LAB 018 - TRUTH PIE
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Thanksgiving is next week, and its been feeling like folks are getting less and less excited for it every year. People are are already putting out their Christmas decorations! We think part of this has to do with the fact that people are becoming less and less comfortable celebrating this holiday because of its history . The colonization of North America led to the genocide of the indigenous people, so folks are feeling uneasy “celebrating”.
In this episode we talk about settler colonialism and its effects on the indigenous people and indigenous ecology of what we now know as “North America”.
We learn that things are A LOT different than how it would have been had the Europeans not colonized North America. Dr. Reo highlights 4 major ways (outside of the genocide of the idigeounous people) that the ecology was greatly altered: Diseases, invasive species, deforestation, and global biotic exchange.
All of these things do not exist in isolation. If one of these categories are touched they all feel the ripple effect.
One example is the loss of the Bison (or buffalo) an animal that was indigenous to North America. In past centuries there were 30 to 60 million bison. By 1900, Europeans had reduced that number to 600. Bison are really important to the ecology of North America. Read this article from The Atlantic to find out more about what we lose we lose the bison.
ABOUT THE EXPERT
Our expert for the episode is Dr. Nicholas Reo. Dr. Reo is is a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. He is Associate Professor of Native American and Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College where he studies Indigenous knowledge and ecological stewardship on Indigenous lands. Dr. Reo blends ecological, anthropological and Indigenous methodologies in his work, often via tribal community-university partnerships.
READ
You can read a transcript for this episode here!