RAI RESEARCH SEMINAR

SEMINAR SERIES AT THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

Science and Sustainability: Learning from Indigenous Wisdom AND/OR
A Retired Anthropologist rethinks her first degree in General Science

Professor Joy Hendry, Oxford Brookes

Wednesday 29 April at 5.30 pm

Joy’s “retirement” was marked by a year taking up exciting invitations to visit universities in Australia, New Zealand and the Cook Islands. The remits there were various but she formulated a project that would draw again on an early interest in science, this time gathering materials from the Indigenous peoples she would seek out in all these places, and building on her previous research with First Nations in Canada (Hendry 2005). The resulting new book demonstrates a stunning and complex understanding of the environment that had sadly been largely ignored and even destroyed by settlers from the Europe which seemed to them so superior. Anthropologists have long recorded examples of indigenous science and the way it lies embedded in other aspects of cosmology such as religion, ritual and even art, but recently governments in the wider nations where it is found are at last noticing its value for sustaining ourselves as the world comes increasingly under threat from an overenthusiasm for “growth” and “development”. Some examples will be recounted in this talk.  

Hendry, Joy, 2005 Reclaiming Culture: Indigenous Peoples and Self-Representation, Palgrave

This event is free, but tickets must be booked. To book tickets please go to http://joyhendry.eventbrite.co.uk