Background: The objective of this research was to review reporting of ethical concerns and community involvement in peer-reviewed systematic reviews or meta-analyses concerning American Indian, Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian (AI/AN/NH) health. Methods: Text words and indexed vocabulary terms were used to query PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and the Native Health Database for systematic reviews or meta-analyses concerning AI/AN/NH health published in peer-reviewed journals, followed by a search through reference lists. Each article was abstracted by two (...) independent reviewers; results were discussed until consensus was reached. Results: We identified 107 papers published from 1986 through 2012 that were primarily about AI/AN/NH health or presented findings separately for AI/AN/NH communities. Two reported seeking indigenous reviewer feedback; none reported seeking input from tribes and communities. Approximately 7% reported on institutional review board (IRB) approval of included studies, 5% reported on tribal approval, and 4% referenced the sovereignty of AI/AN tribes. Approximately 63% used evidence from more than one AI/AN/NH population study, and 28% discussed potential benefits to communities from the synthesis research. Conclusions: Reporting of ethics and community involvement are not prominent. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses making community-level inferences may pose risks to communities. Future systematic reviews and meta-analyses should consider ethical and participatory dimensions of research. (shrink)

This comprehensive educational history of public schools in Hawai'i shows and analyzes how dominant cultural and educational policy have affected the education experiences of Native Hawaiians. Drawing on institutional theory as a scholarly lens, the authors focus on four historical cases representing over 150 years of contact with the West. They carefully link historical events, significant people, educational policy, and law to cultural and social consequences for Native Hawaiian children and youth. The authors argue that since the (...) early 1800s, educational policy in Hawai'i emphasizing efficiency has resulted in institutional structures that have degenerated Hawaiian culture, self-image, and sovereignty. Native Hawaiians have often been denied equal access to quality schools and resulting increased economic and social status. These policies were often overtly, or covertly, racist and reflected wider cultural views prevalent across the United States regarding the assimilation of groups into the American mainstream culture. The case of education in Hawai'i is used to initiate a broader discussion of similar historical trends in assimilating children of different backgrounds into the American system of education. The scholarly analysis presented in this book draws out historical, political, cultural, and organizational implications that can be employed to understand other Native and non-Native contexts. Given the increasing cultural diversity of the United States and the perceived failure of the American educational system in light of these changes, this book provides an exceptionally appropriate starting point to begin a discussion about past, present, and future schooling for our nation's children. Because it is written and comes from a Native perspective, the value of the "insider" view is illuminated. This underlying reminder of the Native eye is woven throughout the book in _Ha'awina No'ono'o_--the sharing of thoughts from the Native Hawaiian author. With its primary focus on the education of native groups, this book is an extraordinary and useful work for scholars, thoughtful practitioners, policymakers, and those interested in Hawai'i, Hawaiian education, and educational policy and theory. (shrink)

pThis article thinks through the work of Kanaka (Native Hawaiian) philosopher Davida Malo (1795–1853) and puts it in dialogue with the work of Richard Armstrong (1805–1860). It argues that Malo offers an account of being human that entails the proper management of impulses (makemake) and intentions (manaʻo) in ways that lead to flourishing (hoʻokūʻonoʻono) in complex communities (kauhale) overseen by leaders (aliʻi) that are informed by the examples of leaders from the past. Standards for proper living, in this (...) setting, are constructed by the community, the members of which are informed by their own experiences and the experiences of their ancestors (kūpuna) as the latter sought to ease the burdens (kaumaha) they confronted in daily life. Armstrong offers a similar picture of human beings as creatures that must learn to observe their intentions and to cultivate intentions that foster proper communal living—a community that Armstrong conceptualizes as a single family (hoʻokahiʻohana). Unlike Malo’s description, however, the standards of this family construct are based on universal laws of right and wrong that only pertain to humans and their standing before a divine figure understood as the Biblical God. The significance of this piece is not only to show how Malo and Armstrong may have conversed over the question of how to live well, but also to begin a conversation in the field of world philosophies about the viability of Kanaka ways of life./p. (shrink)

Henri Lefebvre speaks of space as a social product. Spatially, law operates as a social product when considering sites of imprisonment. Call them prisons, jails, or correctional facilities, people who violate the law go to these places for purposes of confinement, punishment, rehabilitation. However, with decades of increasing rates of incarceration, we can see that these places fail both the jailed and the external society to which they will return. Through overcrowding, exploitative private companies, and defunded social services, these places (...) continue to cause injustice as spaces in which the social product of rehabilitation is often lacking. However, on the Island of Hawai‘i, there is an alternative. In Hilo, the community-based organization ‘Ohana Ho‘opakele’ seeks to provide a Hawaiian holistic approach that will serve as an alternative to incarceration. Through wellness centers and the practice of traditional ho’oponopono, this group advocates for a spatially-oriented rehabilitative approach to restorative justice. A central feature is the land upon which the program will be situated and its organization as a self-supported ahupua‘a. This indigenous land division contains diverse and sustainable resources where the participants will be connected to Hawaiian culture and practices central to the concept of wellness for the person and the community. The group’s vision for this program is far-reaching as it will serve as a model for justice in the Restored Hawaiian Kingdom. In this paper, we will explore the vision of ‘Ohana Ho‘opakele against the backdrop of a politically westernized legislative-based response to the diasporic urgency of Hawaii’s incarcerated. (shrink)

The term “Native Hawaiian” is often used to refer to the indigenous people of the Hawaiian islands; however, the term is itself non-Hawaiian, as is its pronunciation. The Kānaka Maoli, the “true or real persons,” are the indigenous people of Ka Pae ‘Āina O Hawai‘i (the Hawaiian archipelago). After living for centuries in these islands as a sovereign people, with a relationship to the land that is both familial and reciprocal, the last Hawaiian government (...) was overthrown in 1893 with the help of military personnel from the United States of America. Five years after the overthrow the USA annexed the islands, in spite of clear and overwhelming opposition by the Kānaka Maoli. In 1959 the majority of non-Hawaiian residents of Hawai‘i voted in the affirmative for statehood. The aim of this article is to show that the overthrow of the sovereign Hawaiian nation, the annexation of Hawai‘i by the USA, and the incorporation of these islands into the USA as its fiftieth state, are both illegal and unjust. Moreover, justice requires the restoration of a sovereign Hawaiian nation. (shrink)

This paper details the evolution of activism against genetically modified organisms on the Big Island of Hawai’i. It offers an explanation for the ability of rural residents on the Big Island to pass anti-GMO legislation while other states and communities have tried and failed. I argue that the Big Island’s recent anti-GMO legislative success is due to the articulation of interests and actions between settlers to Hawai’i and Native Hawaiian community members seeking to protect Native Hawaiian (...) rights. Tracing the history of the anti-GMO movement on Big Island highlights the unique circumstances that facilitated the passage of this bill, and is also significant for making sense of the potential future trajectories of anti-GMO-related food sovereignty movements elsewhere. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Alzheimer's Disease, Aging, Chance, and RaceAtwood D. Gaines (bio)KeywordsAlzheimer’s disease, chance, mild cognitive impairment, racism, social constructionsThomas Kirkwood's comments are a welcome, articulate detailing of how and why we age with special reference to the brain. As well, his paper indicates clearly that processes reified as pathology and disease, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), are in fact common and inevitable as the human brain ages. Doubtless, this is the (...) reason that aging is by far the greatest risk factor for the development of AD. A key notion, briefly mentioned by Kirkwood, is that of chance. He points out that, "cells (will be) burdened with protein aggregates and similar materials that will increase with aging. Once again, which cells will experience this fate and which will continue to function healthily is strongly influenced by chance" (Kirkwood 2006, 80–81). This mention of chance is most important for our paper, "Building a Mystery," and for an understanding of science as well. In "Building a Mystery," Peter Whitehouse and I sought to show that the history of AD was not inevitable and demonstrates a variety of chance and singular decisive occurrences of encounters, interpretations, social movements, government initiatives, and technological developments. Such decisive moments do not occur by virtue of some (natural) lawful process that is unfolding, but rather, these are chance events that could have happened in other ways. Indeed, science has been viewed as human attempts to "tame chance" (Hacking 1990). However, it often does so by sleight of hand, misinterpretation, and the biomedical discourse of hope. Increasingly, we are learning that chance is a commonality, not a rarity, in social and biological domains. The biomedical approach assumes the opposite. For example, it seeks to tame the chance appearance of AD in the case of Auguste D, and does so in part by reifying differences that exist, as Kirkwood notes, along a continuum rather than as the discrete entities implied by the labels Alzheimer's disease or mild cognitive impairment (MCI).We thus stand with Kirkwood's bold recognition of chance (see also Kirkwood 2003) in the biological domain and have applied the same idea to the social domain in which we consider the practice of biomedical science. We have elsewhere emphasized consensus statements in the making of AD (Gaines and Whitehouse 1998). In the present article, we add a number of other chance, decisive sociocultural moments to the mix of social processes producing AD and MCI. We have not considered in detail here a host of cultural features in the theory and practice of biomedicine with respect to AD. These include implicit, yet highly [End Page 83] implicative, cultural notions of bilateral kinship employed in genetic research on AD considered elsewhere (Gaines 1998).Bavidge's comments are cogent as well. With respect to the notion of my concept of the local biology of "race" (Gaines 2005), it is germane to point out here that such culturally constructed biologies are relevant to a discussion of AD and other dementias. Such constructions represent culture in science. We used the dramatic example of "race" in US biomedicine because it is experiencing a resurgence as an explanatory tool. For example, recently Haiman et al. (2006) presented research that suggests that "Among cigarette smokers, African Americans and native Hawaiians are more susceptible to lung cancer than whites, Japanese Americans and Latinos." The authors assert, as have many US studies, that their findings show differences relate to the alleged biology of the social groups concerned. Their problem and that of others, is that the groups are social, not biological, and most have mixed ancestry and do not stem from distinct groups. This is particularly true of African Americans and Latinos; both groups are substantially composed of individuals with European, West African, and Native American ancestry in widely varying proportions (Gaines 2005). Thus, they are different only in terms of their classification. Such work regularly overlooks influences, such as environmental racism, discrimination, poverty, and a lack of medical care, as well as other practices. These might include, in a study of smoking, pakalolo smoking (local marijuana) among Hawaiians, who themselves are usually part Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, and or European... (shrink)

School climate is a multidimensional construct of the quality of a student’s academic environment, often subsuming dimensions such as safety, instructional practices, social relationships, school facilities, and school connectedness. Positive school climate has beneficial effects on a wide range of adjustment variables in youth, including academic achievement, mental health, school attendance and graduation, and school-based behavior. Studies regarding school climate assessment have burgeoned in recent years but remain marked by limited sample sizes, narrow developmental levels, restricted items, unclear psychometric strength (...) across multiple demographic groups, and lack of integration with key student education contextual factors such as academic mindset and social emotional learning. The present study evaluated a comprehensive measure of aspects of school climate, academic mindset, and social emotional learning in a sample of 105,379 diverse students (Mage = 13.47 years; SD = 2.47). The 9-factor structure of the School Climate and Academic Mindset Inventory was supported via confirmatory factor analysis. A trimmed model displayed adequate goodness-of-fit for males and females, younger age groups, and European American, biracial/multiracial, Hispanic, Native American, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students. The trimmed model was slightly less strong for older age groups as well as for African American and Asian American students. The scale may be useful for assessing school climate interventions, longitudinal climate patterns, and school-based algorithms of future performance, though additional validation of the scale remains necessary. (shrink)

This article reimagines the meanings of U.S. national parks and so-called ‘natural’ places in our environmental histories and histories of science. Environmental historians have created a compelling narrative about the creation and use of U.S. national parks as places for recreation and natural resource conservation. Although these motivations were undoubtedly significant, I argue that some of the early parks were created and used for a third, often overlooked, reason: to preserve a permanent, state-sanctioned space for scientific knowledge production. Deconstructing the (...) concept of the “natural laboratory,” I show how scientists helped justify and then benefited from the creation of national parks. Hawaii National Park serves as my case study. Advocates of the national park aimed to give settler colonial scientists in the Hawaiian archipelago a permanent place for their research, while tying Hawai‘i’s exotic landscape into the sublime nature of the American West. The park was framed as a perfect laboratory for U.S. experts to study “curious” flora, fauna, and geological processes, becoming a major site of knowledge production in volcanology. Reimagining the parks in this way has ramifications for how we think about issues of access and justice. Environmental historians who have explored the ‘dark side’ of the conservation movement have yet to consider the other half of the story: the parks not only barred certain peoples and their ways of life, but also provided access to scientists – a set of actors whose work was deemed more complementary to conservationist goals than the activities of the Native Hawaiians – and marginalized local and indigenous epistemologies. Thus, the question so often asked in environmental history, “Who is nature for?” might be supplemented by the question, “Who has the power to know nature?”. (shrink)

Successful fishery management requires that a dynamic balance of disciplines provide a fully integrated approach. I use Integral Ecology to analyze multiple-use conflicts with an ornamental reef-fish fishery in Hawai'i that is community-managed via the implementation of a series of marine protected areas and the creation of an advisory council. This approach illustrates how the joyful experiences of snorkelers resulted in negative interactions with fish collectors and, thereafter, produced social movements, political will, and ecological change. Although conflicts were reduced and (...) sustainability promoted, lack of acknowledgment of differing worldviews, including persistent native Hawaiian cultural beliefs, contributed to continued conflicts. (shrink)

This article examines the question of how can museum professionals and the interested public resolve the competing claims of traditional ownership and continuing scientific research in relation to museum collections.

Winch’s ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’ addressed the question of how to interpret apparently irrational alien beliefs and practices. Criticizing Evans-Pritchard’s study of Zande witchcraft, Winch argued that across cultures there are divergent conceptions of what is rational and real and that, where they diverge, it is mistaken to apply ‘our’ standards and conceptions to ‘their’ beliefs. Winch’s position is here re-examined in the light of the current debate about whether the Hawaiians thought Captain Cook was divine. Sahlins holds that they (...) did, asserting that different cultures have different rationalities. Obeyesekere disagrees, holding that these views are just further evidence of European myth-making about the natives’ savage mentality, and that ‘practical rationality’ is common to all cultures. In conclusion it is argued that Sahlins’s ‘Maussian’ interpretative strategy is preferable to Obeyesekere’s ‘Davidsonian’ approach, that Sahlins cannot sustain his Winchean claim about rationality and that denying it is a precondition for understanding a practice central to all cultures: that of trying to get the world right. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Imagined Apotheoses: Drake, Harriot, and Ralegh in the AmericasWilliam M. HamlinPerhaps the two best known stories of Europeans being taken for gods by non-European peoples are those of Hernan Cortés in Mexico and Captain James Cook in Hawaii. Separated by two hundred sixty years, five thousand miles, and vast differences in cultural and linguistic context, these two incidents nonetheless share many traits in the conventional telling. Cortés and Cook (...) were both strong leaders, for instance, both capable of inspiring devotion among their subordinates. Both men became amateur ethnographers during their lengthy sojourns away from Europe, both sought to promote an image of respectful rather than rapacious foreign incursion, and both are said to have been taken for returning gods by the native peoples among whom they landed: Cortés for the Toltec culture-hero and demigod Quetzalcoatl, Cook for the Hawaiian deity Lono. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.“The Far Side” cartoon by Gary Larson. Courtesy of Chronicle Features, San Francisco.Recent scholarly studies and debates—among them the rather strident dispute between Gananath Obeyesekere and Marshall Sahlins over the alleged deification of Cook by eighteenth-century Hawaiians—have opened up these returning-god theories to skeptical critique and detailed justification; but such discussions have had little, if any, impact on popular imagination. 1 [End Page 405] Indeed, the idea that redoubtable European explorers can be (and often are) perceived as supernatural beings by non-European “primitives” has been uncritically perpetuated to this day by filmmakers, fantasists, writers of popular history, and purveyors of cultural literacy. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., for instance, informs our children that Caribbean islanders encountered by Columbus “asked if he had come from heaven”—the implication being, of course, that they took him for a god. 2 And in the recent film, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, we hear the indefatigable Admiral (played by Gerard Depardieu) claim that “on every island the natives welcome us with great generosity and trust.... Because of our appearance, we have been mistaken for gods, and are treated accordingly.” 3 Fortunately, we also have a “Far Side” parody of the cultural conceit on which such ideas in part rely, but the cartoon serves as well to demonstrate just how thoroughly the conceit has permeated our collective awareness (see figure 1). 4 Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 2.“It’s against my programming to impersonate a deity.” From The Return of the Jedi, dir. Richard Marquand, Lucasfilm, Ltd., 1983. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Lucasfilm, Ltd.Let me offer just one other example. Near the end of the popular 1983 film The Return of the Jedi, the forest-dwelling Ewoks begin to chant and salaam upon first glimpsing the golden robot C-3PO, who in turn tells his captured comrades, “I do believe they think I am some sort of god.” When Han Solo sarcastically asks the robot to use his “divine influence” to help extricate them from their predicament, C-3PO replies that such an action would be improper: “It’s against my programming to impersonate a deity.” Here we see, embedded within a film romance, both the classic trope of the apotheosized foreigner and the related motif of the foreigner’s reluctance to [End Page 406] play the god-role (see figure 2). It is worth noting, however, that while C-3PO may be unwilling to exploit the Ewoks’ misperception, Luke Skywalker is not; he uses the “Force” to convince the Ewoks of the robot’s magical prowess and, more to the point, to perpetuate their misapprehension. 5What I wish to suggest in this essay is that certain habitual Western assumptions or conceits regarding cross-cultural encounters—assumptions which have been usefully termed “myth models” inasmuch as they condition human perception and find frequent discursive expression—coexist easily but in fact disjunctively with certain other ideological structures in many early modern travel narratives and colonial accounts. Obeyesekere, in his provocative book on the supposed deification of Captain Cook in Hawaii, has linked such myth models to the conceptual structures of the longue durée as characterized by Fernand Braudel, and it is possible that they may also be... (shrink)

Joel Spring’s history of school polices imposed on dominated groups in the United States examines the concept of deculturalization—the use of schools to strip away family languages and cultures and replace them with those of the dominant group. The focus is on the education of dominated groups forced to become citizens in territories conquered by the U.S., including Native Americans, Enslaved Africans, Chinese, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Hawaiians. In 7 concise, thought-provoking chapters, this analysis and documentation of how education (...) is used to change or eliminate linguistic and cultural traditions in the U.S. looks at the educational, legal, and social construction of race and racism in the United States, emphasizing the various meanings of "equality" that have existed from colonial America to the present. Providing a broader perspective for understanding the denial of cultural and linguistic rights in the United States, issues of language, culture, and deculturalization are placed in a global context. The major change in the 8 th Edition is a new chapter, "Global Corporate Culture and Separate But Equal," describing how current efforts at deculturalization involve replacing family and personal cultures with a corporate culture to increase worker efficiency. Substantive updates and revisions are made throughout all other chapters. (shrink)

The Hawaiian Drosophila have been a model system for evolutionary, ecological, and ethological studies since the inception of the Hawaiian Drosophila Project in the 1960s. Here we review the past and present research on this incredible lineage and provide a prospectus for future directions on genomics and microbial interactions. While the number of publications on this group has waxed and waned over the years, we assert that recent systematic, biogeographic, and ecological studies have reinvigorated Hawaiian Drosophila as (...) an evolutionary model system. The characteristics that distinguish good model clades from good model organisms (e.g., Drosophila melanogaster) are somewhat different so we first define what constitutes a good evolutionary model. We argue that the Hawaiian Drosophila possess many desired aspects of a good evolutionary model, describe how this group of geographically isolated flies have been used in the past, and propose some exciting avenues for future evolutionary research on this diverse, dynamic clade of Drosophila. (shrink)

In this essay, after a brief decolonial analysis of the concept of “poetry” in Indigenous communities, I will investigate the poetic-philosophical implications of Cherokee culture, more specifically the poetic essence of the Cherokee language, the poetic aspects of Cherokee myth (pre-history) and post-myth (history), and the poetic-philosophical powers of Cherokee ritual. My first section analyzes the poetic essence, structure, special features, and historical context of the Cherokee language, drawing on Ruth Holmes and Betty Sharp Smith’s language textbook, Beginning Cherokee. My (...) second section considers poetic aspects of the pre-history and history of the Cherokee Nation considered as a text, using Robert J. Conley’s The Cherokee Nation: A History. And my third section investigates the poetic nature of the Cherokee rituals’ myth-ontological background and its existential psychological implications, via J. T. Garrett & Michael Tlanusta Garrett’s The Cherokee Full Circle: A Practical Guide to Ceremonies and Traditions. Collectively, these analyses will suggest that, just as the Cherokee and other tribes are the slandered, disenfranchised, suppressed and covered-over Indigenous peoples of the North American continent, so poetry writ large (including Indigenous philosophy) is the slandered, disenfranchised, suppressed and covered-over arche of western philosophy (as I have previously explored via a new interpretation of Nietzsche). In short, I will argue that both poetry and Cherokee culture can be understood as indigenous “absences” which are in truth vital and enduring presences. (shrink)

Classifying species as ‘native’ or ‘alien’ carries prescriptive force in the valuation and management of ‘nature’. But the classification itself and its application are contested, raising philosophical and geographical questions about place, space, rights, identity and belonging. This paper discusses leading critiques of the native/alien paradigm, including its conceptual fluidity, dichotomous rigidity and ethical difficulties, as well as the incendiary charge of xenophobia. It argues that valorizing ‘native nature’ as inherently the ‘best nature’ is not only obsolete (...) but impracticable in the Anthropocene, and that the preeminence of biogeographic origins should be replaced with a pragmatic focus on species’ behavior. (shrink)

What leads humans to divide the social world into groups, preferring their own group and disfavoring others? Experiments with infants and young children suggest these tendencies are based on predispo- sitions that emerge early in life and depend, in part, on natural language. Young infants prefer to look at a person who previously spoke their native language. Older infants preferentially accept toys from native-language speakers, and preschool children preferentially select native-language speakers as friends. Variations in accent are (...) sufficient to evoke these social preferences, which are observed in infants before they produce or comprehend speech and are exhibited by children even when they comprehend the foreign-accented speech. Early-developing preferences for native-language speakers may serve as a foundation for later-developing preferences and conflicts among social groups. (shrink)

Our exemplar of a Native American relational ethic is depicted through the Seven Grandfather Teachings, an ancient sacred story of Potawatomi and Ojibwe peoples. These teachings state that human beings are responsible to act with wisdom, respect, love, honesty, humility, bravery, and truth toward each other and all creation. We illustrate the possible uses of this ethic through exercises wherein students reflect on the values and learn lessons related to ethics, leadership, teamwork, and relationships, or create stories using (...) class='Hi'>Native American story form. (shrink)

Стаття присвячена питанню, як native speaker реалізує свою владу над non-native speaker. Дослідження виконано в рамках теорії лінгвістичного імперіалізму. Для розкриття цих відносин вводиться концепт права на корегування. Для описання фігур native speaker та non-native speaker звертаємося до дослідників лінгвістичного імперіалізму, зокрема Р. Філліпсона, Ю. Цуди тощо. Вказується, що стандартним поглядом на панування native speaker є соціально-економічний, де native speaker постає як фігура, довкола якої концентруються можливості економічної взаємодії та економічний профіт. Натомість, право на (...) корегування демонструє владу native speaker на комунікативному рівні. Суть права на корегування наступна: native speaker як той, хто первісно занурений у мову і краще розуміє її, має право корегувати/виправляти мову non-native speaker. Для розкриття цього концепту звертаємося до концепту соціолектів Р. Барта та стратегій виключення, описаних Ж. Рансьєром. Основною для права на корегування виступає ідея, що мову найкраще може знати той, хто укорінений у мовне і культурне середовище, звідки походить мова – ця ідея є фігурою системності у розумінні Р. Барта. Право на корегування виконує декілька функцій. По-перше, це практика дискредитації мовлення non-native speaker, маркування його як шуму. По-друге, це практика інтерпеляції та формування non-native speaker як об’єкту мовлення, а native speaker – на Суб’єкта. По-третє, це можливість привласнення мовлення non-native speaker, а отже, позбавлення цього мовлення властивості імперативності, влади. Метою лінгвістичного імперіалізму є створення єдиної (глобальної) логіки виключення non-native speakers з (глобального) комунікативного простору. В цій логіці мова виступає як код, подібний до того коду, що описував Ж. Дельоз. (shrink)

Native women residing in the Subarctic and Arctic are currently struggling for the right to decide whether they will be hospitalized or have a midwife present for the birth of their children. The argument presented in this review paper outlines the cultural and clinical factors in favour of recognizing and legalizing traditional midwifery in the North and critically examines the statistical and safety concerns raised by those arguing against giving Northern Native women an alternative to evacuation from their (...) home communities. (shrink)

In this note, my aim is to point out a phenomenon that has not received much attention; a phenomenon that, in my opinion, should not be overlooked in the professional practice of philosophy, especially within feminist efforts for social justice. I am referring to the way in which being a non-native speaker of English interacts with the practice of philosophy.1 There is evidence that non-native speakers are often perceived in prejudiced ways. Such prejudiced perception causes harm and, more (...) importantly, constitutes wrongdoing. As in other cases of prejudiced perception and biased behavior, it would be pretentious and misguided to expect philosophers and the philosophy profession to be free from this vice. There are good reasons to think that this prejudiced perception is bad not only for the persons who are perceived in such a way, but also for the profession, for it might make us miss important things that could improve philosophy in general. I claim we should be more sensitive to this phenomenon, both out of concern for justice, and for the sake of doing better philosophy. (shrink)

In this study, Limburgian and Dutch 2,5- to 4-year-olds and adults took part in a word learning experiment. Following the procedure employed by Quam and Swingley (2010) and Singh et al. (2014), participants learned two novel word-object mappings. After training, word recognition was tested in correct pronunciation (CP) trials and mispronunciation (MP) trials featuring a pitch change. Since Limburgian is considered a restricted tone language, we expected that the pitch change would hinder word recognition in Limburgian, but not in non-tonal (...) Dutch listeners. Contrary to our expectations, both Limburgian and Dutch children appeared to be sensitive to pitch changes in newly learned words, indicated by a significant decrease in target fixation in MP trials compared to CP trials. Limburgian and Dutch adults showed very strong naming effects in both trial types. The results are discussed against the background of the influence of the native prosodic system. (shrink)

Pragmatism is America’s most distinctive philosophy. Generally it has been understood as a development of European thought in response to the "American wilderness." A closer examination, however, reveals that the roots and central commitments of pragmatism are indigenous to North America. Native Pragmatism recovers this history and thus provides the means to re-conceive the scope and potential of American philosophy. Pragmatism has been at best only partially understood by those who focus on its European antecedents. This book casts new (...) light on pragmatism’s complex origins and demands a rethinking of African American and feminist thought in the context of the American philosophical tradition. Scott L. Pratt demonstrates that pragmatism and its development involved the work of many thinkers previously overlooked in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Sagoff [Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 18 (2005), 215–236] argues, against growing empirical evidence, that major environmental impacts of non-native species are unproven. However, many such impacts, including extinctions of both island and continental species, have both been demonstrated and judged by the public to be harmful. Although more public attention has been focused on non-native animals than non-native plants, the latter more often cause ecosystem-wide impacts. Increased regulation of introduction of non-native species is, therefore, (...) warranted, and, contra Sagoff’s assertions, invasion biologists have recently developed methods that greatly aid prediction of which introduced species will harm the environment and thus enable more efficient regulation. The fact that introduced species may increase local biodiversity in certain instances has not been shown to result in desired changes in ecosystem function. In other locales, they decrease biodiversity, as they do globally. (shrink)

The nomadic Kazaks inhabiting Xinjiang Province, China, retain many aspects of their pre‐Islamic way of life, including the use of methods of traditional healing usually classified under the rubric of "shamanism." These practices are closely related to those in Kazakstan, Mongolia, and other parts of the former Soviet Union.The present study addresses aspects of traditional healing in use among the Xinjiang Kazaks in recent times, and presents a native taxonomy of these practices obtained during recent fieldwork in Xingjiang. Special (...) attention is paid to the use of words, sound, and movement in healing contexts by elders and specialized individuals. (shrink)

Native American land ethics are not well understood by many governmental natural resource managers. This article presents the results of interviews with selected tribal elders, tribal land managers, and tribal content experts concerning traditional beliefs and values forming a land ethic and how these influence tribal land management practices. The Native American land ethic that emerged from this study includes four belief areas: “All Is Sacred”; ; “Right Action”; ; “All Is Interrelated”; ; and “Mother Earth”;. Traditional (...) class='Hi'>Native American beliefs concerning the environment appear to spring from a spiritual context rather than the scientific‐utilitarian context more prevalent in the dominant Euro‐American culture. (shrink)

Previous work on individual differences has revealed limitations in the ability of existing measures (e.g., working memory) to predict language processing. Recent evidence suggests that an individual's sensitivity to detect the statistical regularities present in language (i.e., “chunk sensitivity”) may significantly modulate online sentence processing. We investigated whether individual chunk sensitivity predicted the online processing of gender cues, a core linguistic feature of Spanish. In a self‐paced reading task, we examined native speakers’ processing of relative clauses in which gender (...) cues were variably exploited to induce processing costs. Even after considering the effect of working memory and cognitive control, the results revealed a significant effect of chunking ability in modulating online sentence processing. Critically, higher‐chunking ability speakers’ reading times showed online sensitivity to core linguistic cues online; while low‐chunking ability readers showed no sensitivity to manipulations, indicating shallow real‐time processing of their native language. (shrink)

Advances in genetics and genomics have raised new questions in trout restoration and management, specifically about species identity and purity, which fish to value, and where these fish belong. This paper examines how this molecular turn in fisheries management is influencing wild and native trout policy in Colorado. Examples from two small Colorado watersheds, Bear Creek and Sand Creek, illustrate how framing trout as genetic bodies can guide managers to care for or kill trout populations in the interest of (...) rectifying decades of genetic disruption caused by human activity. While trout management has typically relied on human intervention, the turn to genetic science is prompting new classifications of lineage and taxa, altering long-standing conservation priorities, and reorienting the manipulation of biological processes such as reproduction and dispersal. As a result, other social and ecological factors may be pushed to the margins of management decisions. These changes warrant greater conversation about the consequences of molecular analyses and the values embedded in trout science and conservation more broadly. (shrink)

Non-native species are implicated in many ecological and economic problems, and the field of invasion biology has burgeoned in response to this fact. However, classification, terminology, and management of non-native species generate controversies and even calls for abolition of the field. The fact that the basis for disputes is differing worldviews rather than simply interpretation of biological observations suggests that resolving arguments about non-native species will be difficult, independently of questions about the operational tractability of proposed courses (...) of action. (shrink)

. This paper describes a cross-cultural and developmental research project on naïve or folk biology, that is, the study of how people conceptualize nature. The combination of domain specificity and cross-cultural comparison brings a new perspective to theories of categorization and reasoning and undermines the tendency to focus on “standard populations.” From the standpoint of mainstream cognitive psychology, we find that results gathered from standard populations in industrialized societies often fail to generalize to humanity at large. For example, similarity-driven typicality (...) and diversity effects and basic level phenomena either are not found or pattern differently when we move beyond undergraduates. From the perspective of domain-specificity, standard populations may yield misleading results, because such populations represent examples of especially impoverished experience with respect to nature. Conceptions of humans as biological kinds vary with cultural milieu and input conditions. We also show certain phenomena that are robust across populations, consistent with notions of domain-specificity. (shrink)

The Ohlone, the original settlers of the San Francisco region, were violently dispossessed by successive colonial regimes, first Spanish, then US American. The colonial trauma was written out of history, and by the 20th century anthropologists pronounced the Ohlone to be ‘extinct’. In this article, I explore how the dispossession of the Ohlone haunt one of the greatest movies of all time: Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Although Vertigo is one of the most-analysed films ever, no one has noticed that Carlotta (...) Valdes – the dispossessed woman who comes back from the dead to take possession of the living – would have been Native American. A hauntological reading reveals Vertigo as an unwitting witness of colonial dispossession. (shrink)

This syllabus explores complex ways that Native peoples form relationships with environments. Topics include Native American environmental thought, ethics, technology, and aesthetics of practice. A comparative approach shows differences and similarities of Native and Western templates of understanding that frame relations in our human environment. Texts discuses understanding of traditional and contemporary indigenous philosophical frameworks of environmental practices, and why they collide with technology. Required text authors include Gregory Cajete, J. Baird Caldicott, Michael P. Nelson, Donald Grinde, (...) and Bruce E. Johansen; recommended readings include Krim Benterrak, Staphen Muecke, Paddy Roe, David Suzuki, and Peter Knudtson. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the affinities between current theories of North American Indigenous trickster narratives and continental philosophy where they are both concerned with the question of responsibility in subject formations. Taking up the work of Judith Butler, Franz Kafka and Gerald Vizenor, the author works to show how both continental and Indigenous intellectual traditions work against any assumed stability for the ‘I’ in the narration of the self, yet toward responsible relationality. Such affinities, however, emerge from differing socio‐cultural (...) and linguistic horizons that are not reducible one to the other. This is particularly so with regard to the natural world and the ways in which Indigenous narratives are developed to foster responsible subjects to a larger biotic environment. Through discussion of such affinities and differences, the author seeks to broaden and multiculturalize contemporary debates in philosophy. (shrink)

One of the central questions in second language processing studies is whether native and second language readers process sentences relying on the same mechanisms or there are qualitative differences. As their proficiency grows, L2 readers become more efficient, but it is difficult to determine whether they develop native-like mechanisms or rely on different strategies. Our study contributes to this debate by focusing on constructions that were demonstrated to cause characteristic problems in L1 processing: a particular type of case (...) errors in Russian was taken as an example. We investigated how beginner and intermediate learners of Russian process such errors, measuring reading times and grammaticality judgment accuracy. At the beginner level, we found non-native-like patterns both in online and in offline measures. But at the intermediate level, native-like problems emerged in offline measures. In our view, this is a strong indication that these readers are using the same underlying mechanisms as in L1 processing. In online measures, L2 readers at both levels were, in general, much slower than native participants and exhibited characteristic non-native-like patterns, which we explained by delayed morphosyntactic processing. We conclude that our results are compatible with approaches, assuming that the mechanisms for L1 and advanced L2 processing are the same, but L2 processing is more cognitively demanding and therefore slower. (shrink)

Adversarial relations between science and religion have recurred throughout Western History. Archaeologists figure prominently in a recent incarnation of this debate as members of a hegemonic scientific elite. Postmodern debates situate disagreements in cosmological differences between innocent, traditional, native peoples and insensitive, career-mad, colonialist scientists. This simplistic dichotomy patronizes both First Peoples and archaeologists, pitting two economically marginal groups in a political struggle that neither can win. Although a few scholars have discussed the tyrannical nature of anthropological models of (...) tradition and culture, little consideration has been given to the fact that archaeology as a scientific discipline is drastically under-funded, with little research support and few jobs. Reconsideration of which political and economic groups actually benefit from the dramatization of a dichotomy between traditional and academic perspectives indicates some interesting patterns. The search for common ground is shown to have ethical implications for both the futures of First Peoples and the future of archaeology. (shrink)

This paper argues that discussions of disability must include the same diversity in worldview as is reflected in the client population. Speaking from the perspective of Native American ontology and epistemology, the author argues that those who are considered by the dominant society as disabled might well find themselves subjugated and oppressed by that definition. The differences between a Native American worldview and that of the dominant culture is addressed. The case is made that if diversity in worldview (...) and voice is not honored, disability-based oppression is replicated and reinforced. (shrink)

Studies of native syntactic processing often target phrase structure violations that do not occur in natural production. In contrast, this study examines how variation in basic word order is processed, looking specifically at structures traditionally labelled as violations but that do occur naturally. We examined Swedish verb-second and verb-third word order processing in adult native Swedish speakers, manipulating sentence-initial adverbials in acceptability judgements, in simultaneously recorded event-related potentials to visually presented sentences and in a written sentence completion task. (...) An initial corpus study showed that the adverbials differ in frequency in fronted position, and although all occur mainly with V2 word order, kanske occurs more frequently with V3 in natural production than both idag and hemma. The experimental results reflected these patterns such that V2 sentences were overall more frequently produced and were deemed more acceptable than V3 sentences. The ERP results consisted of a biphasic N400/P600 response to V3 word order that indicated effects of word retrieval and sentence reanalysis. We also found consistent effects of adverbials. As predicted, V3 was produced more frequently and judged as more acceptable in Kanske sentences than in sentences with the other two adverbials. The ERP analyses showed stronger effects for idag and hemma with V3, especially regarding the P600. The results suggest that the naturally occurring word order ‘violation’, V3 with kanske, is processed differently than V3 with other adverbials where the V2 norm is stronger. Moreover, these patterns are related to individuals’ own production patterns. Overall, the results suggest a more varied native word order processing than previously reported. (shrink)