Welcome and Introduction

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:37:00 -0700

What an amazing time in which we live – one where we can work towards truly sharing different paradigms of thought and ways of knowing. Until I participated in two separate week-long ‘One Earth, One Universe’ workshops –hosted in part by Isabel Hawkins, the previous UC Berkeley Principal Investigator of Cosmic Serpent– I never truly had even a taste of a paradigm shift. My inclination to think as a scientist: wondering and hypothesizing about nature, having fun with math, seemed to have been with me since I was very young. But I had never before considered what cultural, historical, and linguistic context into which this scientific thinking had been placed, as I worked my way towards scientific research. In the ‘One Earth, One Universe’ workshops, I was exposed to many Indigenous cultures and ways of learning about the world. The Indigenous use of careful observation, and the creation of models to go with the observations, seemed very similar to the Western science techniques I knew so well. The ways of moving from observation to model also seemed to be quite familiar at times - but at other times, notably different. Moreover, the worldview underlying the observations is strikingly different from what I have known. This glimpse into a different way of knowing our world and universe has changed my thinking about our scientific world, from wondering about how we might sustain life on our planet to the way we listen and talk to one another. My exposure to the Indigenous worldview has opened my eyes and added another ‘dimension’ to the joy I have found, and still find, in the Western scientific world.

I came onboard as the Principal Investigator of the NSF Cosmic Serpent Project in August, 2008 after Isabel Hawkins announced her retirement. It has been the opportunity of a lifetime to work, not only with my own group at the University of California, Berkeley, but together with my colleagues Nancy Maryboy and David Begay and the broad network of indigenous knowledge holders, many who live and work in both worlds I mention above. As we plan our strategy for the year, create our workshop agenda, recruit participants, and determine how to meet the goals of the project, I am able to slowly expand my understanding of the Indigenous worldview and its relation to Western science.

I hope that this project can ultimately lead to museum programs and/or exhibits that provide others with a similarly exciting glimpse, as I had, into a new and inspirational way of understanding the universe. I would be thrilled if our program ultimately leads to museum visitors having a permanent, profound and positive change in the way they view science and knowledge. If visitors simply leave with a sense that understanding our world and our universe is an even more fascinating adventure than they may first have thought, I will be quite satisfied.

If you wish, please join us and share your own thoughts and visions for bridging the western science world with indigenous ways of knowing in science centers and tribal museums. I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Laura Peticolas (Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley)

Welcome to the Cosmic Serpent Blog: The Talking Stick

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:01:26 -0700

Welcome to the Cosmic Serpent Blog! We are pleased that you have visited our blog and hope you will find it useful and entertaining. We foresee using the blog to introduce upcoming events in the museum world and to showcase relevant and interesting exhibits and presentations from science centers, local museums, tribal museums and entities like own own Indigenous Education Institute.

We are looking forward to the upcoming workshop in Santa Fe, the first full Cosmic Serpent workshop for the Southwest region. We will have a wonderful group of educators, facilitators and participants. We will be addressing some extremely important issues in the area of Indigenous ways of knowing and western academic science. We hope to to raise an awareness in this country of the differences and commonalities among these ways of knowing and to showcase innovative activities and programs that enable continuing and collaborative enrichment in the informal science sector as well as in the world of Indigenous observation and place based knowing.

We look forward to your comments and any information you wish to share.

Best wishes,

Nancy Maryboy and David Begay (Indigenous Education Institute and Cosmic Serpent)

Cosmic Serpent Blog - General

Welcome and Introduction

Welcome to the Cosmic Serpent Blog: The Talking Stick