October 18, 2023

Repatriation and Reclaiming as Teachers for Braiding New Research Worlds

A leading global scholar in Indigenous archeology, Professor Sonya Atalay’s lecture will focus on ways that repatriation of ancestral remains and reclaiming traditional knowledge and cultural places provide valuable lessons for creating new approaches to research. Atalay will highlight her work with Native American nations using arts-based research and knowledge mobilization methods, making her research broadly accessible through collaborative comics and science-based graphic novels, storybaskets, and counter-mapping. She will discuss how lessons drawn from research related to repatriation and reclaiming provide models for braiding Western and Indigenous science, leading to the newly established Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science, a global partnership that will help address the urgent threat of climate crisis and its impacts on cultural places and food security.