Meet Sonya Atalay, the 2024 Daffodil Lecture speaker

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The annual Daffodil Lecture is a celebration of research and leadership in sustainability and green development, highlighting different scholars and their work in these fields. This year, provost professor of anthropology Sonya Atalay (Anishinaabe-Ojibwe), will be delivering the talk titled “Braiding Knowledges to Transform Science: Climate Change, Cultural Places, and Food Sovereignty.” Read on to learn more about Atalay and what you can expect from her talk!

What was your journey like into Indigenous archeology and coming to UMass?

You know, it's a long journey. I enjoy [and] do love the work that I do. I particularly love working with students and working with Indigenous communities. But it's a hard road, especially in terms of Indigenous scholarship, and working with Indigenous communities, because it requires a lot of skills and ways of thinking that don't necessarily fit into the Western academic framework. 

Oftentimes, as Native or Indigenous scholars or people of color, you're the only one in your field or in your department. And for archaeology, there are very, very few Native or Indigenous archaeologists and anthropologists. These are fields with such deep colonial roots and histories and it just takes a lot to try to be and remain in these fields. 

When [people] hear that I'm an archaeologist, they say “I love archaeology, I've always wanted to be an archaeologist, since I was a little kid and that's why I got into this.” I joke and say, I got into archaeology because I hated it. I was so angry about how archaeology was engaging, or not engaging at all, with Indigenous peoples. And that history was so problematic for me, I thought it doesn't have to be done this way, it can be done a different way and I wanted to be part of that change.

So mine has been a journey of thinking about a discipline and dreaming of how that could be different, and finding colleagues who could support me and walk with me along that path to try to change the discipline, and that's how I came into this work. 

I came to UMass in 2012, and I chose this place because of the history of engaged scholarship and community-based research specifically in the anthropology department. And I thought it would really be a supportive place for that kind of work – so that's what brought me here.

Why did you choose this topic for the Daffodil Lecture?

Our amazing team of people just won this amazing, fantastic grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF has a program called the Science and Technology Center's program, and it's one of their largest grants that they give – if not the largest. It's $30 million over five years, renewable for an additional 30 million over five additional years. It took multiple years to pull together the team to do it, and to get all the funding. And we were stunned to find out that we went from 100 applicants, down to maybe 30-35 finalists and down to the final team that got awarded. There were only four awards given and we were one of them. This is the largest grant UMass has ever received in its history and we also found out [that] we're the only science and technology center that's in the social sciences. So for all those reasons, it seemed right to use my Daffodil lecture to talk about the work of our new center, which is called the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science.

What can the audience expect from your talk?

Well, I will be talking about the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science, and I've been going back and forth about what I have prepared. I put it together, but then I was reading it through and was thinking, this is very factual. So I'm toying around with what to speak about. It is great to share all the research and the goals and aims of the center. I'll be talking about our educational goals, both for higher ed and K through 12, and I'll be talking about our work in terms of policy and working with government agencies. And I'll also be talking a lot about how we're trying to broaden participation in the sciences, like increasing the number of Indigenous scientists who are working in a whole range of fields. But I'm trying to incorporate arts because so much of Indigenous science involves arts, so instead of STEM, I want to use STEAM, where arts are integrated into the sciences, technologies, engineering and math. So I'm thinking of pulling in an arts framework, maybe I'm gonna do my lecture as a story basket or a story map, we’ll have to see.

What do you want people to take away from your lecture?

The past, the importance of dreaming, and the possibilities of change.

What are some ideas about the Center to be explored in the talk?

One of the challenges is that we realize that Western knowledge tends to silo all these disciplines and have them in their own separate fields. Where Indigenous knowledge recognizes that, just like the real world, everything touches everything else. Everything is interconnected and woven and braided, and you can't pull on one string without it impacting so many other things. 

What we're really trying to do at the Center is engage in transdisciplinary research that has all these multiple fields. And because Indigenous science – it's broad, it includes everything, we decided to narrow it down to three kinds of areas that are, of course, interwoven, interconnected, or as we say, braided. 

So I wanted to mention those three areas. And that's climate change, then cultural places, which are sacred places and thinking about ancestors, meaning ancestors that are buried in the ground or have been removed by archaeologists and are in museums – so the care of cultural places in light of climate change. And also food – topics like food security and food sovereignty. These three areas are so important. We continue to hear Indigenous communities talk about these areas, and how essential they are for healthy Indigenous futures. So that's a big piece of what the center is working on, and so I thought I should mention that climate change, care and protection of cultural places, and food sovereignty and food security – those are the three key interrelated areas and I'll be talking more about that in the lecture.

By Erica Lowenkron at the Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Why is it important for people to learn about this topic?

This is an essential part of not just healthy living, but it's existential for our species and for all our land and water relations, for all those who are other than human, more than human, living around us. It's an existential threat that we're facing. As we think about in many Indigenous cultures, we don't think just about now or the future, or one generation, we're making decisions and thinking and caring for seven generations forward. We do, what we call, “seven generations thinking” and we often look at least seven generations back. 

You look to the past, learn from our ancestors, carry that knowledge and those teachings to look forward and send that knowledge into the future seven generations. 

If we think of a generation of 30 years, we're thinking of decisions that impact us right now. That will be for my descendants, your descendants, and the ones yet to come 210 years into the future. We're at a critical period as we think about what their lives will be like, and that's why it's essential to act and think so carefully about these issues.

This year the Daffodil Lecture will take place on Tuesday, March 12 at 5 p.m. in the Student Union Ballroom. Contact abraziel [at] umass [dot] edu (Ashley Braziel), coordinator of events and programs at Commonwealth Honors College for more information.