Tag: Indigenous Knowledge

Swimming Against the Current: Navigating Distrust in Open Science

This post is part of a series on the SEEKCommons project; read the Introduction to the series to learn more. On a cool autumn day in Vancouver, I took my car, a warm coffee tumbler in hand, and drove into the woods to witness the return of salmon to their spawning grounds. I followed highways and dirt roads to the Adams River, where dense forest meets fast-moving water. I was there for the Salute to the Sockeye—a festival that gathers people from all walks of life every four years, when sockeye salmon are returning in the largest numbers of their four-year life cycle. Every year, salmon return after spending two to three years in the ocean navigating past rocks, hungry bears, eagles, fishing hooks, and even waterfalls. They push forward bit by bit, against the odds, to reach the precise place they were born where they spawn and die. Scientists don’t fully understand how salmon navigate this long, upstream journey, but we know they rely on subtle cues from the earth’s magnetic fields and the river’s chemistry to guide them home. (read more...)

Transgression as the Life-World

That Sunday morning the words came from my colleague José, secretary of the Q’eqchi’ Council of Elders Releb’aal Saq’e’(ACGERS), located in Poptun, Petén… “Tata Mingo is dead, he was lit on fire by his own neighbors a few minutes ago… He was accused of witchcraft.”  My knees succumbed, unable to let sink in the story José kept repeating over the phone, as if to make sure I was grasping the full gravity of what happened. Domingo Choc Che, a gentle soul and wise Ajilonel, expert on medicinal plants and practitioner of Maya Spirituality, and my research colleague, had been murdered.  “The others are afraid,” José went on, “what if they start coming after all of us?”  At that moment, the weight of my academic decisions felt like a punch in the stomach. I told myself we had been careful; we knew the area and had researched the risks extensively. Yet my ignorance of the subjacent complex local dynamics seemed unequivocal. The ACGERS Council was pushing the boundaries of a new type of research, in full trust of our partnership. That day changed me as an anthropologist and as transdisciplinarian. In this article I reflect on what it means to push and transgress the boundaries of collaborative research and how we may be asked to become a new species of social scientist. (read more...)