trying, like grassroots efforts. But we definitely need help. We need allies. We need support. We need funding.

So please join in and help us out however you can. When we talk about the drastic underrepresentation of indigenous people in STEM careers, I mean, indigenous people make up something like 0.2%. What do you think the source of this is? Kim? You know, I think there's a couple of reasons. I think the first obvious reason is genocide. I mean, we saw 90% or more reduction of the number of people that we have. So when we're looking at the fact that we're 2% tops of the population of Americans, that makes sense that there's very few of us in science. The other thing is, we like other people of color, other poor people, are tracked away

from STEM fields early on in school. And I think that as all also related to the fact that there are a lot of native people who are living in rural areas, or if they're urban, they're living in poorer school districts, and there is a dearth of lab facilities, math and science education in those schools. We know in the U.S. that we have a shortage of math and science teachers, and I think that's particularly problematic in rural areas and other poor school districts. So there's a lot of factors coming together that are both about race and class intersecting. Annette?

Sure. So there was a big report done back in 2000. that studied this question, they came up with three main barriers. And the first one was mathematics as a barrier to going into STEM. The second one was uninspiring introductory STEM courses. What does that mean? What does that mean? That means lecture-based memorization and fact-based courses, mostly PowerPoints with maybe a few demos sprinkled in.

This is the old style of learning. So the third barrier, why we have a national crisis in STEM right now, we do not have enough young people in general going into STEM careers, is unwelcoming environments, unwelcoming atmospheres in the departments. And this was particularly bad for females, so for women, and for people of color. Interesting. Let's go to the phones. Lots of people would like to talk about. This Michael in North Carolina. Hi, Michael.

Hi, I'm glad I made it. I've got to go into work. But I'm a Cherokeece from North Carolina, and I was always interested in the subject. But what really sparked my intuition on the whole thing and even taught me a few things about how I am myself, I read a book by Gregory Cahante and his book Native Science. and it's a real eye-opener to our culture in how we view in a summit-type way with cosmology and a lot of things. But I just wanted to put it out there.

That's a really good book to learn on. All right. Agreed. Thanks. Thanks for that tip. Annette, we can talk about why science feels like it's leaving indigenous people who might otherwise be interested in becoming scientists. but also, is science losing out important perspective when it does this? What are we losing? Exactly. I think there's a couple issues here we can speak to. One is simply fairness, and we've kind of talked about this before, like, STEM jobs are often higher-paying jobs by quite a bit.

So why should only certain segments of the population have those opportunities to even consider doing a higher-paying career STEM-type job? The second big reason is demographics. So you're probably aware of this, but the United States is quickly becoming more and more of a brown nation, right? So by some predictions by 2040, 24, we will be a majority, minority society. Right? So we can't afford to leave out so many of our people in science. What's going to happen? we will not be able to be at the leading edge of research and development if we just don't have enough of our numbers, our population, going into the sciences.

So I think increasingly this idea of diversity is it's going to be more and more on the forefront as our nation is becoming increasingly populated with people of color, right? And I think the third reason why this is relevant here, the idea of including everyone, especially indigenous people, especially people of color, everyone in science, is because the idea of science itself, like, how well can we really solve and tackle the really hard problems of today, climate change, the idea of colonizing Mars, the idea of engineering the genes in babies, right? The idea of artificial intelligence and jobs changing, right? All of these ideas are difficult problems, just to name a few. How are we going to tackle those problems if we are limited to one way of thinking, one cultural perspective? You know, Ira, I'd like to offer this simple analogy. Think back on the electromagnetic spectrum. And we know that our eyes are tuned to see the visible.

spectrum, right, the colors red through violet, the rainbow of optical wavelengths, what if we never had known about or discovered or allowed the other wavelengths of light, infrared, ultraviolet, gamma rays, right? All of that to be a part of our knowledge base, how much will we be missing out on? Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, I see. I see that. And that's a very interesting point because you never know where a new idea is going to come from. Exactly. You know, and bringing other cultures, other ideas is I cannot see a reason not to do that. Let me just remind everybody that I'm Ira Flato.

This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. And we actually asked some of our listeners to tell us how they define science on our Science Friday Vox Pop app. And here's some of what they had to say. My personal understanding of science is a rational approach to acquiring and re-evaluating knowledge. Science is a response to the human experience of wonder. I define science as investigating your curiosity by using the scientific method to prove or disprove your expectations. Science comes from the Latin word sheo, S-C-I-O, which means to know, knowledge, or to learn.

Kim, what do you think of those definitions? Well, I think about science in a couple of ways. We can go with those definitions, which I think are focused on the literal interpretation of scientific method. So that's what I would call little less science. But because I'm an anthropologist of science, because I study the culture of science and the politics of it, I think a lot about big S science, which is a science tightly wed to capitalism and colonialism historically

and settler colonialism in the Americas. So the scientific method, rational knowledge production, as I think one of the previous quotes said, is part of that, but that's not all that it is. And so I look at the role that science has played in, again, narrating a history of discovery, the way that it talks about frontiers, the way that it uses its cultural and political cachet to help build U.S. Empire. And as an indigenous person who's been critical of that because that resulted in, you know, the massacre and marginalization of my ancestors. I'm really interested in us being more critical about science and not just viewing it as a scientific method, but really paying close attention to the politics and culture of it so we can do it in a different way. So we can do it in a way that that is more inclusive, that is more critical. And so I've really geared my energies towards not only studying scientists who I think are getting it wrong,

but also helping other critical scientists train indigenous scientists to do things right in some of the ways that Annette is talking about. You talk about bringing indigenous people to genetic science specifically. Right. A new ways. You mentioned how sacred the remains of a person is, and you found that, you know, there was a, it was really not a good idea to grind up bones to bring out DNA, but you found a different method of doing it. Right. Well, not me in particular, but, yeah, some of the scientists that I work with. So there are, there were a couple of Colville tribal members who were scientists who,

were commenting on the Kennewickman remains that of course were 90, maybe 9,500-year-old remains found in the Columbia River in 1996. And there was a big lawsuit where non-native scientists wanted to examine those bones. And a lot of native people were pushing back and saying that that's the ancient one, that's our ancestor, let's re-burry them. And there were a couple of Colville tribal member archaeologists who one of them came up with an idea that we could not grind up the bone because that's one of the issues that some native people have. It's viewed as the desecration of those remains, but we could actually take the calcified plaque off the teeth of the ancient one and then use that to get to get DNA out of it. So indigenous scientists who come from cultures who view

dead bodies that we still need to respect them, will have an incentive to come up with alternative methods to do science in a way that, according to our ethical framework, is more respectful of those ancestors' bodies. And then so that's part of the kinds of discussions that we have in the summer internship for indigenous peoples and genomics, or Singh, which was founded in the United States in Illinois, at University of Illinois, actually, in 2011, and we've since expanded to Aal Teiro in New Zealand, because there are Maori scientists down there. We expanded to Canada in 2018, and I'm one of the leaders of that initiative up here, and then we're just expanding to Australia in January. So we have a four-country indigenous genome training program now.

Well, very interesting. I think I want to thank you both for taking time to be with us this hour. a quite interesting discussion. Dr. Annette Lee, Associate Professor of Astronomy at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota and Director of the Native Skywatchers Research Program, Dr. Kim Tallbear, an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair of Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and the Environment,

University of Alberta in Edmonton. Thank you both for taking time to view with us today. Sir, Philemia. Thank you. Great show. You're welcome. Charles Berkowitz is our director, senior producer, Christopher Taliatta. Our producers are Alexa L.M. Christy Taylor, Katie Feather. Our intern is Camille Peterson.

And special thanks to our digital producers, Daniel Peter Schmidt, and Johanna Mayer, for helping us to put together. It's this beautiful online story about indigenous science. Go to our website at science friday.com slash star stories. Absolutely gorgeous stuff. And we also want to hear your voice on Science Friday. We have a new app to help us do that. It's called the Science Friday Voxpop. It lets you easily record and share your voice comments with us.

And we have a question up there now. We need your help with. Do you think criminal justice system should use facial recognition or other artificial intelligence to make decisions? Tell us what you think on the Science Friday Vox Pop app, and you might hear your voice on the air next Friday. Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato in New York.