Thread by @MerKhaiBurch

Dr.MariaElena Zavala's talk at #MGM2023 was amazing. Dr. Zavala talked about research, mentors & work to increase the number of historically excluded folks in the academy. The Q&A session however had VERY disparaging comments about Indigenous peoples and I want to tell you why 🧵

For context, one individual (a white guy) who has been in the maize community for a very long time got up and gave a 4-5 minute comment on the VERY intimate life details of an Indigenous maize geneticist who worked in their lab 2/

I will spare the details here - but the more general comments painted Indigenous communities as impoverished groups who needed to be saved from substance abuse, poverty, death, and the reservation. Very much viewing Indigenous communities through a deficit narrative 3/

What made this worse was that people clapped after this comment/speech. Hundreds of people listened, and no one said anything. They clapped. I felt too uncomfortable and shocked to get up, collect my thoughts, and say something 4/

Is it even my job to say something? As far as I know, I am the only (North American) Indigenous person in this community. It’s 3 AM, and I will probably regret this later, but after thinking about it for a bit, this is what I WISH I had said 5/

I need you all to take a look at yourselves and think about why you all clapped at the end of that speech. Do you think that Indigenous peoples need your help? Do you think that we need saving from being poor? From substance abuse? From living on reservations? From sickness? 6/

We don't need your white saviorism. We don't need your settler colonialism saying what our "problem" is that you created through genocide. We don't need you to save us. There are over 574 federally recognized, sovereign nations whose land you are on. 7/

Whose crops you are all working on and benefit from. And whose stories you are telling without our consent in a manner that reinforces these deficit narratives over and over again about how we are disappearing and how we are helpless. 8/

Not stories of our strength, power, and resilience in these historically exclusive institutions and communities. 9/

There was a question earlier about how we can figure out why historically excluded scientists leave academia, and Dr. Zavala’s answer was just to ask. Well, this is one of those reasons. Why did you all clap? 10/

This is my 8th maize meeting. During the yearly maize meeting tradition, those who have attended this meeting for the most years stay standing, and those who haven’t sit down. I watched the majority of the historically excluded participants sit down as they called out who 11/

had been to 5, 10, 20, up until 60 meetings. At even the 5+ year mark, I felt alone. Indigenous peoples have worked alongside maize since before colonial constructs of time began, but it is very telling that there are no Indigenous peoples here but me. 12/

Why didn’t the committee on diversity, equity, and inclusion say something? As PIs, and future PIs, you need to stop tokenizing your marginalized scientists. 13/

We, I, need you all to be better mentors. Better advisors. Better allies. Deem our work as scientific enough to be presented on that stage and not just invite us here to fix your diversity problem. So I ask you all again, why did you all clap #MGM2023?