The Power of Braiding: Professor Sonya Atalay on Indigenous Knowledge, Science, and Collaboration

In my latest Q&A series, I sat down with Professor Sonya Atalay, a public anthropologist and archaeologist who studies community-based science protocols and practices and Indigenous research methodologies carried out in partnership with Indigenous communities. She is a professor at both the UMass Amherst Department of Anthropology and the MIT Department of Anthropology. 

Professor Atalay is also the director of the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science(CBIKS). Her work was especially interesting to me because she emphasizes the difference between braiding and integrating, and how collaboration can build trust between communities while opening doors to a respectful way of attaining new knowledge. She is involved in producing a series of research-based comics in partnership with Native nations about the repatriation of Native American ancestral remains, the return of sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony under NAGPRA law.

An excerpt from what we talked about:

V: In your work, you distinguish between integrating and braiding. What are the consequences of integrating Indigenous knowledge into modern science instead of braiding them together?

Prof. Atalay: I love your question. I think people often use words like integrating, braiding, and blending interchangeably. I always talk about why the term “braiding” is important. If you think of a braid, you have different strands that come together and become stronger together, while each strand still retains its integrity.

With blending or integration, the pieces come together differently. If you think about blending colors, none of the colors retain their original integrity; they blend into something else. The same is true with integrating.

In the past, scientific research, particularly in relation to Indigenous peoples, has often involved researchers asking questions or seeking information, then extracting that data and integrating it into Western science. But this can harm Indigenous peoples, who have responsibilities to carry and care for certain kinds of knowledge. When knowledge is removed from its context and from the homeland where it makes the most sense and is meant to be cared for, something important can be lost.

That is why the braiding metaphor is so important. It allows different strands to come together and complement each other, while also protecting Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing so that we can learn from them while still ensuring the knowledge is honored and cared for in a good way.

V: That's really cool. I had also used integrating and braiding interchangeably until learning this difference. As the director of the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges in Science, what kind of work do you perform?

Prof. Atalay: I do all sorts of work. Your interests are more related to the archaeology pieces and the climate change parts. Is that right?

V: Yes!

Prof. Atalay: A lot of my current day-to-day work as director is focused on the administrative side, overseeing a large center and making sure all the research, education, and training aspects of the Center’s work are being carried out effectively. Overall, our center looks at three areas: climate change and environmental variability, the protection and care of cultural places, and food sovereignty and food security. We have a team of more than 100 people working on a wide range of projects, helping to understand how these three areas are interconnected and ensuring the research being done with communities is being done in an ethical way. 

We also have a group of scientists thinking about what we can learn from all of those projects which are happening on the ground and in the field, and how we can improve the research process when working with Indigenous communities and across all communities.

I am not out on the ground as much anymore, doing archaeological work or fieldwork directly with communities. A lot of my work now is helping these projects move forward.

Our Center’s research focuses on climate change, cultural heritage, and food sovereignty, but the insights we are gaining can really be applied to any scientific or scholarly research. It can be utilized in engineering, design, or any form of scientific research, because for so many of the modern-day challenges that we face in our world, scientists have the skills and knowledge to help solve those problems, but they can't do it alone. Their research is enriched in many cases when they partner with local communities or people who carry local knowledge. So, figuring out how you do that in a way that works well for everyone and producing outcomes that are relevant in the world and communities around us is a lot of what I spend my time doing and thinking about.

V: So you rely a lot on collaboration.

Prof. Atalay: Yes, 100%. I often say to my students: I know you want to get out into the world, do the fieldwork, and gather data and information, but at the beginning and throughout the research process, building the right relationships with communities where you are working is the most important task.

Relationships and trust-building matter deeply. When you work with communities, you can learn so much about how to solve detailed problems. You have to be able to listen and develop trust, so collaboration is a huge part of what I do.

V: How can Indigenous communities help us learn more about climate and environmental changes?

Prof. Atalay: Another really good question. There is so much knowledge and detailed information that Indigenous communities and people who live in local communities carry about their environment. In some cases, Indigenous communities carry knowledge that may be the only source of information for a place over millennia, not just hundreds of years, but thousands of years in a single location. There is nothing equivalent to having that level of detailed observational knowledge of a place over such a long period of time.

Working with people whose knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation is incredibly valuable. But we have to be careful not to think of it as integrating or extracting information. We shouldn’t go into a community, ask people what they know, take that knowledge, and apply it somewhere else. That is not only unethical, it also doesn’t produce the most useful outcomes. You have to understand that knowledge in the context of a particular place, which is why we refer to much of our work as developing place-based knowledge.

When you approach it from that perspective, you can see how valuable this knowledge is and how much it can help us address some of the difficult problems we face today related to environmental variability. 

Let me share an example. In our Alaska Arctic Hub, for example, local community members have identified different forms of salmon. In our Southwest Hub of CBIKS, community members have identified particular varieties of corn seeds. Western science has not always recognized these differences or fully understood the variation.

Indigenous community members may carry knowledge about differences in salmon varieties or types of corn seeds that could, for example, help with drought resistance or adaptation to shifting environmental conditions; communities may also have detailed knowledge of how to care for those varieties of plants and animals. They may know which companion plants to grow with certain seeds, or when particular salmon varieties swim upstream earlier or later. Through working together and developing relationships of trust that we can bring these types of knowledge together.

V: Wow, so there's so much knowledge that we just don't know about yet.

Prof. Atalay: I think that is exactly right. Science becomes even stronger when we bring together different ways of knowing. We refer to this as braiding, but other Indigenous communities have different words for it; for example, Mi'kmaq people refer to two-eyed seeing.

If you think about it, when you see with just one eye, your vision lacks depth; it’s a limited kind of vision. But when you use both eyes together, you get a deeper sense of vision. In the same way, bringing different knowledge systems together can lead to better outcomes, improved research practices, and a better society overall.

Whether we call it braiding, two-eyed seeing, or another way of thinking about it, this approach is incredibly valuable for solving complex problems. But we cannot think of the knowledge communities carry as something that is simply there for scientists to take. We should not be able to go into communities, ask people to share their knowledge, and take whatever we want. That’s an extractive approach. We have to think differently and carefully about how we work in partnership, in a respectful way.

V: Absolutely! Can you share more about the work you've done regarding the repatriation of Native American objects and ancestral remains?

Prof. Atalay: Sure. I worked on helping implement a law called NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. It is a federal law in the U.S. that requires museums to return ancestral remains, literally the body parts of Native American peoples, as well as sacred objects and what are sometimes called burial items, or what we might call traveling items —  things that were buried with an individual.

The law also applies to objects of cultural patrimony, which are items that do not belong to one individual but are collectively held. Museums across the U.S., and in fact across the globe, hold hundreds of thousands of ancestral remains of Native Americans and many other peoples and cultures. These collections come from a time when scientists didn’t work in partnership with communities; they may have thought they were doing something beneficial by extracting materials and information, but they didn’t fully consider the people they were harming when they excavated human remains and materials out of the ground. That is part of the legacy of scientific research. NAGPRA law helps ensure that we work with communities respectfully to return those ancestors and cultural belongings.

I was first appointed by the George W. Bush administration, and later by the Obama administration, to serve on a federal committee that oversees compliance with NAGPRA. Much of our work involved listening to communities and offering assistance to ensure the law was being followed.

I also worked with tribal communities to learn more about our ancestors who were being held in museums and to help make sure they were returned in a good way. For example, all the tribes in Michigan had been working for decades on the return of Anishinaabe ancestors from the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and other universities. My role was to help Native nations learn how many ancestors were being held, how they were taken, which sites they came from, and what kinds of materials, traveling items, or burial items had also been excavated and put into museum collections. We worked together to write claims under NAGPRA law for the return of ancestors and cultural items. We also worked with museums across the country to guide repatriation.

That was the scientific research side of the work. I also helped prepare ancestors to be reburied and respectfully placed back into the ground. There were many different aspects to making sure the law was implemented properly.

I did different parts of that work for many years. In fact, that work is what led to my interest in developing CBIKS, the center where I work now. I saw how essential it was for scientists and community members to work together. Through that collaboration and those partnerships, we could reach a good place and ensure the law was carried out respectfully. I learned a great deal about the value of research being carried out ethically, respectfully, and in partnership. 

V: That's amazing. I'm sure it brings a lot of closure to communities and families.

Prof. Atalay: Yes, I think that is true. You hear many people talk about how healing it is to experience the return of ancestors and to know that you are caring for them. It can be painful and very difficult in many ways, but I think it helps people see that there is another way to move forward through collaboration.

I think the work of repatriation also helps universities. Through NAGPRA work, universities and many scientists came to see that research could be done differently. Research and scientific work could be done in partnership with communities, and in fact, the work became much stronger as a result.

What was initially mandated by law became clear evidence of why collaboration is so important and the real benefits it can have for improving science.

V: Yeah, I'm sure it builds a lot of trust.

Prof. Atalay: Yes.

V: I was wondering, why do other nations not have similar laws regarding stolen objects during times of colonialism?

Prof. Atalay: That's another great question. Thank you for all your good work and for coming up with such thoughtful questions.

In some ways, I am very glad NAGPRA exists. It was what was needed in the U.S. to make repatriation happen. However, I do not think a federally mandated law is always the best way to approach this work. Ideally, it would be done without needing to force it through law.

Part of the challenge with NAGPRA was that it created a mandate, but it did not provide funding. Universities and museums had to come up with the funding on their own, so it became an unfunded mandate. Other places, such as Canada, do not have a federal law like NAGPRA, yet they are making progress on repatriation through building collaborative partnerships.

Ideally, this work would happen without the need for a forced law. The law was good in the sense that it pushed this work forward and required repatriation to happen. Other countries have expressed interest in having similar laws or some other mechanism to help ensure repatriation takes place.

There is also complexity in that NAGPRA only covers museums in the United States. Museums around the world hold Native American ancestral remains that are not covered by NAGPRA. That presents a challenge. And, other groups in the U.S. do not have a law like NAGPRA. African Americans, for example, have ancestors whose remains are held in museums, but there is no NAGPRA law that covers their ancestral remains.

So, there is still a lot of work to do, and I would support further laws internationally. At the same time, I wish we did not need the laws. Sometimes people get caught up in the specifics of the law rather than focusing on the bigger picture of ensuring that repatriation happens.

All it takes for this work to begin is the desire to start working together and figure out how to move things forward. That is the key piece, and a lot of work can start from that collaborative mindset. I always encourage museums to remember that they do not need a law to begin repatriation or to begin conversations with communities. They can reach out to communities, start working in partnership, and begin developing trust, even without a law.

V: That is a great point. I had not thought about it that way. Instead of forcing it, it would be ideal if it happened naturally.

Prof. Atalay: Yes, exactly. I think what you find is that museums begin to realize, “Oh, wow, we could develop so many other partnerships together.”

For example, at the University of Michigan, when we started partnering to support the return of Anishinaabe ancestors, one of our elders, Sydney Martin-ba, asked a simple question: “Do you have any seeds here?” In fact, there were thousands of seeds that had been collected over many years. That question led to an incredible project involving a shared garden, the repatriation and return of seeds, and other collaborative projects that would not have happened otherwise.  

Repatriation and research partnerships can lead to incredible learning opportunities for students and universities. It opens the door to many opportunities to learn together.

Some scientists still think of repatriation as closing a door once the remains are gone, as if no more research can be done. I think there is a different way to look at it. Repatriation can open so many doors to collaborative research partnerships and shared learning in ways that would never be possible without those relationships.

V: That is amazing. Collaboration really allows for greater understanding and the ability to gain more knowledge.

Prof. Atalay: 100%, yes.

V: My last question, what sparked your interest in archaeology?

Prof. Atalay: It was my fourth-grade teacher. Back then, I thought I wanted to be a pediatrician. I wanted to help kids and be a doctor for young children.

In elementary school, I was often the kid who finished my work early and then sat there without much to do. I had a fourth-grade teacher named Ms. Eisman, who would give me books to keep me busy and occupied. One day, she gave me a book about archaeology.

I was the first person in my family to go to college. I grew up in a poor environment, and many of my relatives were factory workers in Michigan, downriver outside of Detroit. I did not know anything about archaeology or that someone could even become an archaeologist. 

When Ms. Eisman gave me that book, I did not even know about ancient Greece and Rome. It felt like a whole new world. It sparked something in me — a curiosity that stayed with me. I did not immediately decide in fourth grade that I was going to become an archaeologist, but it planted a seed in my mind.

Then, when I went away to college as a freshman, my very first class at the University of Michigan was an elective, and it was an Introduction to Archaeology class. I noticed an archaeology class in the course listings and remembered that book from 4^th grade.

I laugh because the advisor helping me choose my classes said, “We are only at the A section of the course listings. There are a lot of other letters in the alphabet, and many more classes you can take. Are you sure you want to take archaeology?” I guess it did not sound very interesting to the advisor, but it was interesting to me.

Over time, I just kept taking archaeology classes, and eventually I realized that I really wanted to do this work. In part, as a Native American person, I wanted to help our ancestors come home. Through talking with and learning from elders, I thought, “I think I can contribute something here.”

Those were the threads that came together and made me realize that I wanted to shift into archaeology and braiding scientific research with Indigenous knowledge. Once I started, I never looked back. I do not feel like I missed out on being a pediatrician. I feel like I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

V: Yes, I think you made an excellent choice.

Prof. Atalay: Thank you. I feel good about it.

V: Well, thank you so much for your time.