MIT Joint Fact Finding in Science Intensive Policy Disputes

so uh I'm really pleased that we're able to have our speaker with us today John Goen Center John is the director of one of the science impact centers at Santa Gesa University and his Center is the indigenous Knowledge Center uh for Education hypen science impact it's part of the USGS science impact uh program and so John will present what for many of us is probably a different way of looking at the world so I won't take up any more time and and uh let John presentation you're not I'm not all right well U okay am I am I there okay well U personally I first of all I want to thank everybody for being here uh makes me feel very good even when I had the invitation I was like Wow gee you know I didn't realize what I had spoken about at the rest in Virginia already had a science impact but no I'm really honored really honored in fact uh speaking with some of my colleagues about the opportunity to uh go to another University and and present on behalf of the University honors not only me but my colleagues uh so I'm really proud of usually to try to get over a lot of my nervousness you know I uh I always uh look towards a foundation that I have and uh I'm going to ask you if you could forgive me to uh to say something uh in my own language uh me [Music] for [Music] y [Music] what it is I uh I'm going to talk about comes from my heart uh in my heart is connected to to a land base and and especially my my ancestry so I I do invoke the help of my ancestors uh sort of acknowledge the higher power that overlooks all of us to be here with us as we talk about some important things that come from Indian Country so those are things that we do at our College if you can believe the things we anytime we get together we have an elder get up and pray say something that reminds us that connects us all together so this meeting that we have here really is a uniting and a connection and what I bring to you is a perspective from uh South Dakota the Indian world where I come from I know I've had many experiences out there in mainstream America but I I have traversed across the country this North American continent and and finally come home to work at a tribal College my talk is going to be in three parts first of all I'm going to talk a little bit about our University and then I'm going to move into this little uh program about what I call another America reminding you me of what this country used to look like and how some people still see it today and then I'm going to give a talk about our uh indigenous Knowledge Center for education and science impact and U we'll open up for some discussions I I was in a class this morning and I thought it was very stimulating for me to be asked questions so if you think of anything that you want to ask me it not only helps me it helps me and I really like to be asked questions I think I I do better with questions also coming to this country I mean you I I I drove three hours to get to the airport to get over here last night and but always I remember wherever I go there was indigenous people that lived here so even that song that I sing connects to the spirits of the people that used to live here if you can believe it every element of creation all that embodies some sense of a what I call a spirit memory so I do know though I draw upon those grandfather spirits and grandmother spirits that are around here to know that I'm here that I I I'm singing and I want to make a connection in a good way but that's those are the things that we believe in where I come from and there it is uh our our logo SES University we we're a buffalo culture so that's very prominent for everything we have involves the Buffalo and a vision of our un University really comes from gentleman like this who this man is a a chief two strike C geska in itself means spotted tail and the college is named after a Visionary Chief spotted tale who was one of the treaty signers in 1868 who also had a vision of uh of of education for the future but a man like this you we we aspire to this leader who in these kind of drawings these Ledger drawings actually embody these kind of uh virtues of leadership wisdom bravery WKA and generosity and Waka fortitude we have those emblazoned into the medicine wheel it really points to the four cardinal directions in on our Evolution with the buffalo in itself that helped form our society so it's men like that that really had the vision that fought hard that we looked at them as our ultim ultimate Patriots who were fighting the federal government as we know it now fighting for our way of life and our culture our language our way of life well today in a sense we have new kinds of Warriors our students we look towards developing new types of leadership looking for the wealth and the welfare of our Health and Welfare of our people so strengthening the Sanu lot oate through education the Sanu o oate are one of seven different types of Lota and the Lota are comprised of a division of three different sue people as we're known Lota Dakota nakota we all speak the same language but we're differentiated in dialect by n DS and L's so we as a Lakota we live on the western half of the Missouri River into the western part of South Dakota and there are seven of us myself I'm in ogalala Lakota I'm not Sanu but I have relationships there so but we're all interrelated that way but we all speak the common language so that's kind of a little bit of a background on the college itself that carries the EMB body of of leadership and and um how we look to the future but we really do aspire to these kind of uh uh values and that's something I think you're going to see in in my presentation about how it is that we go forward in looking at the future through education in honoring our ancestry because those people really fought hard for us so anything we do we do in a sense of honoring our ancestors and also looking to the future with our our grandchildren I went to a uh a summit out in JPL last summer and I I threw this up there and and people couldn't relate to it all the NASA people but I said I know NASA guys I've always seen all your orc charts they're very late out there but here's our orc chart but it's really interesting our orc chart is is centered around this idea of Wakota and our connections to the ancestral voices in the future Generations but you can see that everything is so intrinsic to one another it's connected in many different ways and they're all connected to this whole idea of of balance and Harmony so it's our our our organization carries with it a strong ideal of a strive to live in peace and Harmony Wakota in fact that's our word for for treaty as you know a lot of Native Americans as you know them today historically were in involved in treaty relationships with the federal government and we still are but we had no word for treaty in fact our word for treaty was Wakota to live in peace and Harmony that's how that's the concept we thought it was we said since learned that it was really not that it was more like land sessions we were entering into but but you can see that though we do have an extensive organization in our University in fact we're still evolving ceska University is uh one of 35 tribal colleges I don't know if many of you really understand and know where all the tribal colleges are but you can see the states where they're primarily located in but you'll see this uh eastern half of the United States there really are no tribal colleges near you but you can see everything seems to be west of the Missouri uh Mississippi River and the majority of them are into the Great Plains and we are land gr institutions as well but we we uh alog together there there are 34 of them and then there's one right up here into Alberta which is also we count as well and if you want to know exactly where they are their names of them here's a little website you can go to and you can get the names and addresses of all the tribal colleges there the tribal colleges uh were started about 30 years ago 1974 there was an authority called uh self-governance and education assistant act that sort of opened the door with a lot of funding for uh for tribes to start their own tribal colleges so this is where C gleska uh got its start financially from some of the funding by that Authority for for Education as well as other tribal colleges but we are one of the oldest in fact we are the only University everybody else are just refer to themselves as College as four-year uh Bachelor granting institutions and and some of them are still two-year colleges but many of them are still in evolution of as education institutions that are serving their their tribal population and maybe even some of the rural communities around them but it is quite a movement because tribal colleges are much different than mainstream uh education institutions they they are charged with cultural preservation language preservation so consequently at our University we're very strong in our Lakota studies so even you today if you want to go out and get a degree in it's the uh Lota language or Lakota studies you can come there and other colleges have the same kind of programs involving cultural preservation but we also are charged with the future by educating our future leaders and that has to do with all the tribal colleges that you see there much more different they're really tied to communities they're tied directly to the tribal membership around them and and why they evolved is because the only alternative for Education even for me when I was a young man uh I had I was sent to a Catholic boarding school for 12 years you know and that was off the reservation and I had to go to college and I went to University of Colorado so I was like sent away to so these these colleges sort of provide that alternative for people to stay at home and and be and be comfortable because the success rates for most native people at mainstream universities has always been disastrous they just you know it's really hard to leave home sometimes you know leave your friends and family so that's why the college movement is what it is today I want to kind of move on into to another topic uh I was asked uh last spring to do a presentation to the South Dakota State uh they call it the space Grant Consortium and uh so iose to the occasion I said what am I going to tell people about what we're doing at our University but so I brought about some of my Collective experiences and what I'm charged with doing at the university is putting together a curriculum but but it also brought to me something I wanted to share with every body else about what I call another America and its concepts of the Aboriginal worldview and Regional Landscapes this particular map is going to take you back to a certain time what I call the preon cultural areas this kind of supersedes anything that you guys know as your American history because really native people we still see this whole mass of land and in fact a lot of the native culture still refer to it as Turtle Island but you can see that it's kind of geographically divided up into uh I call resource areas all these different geographical areas embody the resources that have developed the culture in the Great Plains I know a lot about that because I'm a loota and we followed the Buffalo herds and we had an evolution that in our own our own histories have seen us take us through a migration emerging Out of the Black Hills of South Dakota traversing through the this part down into the Carolinas and eventually back up into Minnesota and most recently in the past 200 years make our emergence back onto the Great Plains now that's our history a lot of these other ones I look towards like the northwest coast cultures evolved there because they're very rich in the uh resources from along the ocean so they've evolved to be salmon and Cedar people and they really evolved as a culture if you've SE ever seen their houses their carvings their totem poles very rich culture so every every geographical area has evolved a geog geographic area evolved a culture and I was telling these little kids at the space grants Consortium I said over here they're like the woodlands Indians you know they they their culture I said over here in Massachusetts I said I heard the story about how the native people there uh being the woodlands people they sort of like agriculturist they grew squash and beans and and corn said anybody ever here Boston baked beans well that's that's the native that's a native food they actually harvested the the beans that they grew and and utilized the the the sap from the maple trees and made syrup and bake that into in the in the ground and these clay ears and and that's how they invented the the the bust and make beans but you know Alo all the food sources everything that they can think of the medicinal plants all those things came from their geographic area so we see that land land Bas is like that as as something that the Earth the mother and itself gave to us and where we emerg from so we have all these cultural areas and I've seen other maps that divided us into linguistic groups but really we see all these things as the things that helped us grow in be a people and really develop our language and Concepts and spirituality come from these geographical areas that had all these resources but I guess you can see superimposed on that all of a sudden these these state lines and jurisdictional boundaries so we're kind of moving into an area I think two worlds starting to collide but I really want to uh uh uh help you with the concept about you know what I want to get into about about our Center about traditional knowledge so this is kind of information that helps you understand what really traditional knowledge is but but also this this map I just shown you right up here in the interior of British Columbia is called the gsan Aboriginal people and they were entering into what I called the land claims because they they never ever had a treaty in British Columbia even to today there's still no no treaty there yet but they had to articulate their world viw and what their how they could establish Aboriginal title to this land that they've always lived on and I thought this was very interesting and it really said something to me about who we are as native people these are all Clan houses all these different little polygons here are family groups that live together that they live on the land so each family Clan knew enough about that whole area about all the plants all the animals all the things that they subsisted with they knew about that so this story on how they had to describe their Aboriginal territory was internal and it came out to some kind of a boundary so I thought that's very interesting as as opposed to other people defining an area and chopping it up and saying that's it this one came from inside out so all this this this this knowledge was sort of expressed through understanding the migration patterns of animals their critical habitat and their traditions and culture and it was eventually bounded by a big giant uh wated all these had watersheds within them but this one here is Heights of land and a gigantic Watershed that really defined their their traditional territory so I thought that was very interesting that even today native people who are entering into uh treaties with federal government and land claims have the wherewithal and the connections to tell this story and what's interesting is this is all done in GIS geographic information systems to me is and unfortunately in my travels and and the things I was able to participate in this too was one of the most Innovative applications I've ever been part of in utilizing technology that has a vision that has a purpose that has a long reaching effect for a culture that that can survive for from here till forever you know so I I I thought that to be a very powerful uh example of traditional knowledge today and understanding how that applies to a future here again uh this area here is uh here's Washington State Idaho and Montana and there again you can see the 49th parallel the Canadian border today even as n native people we refer to of that boundary is the medicine line I you know it's just a kind of this this fact it's it's it's we don't understand it we know it's there but you know what's the big deal but but there used to be there's a can import drug yeah yeah or get or get get out of the draft or something like that this magical line that's what it is that's why we called it the medicine line but there again cultures have existed within this whole area here and just will happen all these jurisdictional boundaries I here but then the uh tonoa Nation still had you know they had an affiliation to this whole land base here all the way along the sort of the the the Canadian Rockies inside there and yet they they have cultural areas that they still identify with you know so they they they have identified their Aboriginal territory as you can see uh by all these little Camp settlements and all that that they still relate to and all that but they're again the only land claim that they can make is stops right there at the international boundary so we're still encumbered by a lot of these things but we still hold alive this idea of an area that we are connected to ancestrally one of do BL commun go to some stewardship courses we talk uh one of the instructors there talks about human Geographic units and these cultural units as opposed to political boundaries and they've done an analysis of of this because just exactly as you're explaining people are tied together by these by these cultural units and uh I don't know interestingly a couple of years ago we were doing a training at um mlin Nevada mclin is a casino town I hadn't realized that thought it was going out to the desert getting away from that but the people that were coming the training right across 10 minutes away across the river in Bullhead City Arizona across the Colorado River and we expected 4045 people at the training they for some reason held it in this casino we got eight and we had to uh cancel the training the Colorado at that point happened to be one of these cultural boundaries that we had M so we don't know if that was the prohibitor or what was the prohibitor uh we we suspect had we held it in a Schoolhouse or a firehouse in bhead city we would have gotten full complimented people but I I think there's you know my own view a lot of power for this concept yeah there is yeah in fact they seem to be more inclusive I think they broaden it uh so that was in Canada some of the stories that I was just going to some of the things I kind of personally know of but but all you know so I came back to Canada this was probably about 10 years ago when I was up there working in the land claims and and I came back to talk to other native professionals and this whole idea of ad oral territory wasn't as strong here in the US because of the paternal of federal government but this is a recent one that came out in about the last three years uh the cordelane tribe on their uh uh website they have a GIS program there have actually identify their Aboriginal territory so that that's kind of a concept that's coming back again to Native people is a reconnection to a landbase beyond their their little reservation like you can see this is all that they really have right now um through their treaty process and land sessions but they still have a connection to all these uh uh cultural sites and then they really there yeah there's some arbitrary lines here but you could see all these things are probably pretty much bounded by some kind of a natural feature that really identifies their Aboriginal territory so you can see us I I always felt this as a as a as a Renaissance As happening with Native culture and how technology is becoming part of that Renaissance and they are starting to kick out cargraphic products like that to identify their Aboriginal territory those are very Sovereign statements in itself this is another uh example that I was involved in with the Squamish nation in uh their their their headquarters is in North Vancouver BC so what I'm going to show you here is their their idea of the Aboriginal territory that they identified and they they went about it a little bit different they actually substantiated by the arch iological record by a lot of the uh external research that they did Beyond just themselves so they utilize some of the mainstream information ethnographic and historic research and they also substantiated it with their oral Traditions so as a result they submitted a map for the tree process that identifies an area of occupancy within the natural boundaries of heights lands and Watershed see it's that a big gigantic uh Watershed there and that's the Frasier River where they subsisted culturally with all the salmon so they knew all the streams and all those things so they they they really brought about a strong story when they when they involved all that nobody could dispute the archaeological record and all that but but interesting enough to the to the land claims in in in Canada is um is back in 1999 was the delam decision which really sort of validate this idea of oral tradition and traditional knowledge that it overturned a lower court decision in British Columbia to say say is that traditional knowledge oral histories and tradition are part of the claim for for Aboriginal title to the land so that really validates and there's nothing like that significant in the US that has validated traditional knowledge other than a Native American Graves protection repatriation act that's just a crack in the door for people in the US that validates their U their traditional knowledge but I will say for the USGS to invite cin geska to be part of this science impact with this sort of the doors open to to Really explore and understand the relevancies of traditional knowledge I think that's very Innovative far-reaching people are going to benefit from that we're going to benefit and I think what we have and how we're learning to articulate that going to really benefit Society I'm really looking toward forward to that but those are just ideas so it gives you this idea what I call another America how people really still see the land and relate to it and when they have to really identify it and articulate it this is what you see you just see these irregular looking polygons that are part of what we call natural law yes today I don't know if anybody really ever studies these kind of maps but you know I look at them occasionally and I shake my head and and realize that you know our culture was a buffalo culture we traversed the Great Plains but this is our reality real it and this is the reality today as it is right now in Indian Country you don't see that many reservations over here in the East but so recent history is kind of uh in front of you right now for what where Indian people live what we have we're even thrown into places where there's reservations within reservations can you can imagine the conflict and culture there two different language groups two different customs and yet they're forced to live side by side and all those things are mandated by federal policies and treaties so that's just an idea of the the jurisdictional boundaries of the bureau venan Affairs their different regions and and how they manage us okay well you know maybe that's it you know when I look at these Maps they're there that's a reality and you look at Oklahoma for what it is there's many there's not that many reservations but there's so many uh different tribes there if you can imagine all the assimilation policies in oppos on any people Oklahoma is a shining example they moved the seols there they moved Delaware people there they moved they just moved a lot of tribes from the East and Cherokee here that was Indian Country they said asde to move all the Indians to so right now there's this conglomeration of different tribes that live there on little settlements they do have allotments and I think they're like little county seats that really govern them but they don't really have any reservation lands Collective land Holdings like the other tribes who who have negotiated with the federal government these guys were forc marched out of their different land areas so it's kind of a Melting Pot of Indian culture in Oklahoma mention one thing about the East and that story in Upstate New York when they're trying to resolve land claims you have a split you have people who stayed on the land in Upstate New York who are One Tribe and you have people people from that same tribe who got moved out to Oklahoma when the negotiation is going on between the tribe and the state about what's going to happen you've got this group out in Oklahoma who say well we should be part of that negotiation this is our tribe we may live out here but we're part of that and their attitude actually turned out to be quite different from a lot of the others they were more willing to negotiate for money rather than land because they're already moved but there was a real internal conflict caused by that for migration same way with the chalk to there moved out to Oklahoma but a ban State here and eventually uh super persists became very wealthy so I don't know if you refer to them but that's Chief Phil Martin and his group down there very wealthy native people through gaming but yeah you you you just see you know that that that is a very that's a phenomena here in the US most people don't really realize all those assimilation policies imposed on Native Americans and so but what is happening anyway in reality a lot of these tribes are connecting culturally and there's there just just just just Greening of America I guess you could say through through native culture because we we see the richness in our own cultures to share it with one another so there's many inter marriages here's another reality about America and itself too what Native people understand sometimes when when I put this map up in front of native people they get very angry but then I I turn that anger around and said well you know why don't you define your own tribal your Aboriginal Homeland because this was a done for you it was adjudicated judicially established Indian land areas the government actually had to come up with their own document to show the land areas that they actually bought or appropriated from native people so it stands out to be this document in the sense that says who are the sers of the land were well and they were given up until 1978 the tribal people to put in claims of any kind of a against the land that was taken from them a land claim so they had up until 1978 to make a claim but since then the land Claims Commission has been closed my concern where I come from is this big West this big this is all Sue but it's the Western half of the where the Missouri River is but you can see all these different land areas and there are some legal uh ramifications to the identifying these things because they're actually Geor referencing people so they can make claims in repatriating artifacts and human human uh uh humans back out of museums so that's a this is this map really plays an important part in Native people making claims in repatriation because it tells of a a geographic area where they came from if an artifact was found from there so but that's one of the applications I developed for using GIS you know is actually referring back to this map so this has been a very helpful map but it makes native people sort of angry to realize that someone else identified their their Aboriginal areas but there again that's that's I said that's that's for you to see that and go ahead and and re-identify it again here's an interesting one the pony their Aboriginal territory see all these arbitrary straight lines and it's nowhere like that if you listen to it a Pon all about their their Aboriginal territory good friend of mine Walter echohawk he said our Aboriginal territory was defined by these four stars wherever you can go in this this land and if you still seen those four stars you knew that you're you're in your your your Homeland once you didn't see that star you knew you were in trouble you might have been in Lakota territory he said but no we have different ways of identifying where we live you know and that that I thought that was interesting because the paon they they still have a star map that they relate to you know so they there are this connection that identify people to the land but also to the heavens and I'm going to get into that about some of our traditional knowledge uh this is my part of the world Lakota country the great Sue reservation and at one time the Treaty of 1868 identified this whole area as Lota country But there again all of a sudden you see these arbitrary lines to me that that identifies a clash in cultures when you start seeing Geographic products like that I and we still contend that this treaty goes up to the Eastern Bank of the Missouri River and that's ours the Missouri River and according to this treaty so we're still fighting that with the federal government and the definitions and terminology of our treaties so this boundary shifts and changes all the time so this is another thing I talk to students about about why we need to use Technologies to understand the Dynamics of that River because it's part of our treaty it's part of our relationship with the federal government but also you can see all the legislative actions that happened uh and this is eventually what we ended up with the yellow here these reservations but all that land was eventually taken away from us although it was negotiated in the first treaty this is more of the reality about some of the things that are related to land and tribal government and our existence today is this General allotment act and I'm going to show you another graphic regarding that but it's where we never had the concept of uh of uh individual land ownership we believe that we are part of the land and we didn't even believe we owned the land then all of a sudden we're being forced into owning land so what they did was they what reservation was left they had this General lotman act it's called The Howard wheeler act that actually gave head of households and adults of a certain age 160 Acres interesting we weren't that many people then but think of all the land that was left over they opened it up to homesteading so that's how we lost a lot of our land that was one example here uh how we lost land and a lot of people don't realize that in 1924 they finally decided that we weren't second class citizens and you got the right to vote you know what does that tell you in your history you know those are things that we we we know in our history is that we weren't citizens of this great country until then and then we had the reorganization act that imposed the former government on us in 1934 so today we still exist in chaos with the form of government that is really traditionally not ours I think the founding thing that keeps us together is our traditions and customs but we have an administrative government that deals with federal government at that level so we're talking about you know I guess we we say conflict resolution but we're trying to merge these two forms of government together and very often you find uh people that are culturally founded to be uh councilmen so that happens on many different occasions but this reorganization act has a a stipulation that you know in in the Conti ution of our our tribe says we can only have elections every two years so you can imagine the turnover in our government so it's just major chaos but a lot of tribes right now are revising their their uh constitutions to to react towards you know being more uh I guess uh proactive in their their uh future there's all these other acts here that that really affect us that you don't really understand and know but then these preservation acts environmental policies they really involve what they call uh Native American consultation it's sort of like the trust responsibility of federal government to really seek and and uh look for input from native people so I think those are the things that we're talking about here in this policy Environmental Policy places how to create some kind of synergy for people to be to sit at a table and and talk right now you know that that that isn't so prevalent in Indian country a lot of times we have to go somewhere no one ever comes to us you know so we got to find a happy medium there and I I I don't like the word conflict resolution but there there seems to be that that stands in a way you know but we are by law supposed to be consulted uh like I mentioned 1975 the education assistant act 30 years ago uh actually that that was uh under that was the mix Administration native people didn't you know didn't mind that uh Nixon and his administration got more of the funding directly to us rather through the Bureau of intern Affairs at that time the statistics were 30 cents out of every dollar finally got to the tribal agency because of the administ trivia but but now we got more funding coming to our tribal government directly and the education assistant act allowed us to to start moving into the tribal College movement and here's another kicker that most people don't know it's been our reality is that how this country was founded on religious freedom but fortunately we weren't guaranteed our religious freedom as Native Americans until 1978 and that was uh one of the first things that the Native American rights fund really fought for was our our religious freedom in fact right now there are still fights going on right now regarding the Native American church and the use of of peyote as a Sacrament so we're still fighting for our rights regarding religious freedom but you can see all these different kind of Acts that that that that sort of uh have us in having to be more proactive so I I think at the tribal College I mean where I'm involved and I see government tribal government is so reactive because they have so many priorities that there again the tribal college has to prepare a whole level a whole Cadre of um of new leaders to react to these kind of uh authorities so we can still uphold our end of the treaties that we still have in place well you can't believe we're very faithful to those treaties these things are things that really keep our relationship going if it if it weren't for these kind of authorities and our treaties I really wonder what would happen to Native people because at one time we were administered to the Department of War you know that's our reality a joke I always tell was you heard of General kuster technically at that time the the native people were being administered under the Bureau of I mean under the department of War so he was technically the head of the the Bureau of Indian Affairs and he said don't do anything till I get back of course he never got back you never made it back from the Little Big Horn uh that allotment Act and the Homestead Acts all those legislative actions that were in violation of our treaties but still today we can't really fuss about that but we're left with the reality of uh if you could look at the the the the index here uh there's a lot of lands are in the blue and uh tribal Reserve lands here in the green tribal uh other lands in the light green and this used to be our whole reservation but then through other through the Homestead Act we lost and this is all we have today on the uh Rosebud Sue reservation you can see that here in the scale of South Dakota that whole area that we lost is down to this but this is our reality this is what we have to use and manage many mil uh okay I'll say a about 100 100 there's about 400 square miles here approximately yeah but that that that's our realities and how checkerboard that is but our our culture is really tied to this land base not only here that's today but we're also connected to the Black Hills of South Dakota Western South Dakota this whole area like that where we still a lot of those authorities I mentioned have us connected to there so it wasn't for those authorities like the archaeological resource protection act and the Native American Graves protection and repatriation act Clean Air Act all these kind of things keep us connected to that whole uh greater Aboriginal territory here's some pictures of our reservation now I just took that a few days ago that's how beautiful it is we had a nice spring so these uh these this is The Little White River it's running pretty full and the grass lands of grass is nice and Tall over here you can see the topology we have some of the bad lands and we have uh the Prairies and there's deer standing out there but it's a really beautiful area you know it's uh our homeland but yet uh it's almost like an island and the sad thing about it is that a lot of people fall fall into that political boundary and they they don't realize what's happening out here in the greater World they again that's why the tribal colleges for who we are really are trying to make those connections for our students in the future Aboriginal Homeland is really one of those things that we're trying to bring back as a concept looking at the vested interest in the whole area how that can really benefit us and be what you call metaphorically in our Homeland to be connected to it again but also be co-managers because we have that opportunity in front of us through our treaties to be co-managers of of federal lands because we still have land claims you know we're we're trying to regain title to the Black Hills but we know in reality we won't but we will do want to propose that we can be co-managers of federal land that may be more of the reality so those are things that tribal colleges are really uh at least we are and other uh uh Lota tribal colleges are looking at okay let me move into another next topic how we doing on time okay good indigenous Knowledge Center for education and science impact you know I I uh was was wrangling with the how to put the the words together for a title and and what came there was the acronyms ik C and all of a sudden when that stood out to me it was a Lota word and it said I I means a it's a value that we have which is tied to the commonality of man and self we're all common men we're all common women a sense of humility about who we are but collectively there's power in in our knowledge that we share it's a distributed wealth of knowledge between common people our experiences that we we bring together so when that word came out it just really hit me that really that's the essence of our of our science Impact Center is a collective knowledge of of of who we are as a people so I I was like really inspired and I think we're on to something good I was telling some of my other colleagues and I even ran that by some of our the tribal historian and they just grinned and smiled they said it must be good then but I I just thought very inspirational that that we were able to put together a concept for for the science impact uh program and how we can actually connect to it culturally as well and it ties in some of our values and our ideals and really kind of thought hard about some kind of a logo that we wanted to present with with our Center and and I remember many years ago I drew this up and it finally came out it's like yeah we uh this is who we are as native people because we really sort of we're not so much male Dominator we're actually a matrinal society but then we live in harmony and balance we complement one another that's traditionally how we we existed as a culture in gender balance so even that alone is says something about how we want to approach our business and and look at our Center is to really honor uh and have gender balance and look at the world in the sense of balance again too so so that in itself is a statement and a story about who we who we are and what our Center wants uh can can be I mention the fact that we have many partners uh we're probably the only tribal College as of I'd say two years ago that were very enterprising to go out and and start um uh developing relationships and since then we have written many grants we've applied for different things and funding but but some of the things that we have in place right now is by that enterprising and Outreach and it more or less predicated on this relationship with the the Aeros Data Center and the USGS so we have a formal mou with the USGS that we're able to uh leverage and also we're part of a an organization here called the Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium that's led by uh Dr George sead and I don't know if you know him but I if if anybody I could say is an elder in American society that's George sead is one of them he's sort of a Visionary I'd say but he really embodies a lot of wisdom and we always figured him a smart man to invite us into our his Consortium so but yeah so we we have gained from our association with him and uh also we several times I don't know how many times we've been trying and and we finally broke the crack the nut in NASA and and got a awarded a reason can uh project so we just initiated that here the beginning of the fiscal year it took us a year to finally negotiate our budget with them because they they shaved our budget 80% but nonetheless we have won one of the reason can projects and we have ongoing uh uh uh a water quality project with Noah and we're getting into uh some renewable energy projects with them looking at and this has led us to I don't have a uh graphic up here but Noah has kind of introduced us to to uh Nar so we're getting involved there with enar and with uh Bob Harris he's been very helpful uh the the National Science Foundation uh before I started science impact here I I was managing a an NSF uh project called partners for Innovation which involved two industry leaders uh ersad and on GST over in Maryland and looking at developing an Enterprise as well as a curriculum for geospatial Technologies and so that's what I was doing for the past two years was developing a geospatial uh curriculum based on tradition and culture it was very interesting because really you know our approach to technology through this new innovation was what I call growing technology from the bottom up rather the top down where the land base and the culture was really the substance for developing introductions to GIS GPS and looking at this through a flowering tree which all the branches were all the different applications and the systems approached to it and all the programming so you know it it followed sort of this natural trunk of the tree to flower out like that so that was our approach to Growing it from the bottom up based on the Lakota Paradigm philosophy so the the the National Science Foundation has really been you know supporter of us for and because they've been supporting curriculum for in since the '90s about the developing GIS curriculum but they funded one more a cultural approach so I was really really glad that they were uh inspired by uh our proposal but yeah we have just you know developed significant relationships with other entities here but I want to uh and I showed this slide at in in Reston because it you know maybe other people in USGS didn't realize what what USGS was really doing with seski University but I heard buzzwords at science impact talking about better business practices well we entered into what we call a better a new way of doing business well I'll say it's new because it's all centered around Wakota and when we had a formal signing of ouru with the USGS we actually performed what we call a wot ceremony we invoked the higher powers and actually had a religious you know spiritual ceremony coinciding with the signing of this mou with the USGS and that really validated our own processes and it says to us as our University while we have finally found a mechanism to really utilize our culture and our spirituality and our new way of what we call better business practices so this really helps us uphold our end of the bargain regarding our our or mou at the USGS and I think that sort of impacted uh chip Groen himself when he came out with all the different uh leaders you know from the USGS all the different regional directors came there as well so I think we we did uh get into science impact in a way that you know kind of showed us that and showed them that we have a a mechanism doingit better business so that that really said something to the Community too that was there to see this ceremony to see that our traditions and culture are all going to be involved in this whole idea of of Wakota and the treaty with the United States Geological Survey our mou is up again we're we're looking at the next five years uh and I think you know science impact is going to be part of our our our mou and and relationship with the USGS so but that's what it is relationship building and I think that's the key word to to all these things about conflict coming to some sense of solution it's all regarding knowing each other I had a kind of an elder friend describe to me um the idea that we all sit down at the table and he said just imagine that there's this big colored beach ball in front of you we're all sitting around it each one will argue and tell you well I see see a red stripe and this is what it is it's a red stripe and this guy will they all go around and tell you what color they see and Advocate that that's what this is it's it's green but collectively we all hold together what that ball really is it's multi-striped it's all that's what it is but we're so opinionated to see what's in front of us and always thought that you know so so the things that I I've heard from the eldership in our reservation with how they how they talk and relate things I know there are solutions so that this is why this this new way of doing business in invites that whole level of expertise to be part of this process people that have common sense to me that's what I was I was asked this morning in class what is traditional knowledge and so I was given examples but really it is it's just common sense sometimes based on experiential knowledge you know that somehow rolls on into being wisdom well our our Science Center is sort of like this blending looking at new tools and the traditional knowledge always present this graphic to some of the students at the college having them look at their ancestors and their attributes because our attributes are adaptability we look at the natural world and how we have to adapt to it so we don't look at ourselves as as sort of well let's say climate change we have to adapt to climate and all that all the time so we find ourselves involved in really looking at ourselves in our adaptive strategies and these are exemplified by that that that man is is riding a horse and of course we all know historically the Spanish brought over the horses but somehow it's been written that the Plains Indian became the light the the best light Cavalry in the whole world because I think they they recognized the power of that animal and they developed a relationship with it they didn't think of him as a beast of burden they actually honor him they venerated him they gave him names they decorated him with feathers give him more honors as well and so they they brought him in as a relative so that's the way we have to look at technology is to to look at it for what it can bring to us and if we don't like it we don't we won't use it but if we do we need to embrace it into ourselves culturally so that's that's how we embrace the horse and the horse has caused us to gather more to travel further and our Arts really flourished we had more time to decorate our our utilitarian objects everything flourished with that with that relationship with that animal and then that gentleman is holding a rifle that came to us in a in a way that we didn't understand it was shown to us as a weapon that killed us but also when we were able to secure it we became deadly within ourselves because although we didn't manufacture the gun we didn't manufacture the weapon I mean the bullets somehow we became enterprisers and were able to use that to our advantage so those are the things that that we have to look at as how we adapt things bring it into our culture make it it beneficial so that that's one thing I'm looking at is is is more of these kind of stories and examples for our youth to get expired inspired by their attributes or their their ancestors so this traditional knowledge thing is going to be a key to somewhat of a foundation that that we don't realize that we're standing on and we do need to know exactly what we're where we're standing all the time I'm going to sit down here and just kind of go through these CU these are pretty laborious but just if you can just read them and I guess maybe you can look look at it more carefully when it's online but these are some of the the the principles of our uh uh indigenous knowledge and knowledge Center to integrate the traditional knowledge into the scientific assessment of Land Management practices and that's one thing we want to really accomplish is the fact that U we're operating under regimes and policies that aren't ours in man managing our reservation lands and even wanted to and how can we be involved in in uh with our vested interest into our Aboriginal territories is to look at uh uh different Alternatives and how can our traditional knowledge be part of that and we want to really understand what happened to us so we want to make determinations how the changes in the ecos system have influenced the Lota way of life I was given an example uh today about a young Lota girl that I met at a grocery store she was a checkout Clerk and and I was buying a a squash because I was going to go home and cook and she asked me she said what is this is this a what is this is a vegetable or fruit I said oh my God I didn't realize it here's a young Indian lady that probably doesn't know her food sources and and those are the kind of things I want to we want to understand why is it that we have youth that right now that don't understand that things grow and come from the earth you know oh my God we about 10 minutes and if we're going to have any chance for people to ask questions I'd love to rescue those last few minutes if okay let's do that okay well like I said there's just a lot of uh things I have here but I want to get to this idea what we're already starting to look at as far as our our our science uh impact project so you can read all these I guess this is going to be online and this is kind of just you know reasons and more reasons and major points uh but I want to get to this uh I use this imagery because it really sort of uh says more of the greater pictures this is the Black Hills of South Dakota up here's the north end but all of a sudden a lot of people really connect to imagery like that because all of a sudden there's not all these State boundary lines and all those kind of things that really encumber us and sort of limit us to to to imagine what is possible so we see that and when I show this to the Lakota people and that's their sacred Black Hills they just like they really love it so technology has its place in Lota culture now seeing that we can see our our homeland and Mother Earth in this vein now this is what I wanted to show you this is really really it brought an awareness to me and and it was almost scary to Appo that back in 1890 there was a man named Amos hard bad hard bull he drew this map of the Black Hills of South Dakota and it's in one of his books the collective of all his Ledger drawings but how detailed it was for all the rivers and all the geographical Place places there that were significant and then here comes another native guy John Harrington the astronaut 2002 we asked him to take a picture of the Black Hills so we had that image and when I put this image beside the other one I was amazed to see the scale here's a man that's never been in space but he was able to draw in detail the same and almost in scale this is what like 800 miles in space looking down and this man he had the same image he drew the red racetrack around there which if you really look closely you'll see this whole red red uh ring around there which is the soil that so when the Black Hills emerged like that there was all this red soil around it and we have a a local story about this racetrack here so to me that was very powerful about people that really walk the land that knew the land they live their data we're able to draw things like this but today we have ways of looking down on it but we don't have ways of walking that land to really understand that there so there's a disconnection here that I see that you know as we approach the future we have to look at these tools that are available to us but also get back to this place where we walk the land we understand it and we can feel it and see it so this man he knew that land in intimately and was able to draw it much at the same scale as what we see in an image from space to me that's very inspirational and here's a constellation in the uh the sky as we know it it's called The Cheska wak but all this constellation and the Stars point to geographical features in the Black Hills of South Dakota so that's something that we we really that are timed with the seasons and certain activities have to happen for us culturally and we go out and do pilgrimages with these sacred sites so there's our connection from the land to the Stars so that that image from space said something to our people about the stars and how we're connected to them and I think even science has talents that that we're all Stardust we lotas knew that already but anyway here's the last image I want to show you is that same map that identified these cultural features here and the names of them in our language the racetrack around here over here's Devil's Tower it's called the Bears Lodge the slim bees all these things like that but that's sort of the things that we're we wanted to bring out in our traditional knowledge about our region and how we're connected to the stars and can reference all those things so we have this integrated approach to looking at our region well that's kind of it uh any questions yes as an outside of with very little knowledge of what you've been describing what I read in the newspapers is the importance of economic change not technology not science but fistance uh and I I have the impression that has transformed many reservations uh particularly in terms of what they have to offer which is said just to gambling and the amount of money that that brings in must diffuse and somehow or other your very interesting presentation didn't refer at all to the economic just and that imp so I wonder if you could just say something okay well our our University probably is really of all the universities I know are very steeped in the culture which is this concept of Seven Generations it's a very long perspective and the foundations of that are in the culture yes we are charged with economic development we're looking at a land base and how can we develop the the the intellect that we have there to look at making our land more productive you know we're I think all these things that you're hearing are very shortterm in terms of you know the culture in itself we really focused at the culture and where we've been and where we're going you know so so the culture Foundation is something that we're always trying to administer all these other things like that I think you know are are are the opportunities for our students we don't really look at the gaming right now I think that's more like shortterm it's not so much longterm but we are looking at the alternatives for our land use we're we're not next to any kind of big urban area like you know a city where we where we could really Thrive with with with gaming our our uh our our wealth is our spirituality and our culture so we look more towards uh let's say the restoration of Buffalo the restoration of the prairie ecosystem things that really matter the things that that that I guess most people discount as far and they take for granted you know but we do know that the Buffalo are the heart and soul of us in our in in an emergence from the land only reason I carry this message is because I there there are other people that sort of inspired me to to to give me this reality about natural law and who we are and where we came from but there there there that is very serious question about economic sustainability you know and the only thing we have is Our Land and people um I had a question about the data collection and um kind of the if you could speak a little bit more about the process of um whether it's students that are involved in the data collection or the community in terms of determining what information would be useful and and if that would be played out you heard me mentioning growing the technology from the bottom up you know in fact we want to meet Community needs because the administrative government will not they have their own their self- serving it seems to be but they don't really meet the community needs so we're looking at empowering the communi through students and myself looking at the emerging technologies that are uh what state-ofthe-art what we call the mobile Workforce today people out with uh data collection uh devices being right there on the land because all these people you know they they live on the land they live out in the country remember me I mentioned no there there's no street addresses on the reservation there are little hamlets and towns and communities but there's there so there's so so many applications but just no one Department no one person can do it so we looking to to people that are actually uh living out there to to empower them with so we are having training classes with the these handheld GPS units and these uh I packs for drop- down Manus for you know collecting data Are there specific um pieces of information that the community has identified as useful in terms of being able to help the community make decisions about land use or uh one of them is housing it's it's a big application because there's not enough housing you know so and then that relates to public safety and health related issues and things like that so so data is really uh critical and so we have to really utilize what I call the human capital which is probably our youth because they're they're really growing there's a lot more youth than than anything so so yeah this is kind of a k through 12 kind of a thing too that we're involved in at the university is not just you know the uh the college student high school student we're also involved through the teachers because we are an education institution we're we working with inservice and and pre-service for teachers regarding uh the technology and what it's going to take to empower community so I think that that's sort of uh circumventing the paternalism that that we've been operating under so far you know with the federal government is to do be more be more proactive one one of the arguments about new technology is that it should allow for new networks to form and for people to be in working collaboratively in ways that were difficult when they were seriously divided by space um does the coming of new technology change the way decisions are being made in Council or in conjunction with other tribes as you think about the management of larger resources do you actually see any evidence of dialogue happening that wouldn't happen absent of technology or of decisions being made in a different way okay well you know we do have a CO Consortium an American IND higher education Consortium and with that uh I know we've taken some initiatives in their support to actually form our own tribal College geographic information technology Consortium called native view so we're starting to to find those kind of synergies of like-minded people and of course at the higher levels like tribal presidents tribal government presidents they have organizations and we've been able just in small instances get on their agenda and talk to them about the uh you know the the enabling owering Technologies but we're at that level where we have a a form of leadership that is very care ful of losing power you know so so we kind of contend with that the power Brokers and and and that's a reality you know that one of the things that I know Herman and I are hoping is that um students here are engaged in what we call practicums all the time in which they take a problem in the World At Large they make that problem the focus of the class and they're trying to provide service at the same time as they're trying to learn how to use certain tools and and analytic techniques and if there were an opportunity to link up with a group of students at your University and take an actual problem not just in the University but in the community at large it's conceivable we could do some kind of joint practicum where people would bring the Knowledge and Skills they have here travel out spend some time learn something about the place and then continue to work uh with the group of students or a client group of leaders or people working on a particular problem whether the management of a natural resource or Imagining the design or redesign of some new application of technology so one of the long-term goals we have within the larger USGS collaborative is to see if we can't make practical connections that allow courses to stream into these same relationships that we're trying to build well thank you Larry because I I've thought of that in regard to my the my development which was an applied Curriculum by actually going out and doing something meaningful you know and learning from it and actually providing a solution the students here could come and yeah tell something to students there about actual practicums that they've already worked on here and talk about some of the issues and problems of trying to be cast in this intermediary role between your University and a client group you're in a course but you're also trying to do something useful they might be able to make a connection to a group of your students students talk about their experience and that might get a group of your students interested in organizing a local practicum even if the students from here don't work specifically on that project but we have uh over January we have a intercession period where a group of students from here could travel describe practicums and maybe get some of your students to begin to think about doing something like that okay I've already been thinking about what we can do together and sort of talked with uh Herman about the possibility if you can clear your February schedule and come out and and and uh meet myself and colleagues and some students we have what we call Founders week I think You' probably gain to learn more about our College because we have like public forums there and even meeting some of our esteemed professors you know and and because I've always wanted the scientist to sit down with the Lakota studies professors because they have I I would call them very Leading Edge applications research projects but they they need somebody to to listen to them and and interpret that into a project that has a deliverable that also exemplifies the disciplines of how you go through it you know and I think You' find innovation in some of these things that we're talking about one of them is is we have many things regarding the authorities in our in our treaties that we have no way of actually getting a jump start in in articul ating and researching and one of them is like you know um underground water modeling something like that because that's one a concern but there there's so many applications that that we have that if you sat down and listen you'd find them to be incredible as as very Innovative applications to to approach and learn from you know some of these have never been attempted yeah there's the there's the the treaty negotiation land claim ones are very Innovative but beond on that there if you sat and listened to some of our elders oh my God I'd like to do that as a project you know but I'm only going to live to be not 100 I don't think but I'd like to see a lot a lot of those things ported over to to our students to earn their phds on you know um let me thank you again for from all of us for traveling here and beginning of process of conversation that we hope will lead to some collaborative work students here have 2:00 classes that they're now L for so we're going to