Native Skywatchers - "Indigenous Ecosystem Learning" - Year One

The Native Skywatchers research and programming initiative has been recording, mapping, and sharing Indigenous sky and earth place-based knowledge for sixteen years. From NASA to Fond du Lac Tribal College to the Minnesota Department of Education, the Native Skywatchers Summer Workshops for Educators, has decades of experience at the forefront of working at the intersection of science, culture, and art for the benefit of all. Native Skywatchers has served over 300,000 people and continues as a leader in Indigenous science methodology and research with long-term broad impacts.

This project, “Indigenous Ecosystem Learning”, is an expanded version of the “We are Stardust” and its related branch, “Ocean Voices-Sea and Stars” projects. Support from the Heising-Simons Foundation has given Indigenous students a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate more deeply in science, culture, and art...to dare to be engaged with authentic data and scientific tools. Students participate.

    * Native Skywatchers'Teams in the 3-year "Indigenous Ecosystem Learning" initiative are:  

 

South High School, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Little Singer Community School, Winslow, Arizona

Volcano School of the Arts and Sciences, Big Island, Hawai'i

Maya Zone Intercultural Mayan University, Quintana Roo, Mexico

Strategy: Indigenous teams of students and educators do research, form a community, and produce multimedia content integrating science, culture, art, and personal connection. Working in co-learning communities with scientists, elders, and artists we elevate our STEM identities, transform narratives, and create more inclusive learning... for the benefit of all. 

Framework: The core framework for the Native Skywatchers initiative is rooted in a teaching called ‘Two-Eyed Seeing’ or Etuaptmumk as explained by our Mi ‘kmaq elders: "Two-Eyed Seeing is learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing, and to use both these eyes for the benefit of all.
(Bartlett, Marshall and Marshall 2012, 336)

Principal Investigator - Annette S. Lee, DSc, PhD, MFA

Themes:
Identity and Light
Identity and Sound