Thread by @davidshorter

I hesitated responding to this op ed because I hesitated reading it. I knew well the pillars of colonialism that bolster such views and have seen them before in NAGPRA disputes. But I can't help myself: The #TakeDown 1/10
mercurynews.com/2021/08/31/831…

To assert that scientific research is anathema to best practices demonstrates that this "scientist" does not understand methodology: your theories support practices and vice versa. In this case, her methodology shows that for her, Natives are only objects of study. 2/10

To claim that we must disregard community interests for "humanity" continues the same logic of dispossession we have seen for decades with world heritage sites: "excuse us while we take what is yours 'for the sake of humanity.'" Girrrrrrrl, that's just colonialism. 3/10

When she writes that many collections are "assessed as culturally unidentifiable," her passive voice is key: these assessments are often made by archaeologists and anthropologists who think like her, or are NOT in conversation with tribal cultural resource management teams. 4/10

She says "decades of scientific research can be overturned" by a tribal elder. This sh*t again: Native knowledge can't be as reliable as writing? WTF. Read a book. Hell, read mine. She shows she has not read deeply in Native Studies. 1960 called; it wants it's racism back. 5/10

And note her colonial mentality: How dare tribes not HAVE TO TELL US how they know! She not only wants the bones; but if she can't have them then she wants access to Indigenous Esoteric and Life-Saving knowledge that has been protected for a couple centuries from ethnocide. 6/10

Showing her disciplinary parochialism, she says tribal knowledge suspiciously includes creation and supernatural events. How did she graduate with a BA without learning that Native communities often have distinct categories for tales, legends, sayings, knowledge, etc? 7/10

Should someone tell her that "science" also has traditions, falsehoods, premises, and supernatural theories that may or may not become "naturalized" through testing? Should someone tell her that Indigenous people were testing, theorizing, living practically and relationally? 8/10

CalNAGPRA is not "destroying research." It's inching toward decolonizing hierarchical relationship between differing ways of knowing and valuing. And if her reification of science depends on those hierarchies, then she's practicing a settler science that aims to colonize. 9/10

Finally, I want to say I'm a settler (on Tongva land). Indigenous scholars should be read more widely in STEM curricula in order to disrupt simplistic notions of native vs. science: Claw; Edmunds; Gaudry; Lorenz; Kolopenuk; TallBear; Fish; Watts; and others! 10/10

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