Samya Stumo ’15, died on March 10, 2019, one of 157 people lost in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. Samya, a Sheffield, MA native, was enroute to Kenya for a work assignment with ThinkWell, a non-profit organization working to disrupt the status quo in global health development.
Thomas Leatherman, a professor of anthropology, who worked closely with Samya on her thesis and research at UMass Amherst, described her as being “infectiously vibrant.” “Her exuberance and enthusiasm were contagious and her spirit often buoyed those around her. She was joyful, kind, spirited, and fearless. She was truly a ‘one of a kind’ individual whose life and career held such great promise,” he said.
My work on violence is as much about correcting the positionality and white privilege of our sordid past as it is about understanding the poetics of violence of specific populations. Methodologically, I am a trained bioarchaeologist who specializes in trauma-pattern recognition, specifically sharp-force trauma (cutmarks and butchery marks). It transcends space and time to consider the unique cultural circumstances that create and maintain systemic and episodic violence while recognizing the ethical dilemmas bound to privileging particular narratives. The history of physical anthropology is replete with the exploitation of Indigenous and marginalized peoples by white men. Their collection practices and publications had performative powers to normalize the cultural and structural violence of governments (establishing laws and policy) all over the world, and is one reason minority scholars are needed.