About the video: Leroy Little Bear delivers the Spring 2011 Simon Ortiz and Labriola Center Lecture on Indigenous Land, Culture and Community.
Leroy Little Bear, a member of the Blood Tribe of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Canada), speaks about science through the lens of Native American culture and teachings. He outlines several tenets of this lens and discusses how we might use them to overcome obstacles reached in the scientific community. These tenets are constant flux, renewal, and place. He also discusses the tendency for a focus on interconnectedness and the larger picture in Native culture versus the focus on individualism and the individual parts in Western culture and the part this plays in studying science.
Prior to entering the legal field, Little Bear began his college career hoping to enter into the field of science either in physics or chemistry. He is head of the SEED Gradu­ate Institute, which seeks to integrate existing fields of learning, including science and cosmology as well as other disciplines, with Indigenous world-views, he is former Director of the American Indian Program at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus of Native Studies at the University of Lethbridge where he was department chair for 25 years. Little Bear has served as a legal and constitutional adviser to the Assembly of First Nations and has served on many committees, commissions, and boards dealing with First Nations issues. In 2003, Little Bear was awarded the prestigious Na­tional Aboriginal Achievement Award for Education, the highest honor bestowed by Canada's First Nations community. In 2006, he was awarded an honorary doc­torate by the University of Lethbridge. He has written several articles and co-edited three books including Pathways to Self-Determination: Canadian Indians and the Canadian State (1984), Quest for Justice: Aboriginal Peoples and Aboriginal Rights (1985), and Governments in Conflict and In­dian Nations in Canada (1988). He is also contributor to Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision (UBC Press, 2000).
About the lecture series:
The Simon Ortiz and Labriola Center Lecture on Indigenous Land, Culture, and Community at Arizona State University brings notable scholars and speakers to Arizona for public lectures twice per year. Underscoring Indigenous American experiences and perspectives, this series seeks to create and celebrate knowledge that evolves from an Indigenous worldview that is inclusive and that is applicable to all walks of life.
Sponsored by Arizona State University's American Indian Policy Institute; American Indian Studies Program; Department of English; Indian Legal Program in the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law; Labriola National American Indian Data Center; Faculty of History in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies; and Women and Gender Studies in the School of Social Transformation; with tremendous support from the Heard Museum.
Recorded March 24, 2011 at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona www.heard.org
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