For detailed information on past workshops, please visit earlier volumes of the Cosmic Serpent Newsletter located in our Resource area.
The first full SW workshop was held in Santa Fe, NM in the spring of 2009. We held most of our meetings at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in South Santa Fe. It is an inspiring location and is where many of our most distinguished Native American artists have trained. We had a site visit to Poeh Museum, a tribal museum of the Pojoaque Pueblo. There we experienced break-out sessions on basket making and pottery making by renowned artists, who talked about their art and the science that could be understood in the plants and soils that are used to form the baskets and statues and pots. We learned how many Indigenous artists see their work as highly interconnected with the natural forces of a relational universe and how they gather and work with their materials in a way that promotes sustainable ecology.
For this NW workshop, we recruited museum personnel from science centers, tribal museums, and cultural museums located primarily in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. This five days workshop (which started the evening of Sunday, August 23rd and end at 1pm on Friday, August 28th) was held at Semiahmoo Resort near Blaine, Washington and at Northwest Indian College. The workshop was opened by Swinomish elders and cultural specialists Joe McCoy and Larry Campbell, of La Connor, WA. We continued with traditional Indigenous introductions and panels which explored the archetype of the cosmic serpent and examples of possible workshop outcomes in museum settings. We explored Indigenous ways of knowing and differences and similarities with western science. Break-out sessions deepened participants’ knowledge of the two ways of knowing the universe. Some break-out sessions focused on experiencing western science, presented by OMSI personnel Vicki Coats, Kyrie Kellett, Brett Kiser, and Lori Erikson. Some sessions went more deeply into Indigenous ways of knowing through direct observation and relational thinking.
The first California workshop began at noon on February 8. We met at the Barona Resort Convention Center on the Lakeside Pavillion and had a welcome and an outdoor dinner. Participants came from many areas in California from North to South, East to West. There was a large contingent of Hawaiians most of whom represented the 'Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo. The workshop was hosted by the Barona Culture Center and Museum. Meetings were held at the Barona Resort and at the Barona Tribal Museum. We had informal armchair discussions on the differences and similarities of western science and native ways of knowing, panel discussions, round table discussions and break-out sessions. Participants learned about Indigenous Navigation, Hawaiian wayfaring, Navajo and Hawaiian Astronomy, Southern California tribe's basketmaking and Mayan math. We had one day at Balboa Park in San Diego, where participants could visit various museums. We had several sessions at the Reuben Fleet Science Center including on on interactive science activities and one of Navajo and Native Hawaiian astronomy, which took place in a portable planetarium with a Skyscan digital projector. Much informal discussion took place over the week and many relationships between western science museums, community collection-based museums, and tribal museums were developed.
The first Follow-Up Workshop took place in April, 2010. We met at El Monte Sagrado Resort Hotel in Taos, NM for 3 1/2 days. This was a retreat that brought together Cosmic Serpent Fellows who had attended the first SW workshop in Santa Fe, with the addition of several participants who were new to Cosmic Serpent. This workshop emphasized interactive sessions and time for CS Fellows to network together. Many of the museums had already begun working partnerships, since the first Cosmic Serpent workshop, between science centers and tribal and community museums. There was an afternoon visit to Taos Pueblo and there were outdoors sessions which featured Hawaiian navigation and Pueblo (Zuni) explanations of the Golden Mean and other geometric features of ancestral Pueblo structures such as found in Chaco Canyon. A half day session featured the use of multiple intelligences as a way to encourage learning in museum settings. This session culminated with small groups creating interactive museum exhibits featuring western and Indigenous perspectives around such themes as moccasins, trees, astronomy, ecology and baskets. Break-out sessions were so popular that participants voted to hold them consecutively instead of concurrently. These sessions included chemical properties of clay juxtaposed with an Indigenous perspective on pottery (taught while the instructor, Clarence Cruz, was actually building a pot). Other sessions included the chemistry and the Navajo perspective of creating Navajo rug dyes from plants, and the science of making Navajo blue mush from corn and juniper ash. There was tremendous enthusiasm for carrying out the values of the Cosmic Serpent through networking with different museums in programming and building exhibits.