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Folio
Society and Culture, Research


U OF A ARCHEOLOGIST TAPPED TO HELP LEAD MAJOR EXPLORATION OF INDIGENOUS
KNOWLEDGE

Five-year, $30-million international project aims to braid Indigenous and
western scientific approaches to tackling the world’s most pressing challenges.

September 12, 2023 By Michael Brown

Kisha Supernant is contributing her expertise in Prairie and Indigenous
archeology to a major international project bringing together Indigenous
knowledges and western science to tackle complex challenges brought on by
climate change. (Photo: John Ulan)

When excavating former Métis settlements, archeologists typically categorize the
historical items they find by the material they are made of — metal objects
together, ceramics together — and put them into boxes.

Beads from Métis beadwork are usually put into something called a “personal”
category because archeologists have a preconceived notion that beads are
personal items.

“But that’s not actually how Métis beaders that I’ve talked to understand those
belongings,” says archeologist Kisha Supernant, director of the University of
Alberta’s Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology.

She explains that while beads are personal items beaders use to craft items for
their family, they may also represent commerce and exist as part of an economic
network.

“These beads are not just this object that you measure and describe, they’re so
much more than that,” says Supernant. “And when we categorize and break things
apart, which western science often prioritizes, we lose so much of the meaning.”

Fully understanding how beads existed within Métis culture captures the essence
of a massive five-year, $30-million international initiative to see whether
solutions to the most pressing issues of our time may exist at the intersection
of Indigenous knowledge and mainstream western science.

Supernant, who was tapped to head up one of seven working groups under the
umbrella of the U.S.-based Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and
Science, says the project will bring together scores of researchers to work on
complex challenges brought on by climate change, including dire impacts
affecting land, water, plant and animal life; the danger posed to irreplaceable
archeological sites, sacred places and cultural heritage; and the challenges of
changing food systems, all of which disproportionately affect Indigenous
communities.

“This project is broadly about how we can bring a richer understanding to many
different aspects of scientific practice — not just archeology, but ecology and
various other forms of research across the network around different parts of
scientific work,” she says.

“We can learn so much more when we bring together these different ways of
understanding.”

Supernant says by combining Indigenous and western sciences, or “braiding
knowledges,” scientific practice will come to Indigenous communities, while
knowledge Indigenous peoples have accumulated from living on the land for
thousands of years will bring a more holistic and relational perspective to the
questions that are being asked.

“A scientist says, ‘I’m going to study the water.’ But Indigenous people say you
can’t study the water without studying the fish, without studying the plants,
without that interconnected nature of how knowledge has to be understood that
the scientific method is not necessarily well equipped to do.”

By taking a transdisciplinary approach, the centre will use community-based
research to undertake place-based studies and projects in partnership with
institutions and 57 Indigenous communities in eight international “hubs” in the
United States, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Australia and Canada.

Supernant, who was invited by fellow anthropology professor Sonya Atalay,
director of the centre, early on to help lay the groundwork for this project,
will head up one of the working groups designed to integrate work happening in
the eight hubs — one of which, the Mountains and Prairies regional hub, will
ultimately be home to work from the U of A.

“I will work with communities, bringing together elders, knowledge holders and
beaders to talk about everything from what kind of language we want to use when
we talk about archeological materials, to how we want to represent them, share
them and care for them.”

“Our vision is that braided Indigenous and western methodologies become
mainstream in scientific research — that they are ethically utilized by
scientists working in equitable partnership with Indigenous and other
communities to address complex scientific problems and provide place-based,
community-centred solutions that address the existential threat of climate
change and its urgent impacts on cultural places and food systems,” says Atalay.

Funding for the centre and the resulting projects comes courtesy of the U.S.
National Science Foundation.

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