February 20, 2025 • 68 mins
This episode merges the light-hearted exploration of ear wiggling with insightful discussions on human-animal interactions and ethical considerations within archaeology. We discover how our ear muscles connect to hearing and how animal encounters, like at zoos, drive donations. The conversation also addresses the importance of repatriation in archaeology, encouraging listeners to reflect on the stories we tell and the voices we include.
• Overview of ear wiggling and its evolutionary significance
• Link between ear muscles and hearing capabilities
• Study highlighting the influence of animals in zoo donation strategies
• Guest interview with Rachel Paul on NAGPRA and the ethics of repatriation
• Emphasis on the need for inclusive dialogues in scientific research
Links to Support Us!
Join the Paw Pack!
Our Website!
www.bunsenbernerbmd.com
Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter!
Bunsen and Beaker on Twitter:
Bunsen and Beaker on TikTok
For Science, Empathy, and Cuteness!
Being Kind is a Superpower.
https://twitter.com/bunsenbernerbmd
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello science enthusiasts.
I'm Jason Zukoski.
And I'm Chris Zukoski, we'rethe pet parents of Bunsen,
beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The science animals on social media.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
If you love science.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And you love pets.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You've come to the right spot, so put on your
safety glasses and hold on toyour tail.
This is the Science Podcast.
Hello everybody and welcomeback to the Science Podcast.
We hope you're happy andhealthy out there.
This is episode three of seasonseven.
So it's been freezing cold thislast week, with temperatures
(00:44):
around minus 30 to minus 40Celsius, if you can believe it,
so there hasn't been muchexploring outside.
It's been even too cold for me.
Bernoulli does fine, beaker doesokay in her snow pants, but I
think at those temperatures evenit's not safe for Bernoulli.
And, of course, bunsen is stillin rest.
We think he's improving like.
(01:06):
His mobility is getting betterday by day.
It's going to be a long haulfor him With that bulging disc.
He's got what is it?
Three and a half weeks of restleft, but we do notice he's
improving.
He's more sure-footed, he'smoving quicker, even though he
shouldn't.
We just got to keep the rest on, so hopefully he gets back to
as close to 100% as possible.
(01:29):
All right, well, what's on thescience podcast this week?
In science news we break down afun study about ear wiggling
and in pet science animalscience we have a study about
how human-animal interactionscan increase the amount donated
to worthy causes.
It's a great little study whereChris and I maybe get a little
off track.
Our guest in Ask an Expert isRachel Paul, who's going to be
(01:51):
talking to us a little bit aboutthe ethics of putting artifacts
in museums from cultures youdidn't really ask if you could
have them from.
It's a really cool discussion.
All right, on with the show,because there's no time like
Science Time.
This week in Science News wehave a somewhat whimsical study
(02:15):
in Science News item.
There might be a little wiggleroom here to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Like that wiggle room .
That's super funny.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So, chris, can you wiggle your ears?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I cannot, and I am so jealous that you can wiggle
your ears on a whim I can wigglemy ears, and I have for as long
as I can remember.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
I never had to try, I just could do it right and and
it's something that I justthought was so cool about you.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
And I would say wiggle your ears and you would.
And that's something that Ijust thought was so cool about
you.
And I would say wiggle yourears and you would.
And that was something that youdid just for me.
You don't just wiggle your earsfor anybody no, it's also weird
.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
You just don't go around doing it and guess who
else in my family can, couldwiggle their ears I think cam
can he can a little bit.
Yep, my grandpa.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Oh yes, your grandpa for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, my grandpa could wiggle his ears and he
would do that to delight thegrandkids.
The little kids just loved itwhen he would wiggle his ears.
That's what our study's about,because apparently, if you can
wiggle your ears, it's perhaps athrowback to our ancient
ancestors.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So what does that mean about me?
I cannot wiggle my ears.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Only about 10 to 20% of people can wiggle their ears
voluntarily.
So that's like me, and theability to wiggle your ears is
controlled by the auricularmuscles.
These are considered vestigialin humans.
You can train them withpractice, but for most the
muscles aren't strong orwell-connected enough to move.
(03:51):
You either have it or you don't, but we all have auricular
muscles.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Okay, that's really interesting, jason.
What do we use auricularmuscles for, then?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Jason.
What do we use auricularmuscles for then?
Okay, the auricular muscles,again, are a throwback to the
ability to wiggle the ears, butwhen you strain to hear, like if
there's a faint sound or you'renot really sure you're really
trying to make out a word, thoseauricular muscles activate, the
ancient ear-wiggling musclesactivate.
This comes from a study inFrontiers in Neuroscience
(04:28):
published at the end of January.
These little muscles likelydon't contribute to hearing, but
they're more active than wepreviously thought.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Okay, so I can't will myself to hear better by trying
to wiggle my auricular muscles.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
But if somebody's talking really faint like this
hey Chris, what was I saying?
Partner?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
You said hey, chris, and then you went just to try
and trick me.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
But the harder it is to hear, the more those
auricular muscles will activate.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Okay Now, recently you reposted some content about
Ginger listening to music and inthe video you could see that
she was turning her earsbasically around in order to
hear that sound.
Her little ears are likesatellite dishes.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
They're so cute when she's listening, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I know, I know she's listening, but she's also
ignoring.
But what about humans?
Do our ears do that?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
No, we can't.
We have relatively rigid earsand we can't move them like that
.
Even when I wiggle them, theyjust go up and down, they don't
move around like a fuzzysatellite dish.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Okay, so no fuzzy satellite dishes for us.
Can you tell me a little bitabout the scientific experiment?
How did they set it up?
Speaker 1 (05:48):
As mentioned, this comes from Frontiers in
Neuroscience, and somescientists conducted a study on
20 people with normal hearing.
The participants listened to arecorded voice while distracting
podcasts played in thebackground.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So just like our house, I guess, so Maybe they
used our podcast in thebackground.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
So just like our house, I guess.
So Maybe they used our podcastin the study.
That'd be funny.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
That would be funny, but this is what our house is.
Jason is listening to noise allthe time.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yes, it's because I'm making content right.
It's probably annoying toeverybody else, but I have to.
I don't want to get into techtalk, but there's a knack to
putting your reels with music inorder to have more people
listen.
But anyways, the folks in thestudy had electrodes placed
around their ears to recordtheir muscle activity and the
(06:38):
auricular muscle which isresponsible for lifting the ear
up and down.
If you can wiggle your ears andif you can't, you still have
them it activated when listeningconditions were difficult.
Now that's the study, and maybe, Chris, you could fill us in on
the evolutionary perspective ofwhat the deal is here.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Okay, so millions and millions of years ago these
muscles may have helped ourhuman ancestors collect sounds
and unfortunately today thesmall amount of muscle activity
likely doesn't improve yourhearing.
Otherwise I would be, you know,exercising my ears just like I
(07:20):
exercise my other muscles.
Now, scientists haven't testedwhether the activity, the muscle
activity, aids in hearing, butthe activity of these muscles
could serve as a measurement ofa person's hearing effort.
So for me, when I'm trying tohear my students talk, sometimes
I have to actually crane myneck in because some of them
(07:44):
talk so quietly or they don'twant to be heard in the
classroom.
So it's I'm trying to get themto talk and I have to go in
closer and they're like oh, whyare you getting so close?
Probably because you're talkingso quietly and I cannot
exercise my ear wiggle to hearyou better.
But the cool thing about thisstudy is the data that they
(08:06):
attained could improve hearingaid technology by detecting when
a person is struggling to hearand then adjusting accordingly.
So that would be cooltechnology for hearing aids for
sure.
So, as your auricular musclesactivate, the hearing aid jacks
itself up right, yes, Mine wouldgo on to full power, but I
(08:27):
don't have hearing aids, I justcrane my neck and move closer to
hear better.
Like, what big eyes you have,oh, better to see you with.
What big teeth you have, betterto eat you with, I guess.
And then what big ears you haveBetter to hear you with.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
There's some funny comments near the end of the
study, which one of themactually, shockingly, is like
what I did with my ear wiggling.
So everybody's ear muscles varyin size, so that makes studying
those auricular muscles tough.
Some people, as they'relistening, can actually feel
their ears move towards thesound.
(09:06):
I do that.
So when I'm straining Iinvoluntarily flex my ear
muscles and my ears perk up.
You know that term they perk up, my ears literally do that,
which is wild.
And then it says here furthersome people use their ear
(09:26):
muscles for practical purposes,like adjusting their glasses.
I did that all the time, likeyou.
You knew me when I woreeyeglasses.
I got laser eye surgery but Iwould wiggle my ears to get my
glasses where I wanted them,hands free I know there's
nothing you can't do.
(09:47):
No, there's lots of things Ican't do, but I can wiggle my
ears, so some people have apretty good knack for wiggling
their ears and just use thatability throughout your life.
And if you don't, you're notmissing much, right?
You're not missing much of theability to bring your glasses up
as they're sliding down yournose.
That's basically what I didwith my glasses.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Jason, I find it fascinating.
I find it a fascinatingbiological trait and I think
it's super cool, Just liketongue rolling or other things,
but I just think it's cool.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
There you go.
That's science news for thisweek.
This week in pet science, moreanimal science.
We're going to go to the zoo,zoo, zoo.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I remember that's Putt Goes to the Zoo, and it's
from a video game that we usedto play with our kids.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Duncan loved Putt.
And what was the other one?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Pajama Sam.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Oh, my God, pajama Sam.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Pajamasam oh my God, Pajamasam.
I don't know Pajamasam.
This is pretty niche.
I don't know if peoplelistening will know about Putt
and Pajamasam and Freddy Fish.
We can't forget Freddy Fish.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
No, we can't.
And I even say things likethunder and lightning aren't so
frightening all the time.
Or Havarti Provolone it'sreally pronounced Provolone, but
it doesn't rhyme properly.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
I say all these quotes from these video games we
actually use that with duncanwhen he was little, so if we
ever lost him, it was like thecall and answer, like havarti,
and then he would say provolone,like in the supermarket because
, like, lots of kids will belike mom and then 72 moms look.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
But if you say havarti, then provolone, then
you know you're gonna match upwith your kid.
Yeah, and I, I dounderstandarti, then provolone,
then you know you're going tomatch up with your kid.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah, and I do understand we're saying
provolone wrong, but it justworked better the other way.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
It did.
It worked better.
The other way they played agame.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
It was tic-tac-toe with different cheese and the
flim-flam.
What was it?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
It was the flim-flam chimney jam flapper gapper
that's in my bag.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
All right, we may have lost some of our audience
as we've gone off the rails, butwe are going to the zoo, which
precipitated this wholeconversation, looking at human
animal interactions in wildlifetourism.
Right, so I love the zoo.
The zoo is one of my favoriteplaces to go and last year my
(12:08):
colleague Jackie Shukin, whoteaches the biology component of
the interbaccalaureate programat our school, I went with her
as a chaperone to the zoo withthe high school kids the biology
high school kids, and it's asmall class.
I think there was like 25 kids,so two chaperones to 25 kids.
We get to the zoo and guess howmany tours were at the zoo,
(12:33):
chris?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Did you go on the edutrex?
Because I've looked into goingon these.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
No, it was self.
We just went on a self-guidedzoo tour.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Oh, okay, because I always want to go and access the
edutrex, which I did when Itook our grade nines.
But with the high school, wethey're like no.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, these are grade 12 students.
Many of them are 18, right, sothey're adults.
Right, they're the last year oftheir school, but there were
hundreds of elementary schooltours there.
And so we get off the bus in abig line to get into the zoo and
these kids are just liketowering over all these small
(13:14):
children and because they're alllike kindergarten and grade one
, teachers and the teachers arelike stressed out of their mind
because they don't want to loseany of these kids and they're
like do you have your walkingbuddy?
Who's where's your walkingbuddy?
So then I started to give all ofour students a hard time.
I'm like you guys better haveyour walking buddy or I'm going
to lose my mind.
(13:34):
Where's your walking buddy?
So they all took me serious andthey got into pairs to have a
walking buddy to get into thezoo.
But in the zoo, as we'regetting to this story, a walking
buddy to get into the zoo, butin the zoo, as we're getting to
this story, they always haveshows where they have an animal
there to show off and explain asan educational kind of
presentation.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
We've been to some of those like the tiger and the
lion yeah, or birds of prey,vultures and stuff like it's
feeding time and then come watchthe feeding lunch, yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Or they're like this is Benny and it's a penguin, and
so they bring the penguin outand you're like, oh my God, it's
the cutest thing I've ever seen.
It's really engaging, rightSuper engaging, to have a live
animal there to talk about.
Now.
This study gets into how havingthose human-animal interactions
(14:28):
affect donations, because zooshave an operating budget and
wildlife tourism requires peopleto pay to go see them and
that's rolled back into animalconservation.
The study talks about theTaronga Zoo in Australia and
what's going on with thesehuman-animal interactions.
(14:49):
Chris.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
This one was specifically during a bird
presentation and the donationsystem allowed the visitors to
pay by giving money to a bird.
They were looking at threedifferent ways or three
different treatments that testedvisitor donation behavior.
So the first one was that thebird itself was physically
(15:11):
accepting money from visitors.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
It was a parrot.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And it was so cool, thank you.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
It was taking money from people it was a parrot and
it was so cool.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Thank you, money from people taking so much money to
a parrot you would.
You would stand there and itwould be like a slot machine,
like a vlt I love parrots you do.
One of the other ways that theytested visitor donation behavior
was having a bird present butnot not taking those donations.
So the bird was visible but nottaking or really involved in
(15:40):
the donation collection at all,just hanging out.
And then the third donationbehavior that was tested was not
having a bird present at all,so just having the standard
donation box.
And then on top of that theyhad a separate factor assessed
the impact of a donor reward.
So a badge system, yeah, sosome audience.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
You donate and you get a little badge, kind of
thing.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, and so some audience members received a
message about receiving a badgefor donating more than five
Australian dollars, and othersreceived no message about the
badge.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
That's weird that we call it the Australian dollar,
because I'm pretty sure theAustralians just call it dollars
.
We don't call our moneyCanadian money, we just call it
dollars, right.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yep.
I don't know I call itAustralian dollars because in
math we do money conversions.
So convert from Canadian to US,from Canadian to Australian
dollars, or Australian dollarsor the pound.
We do conversions.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
I'm always confused by the British, like a shilling.
What's a shilling that's soconfusing to me?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
We had a conversation about this in the car and it
was so bizarre.
I was like looking it up and Isaid this is like fictitious.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Sorry, sorry English people, I love that you have
shillings.
It's probably like the Canadianloonie and toonie.
It's just so normal for us.
But it is whimsical when peoplecome to Canada and they get
their loonies, which is a $1coin, and their toonies, which
is a $2 coin, because ourAmerican friends don't have that
.
And it was like, why do youhave little duckies on your
(17:27):
money coins?
And I'm like they're loons.
There's Canadian loon.
It's important, but anyways.
So let's get to the some of thefindings from the study, hey,
but anyways, all right.
So let's get to the some of thefindings from the study, hey
yeah, for sure so maybe it's alittle shocking in places and
not in others.
so more visitors donated withwhen the bird took donations
(17:47):
than the other two conditions.
Literally, that makes sense,because if just the act of
giving a parrot some money is agift, enough to yourself, right?
The parrots get me money andyou're like, oh my God, here's
$10.
So it's a game.
Now the counterintuitive or theshocking part was larger
donation amounts were given whenthe bird was not taking
(18:10):
donations.
So while more people donated tothe bird in the situation where
the bird was just chilling onthe side, bigger donation
amounts were given.
Also, the badge messagingplayed a crucial role in
increasing donation amounts,especially when there was no
(18:32):
bird present at all, when therewas no bird present at all.
So if people knew that if theygave more than five bucks they'd
get a badge, they're like, oh,I'm going to give more than five
bucks then, so I can get abadge.
And that makes sense becausepeople love collecting stuff.
Pokemon just won't go away.
Pokemon is wild.
Right now, annalise iscollecting Pokemon cards.
That's Adam's girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
I love it and I get FOMO when I don't get the badge.
So, it's definitely a motivatorfor me to donate.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Zero, motivation for me, zero.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
And even if it's a digital badge, I'm for it.
I'm like, yes, that's perfect.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
It's the gamification right.
Some implications for zoos inthe future is that physical
interaction with animals isn'tnecessary to inspire donations.
Just having the animal there orhaving a badge system is enough
to get people to donate.
However, obviously, thepresence of animals alone can
influence visitor engagement andgenerosity.
(19:30):
You see the bird and you'remore connected to giving to the
zoo.
See the bird and you're moreconnected to giving to the zoo.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So did you hear that the Calgary zoo got two new
cougar cubs?
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Oh my God, really.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yes, now Alberta, fish and wildlife rescued them.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Oh, this store.
I've heard this is acontroversial story, Chris.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
I know, yeah, this is all I.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
this is a controversial story, chris, I
know.
Yeah, this is all okay in ourlittle area of the world.
This is quite controversial.
Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, so maybe people will be one of them.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Right, the whole story here, chris.
Just for people who are curious, this is a cougar that has been
known to the Canmore area andit lived in Grotto Canyon and
that's where we hike.
We've hiked Grotto Canyon howmany times in our life, like
five, six times.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah, quite a few.
We like it there.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, so this cougar has been coexisting with
everybody in that area and thecougar was shot?
No, yeah, it was shot by ahunter.
Yeah, so it's quite the scandalbecause it had two little
babies the scandal because ithad two little babies.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
So like zoos are very important for animal
conservation and educationprograms, but on the flip side,
it's where are they gettingtheir animals from?
And this is definitely atragedy here in our province.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, it's a tough thing and it's controversial
right now, of course, because itwas a mom that was killed who
had babies.
But Alberta does allow acertain amount of cougars to be
hunted, because they need tokeep the numbers of cougars at a
certain level or they haveinappropriate interactions with
humans and then they start toeat too much of the prey.
(21:34):
And then they start to eat toomuch of the prey.
That's a tough situation rightnow because the forestry and
parks is defending the hunterbecause the hunter went through
all of the proper channels.
You're allowed to hunt femalecougars, but you're not supposed
to hunt female cougars who havecubs, and perhaps the hunter
didn't see that.
So I think a cool implication,maybe for shelters or people who
(21:57):
are donating money, is havinganimals present, and they do
this at teacher's convention,because what do they have?
We are going to teacher'sconvention together soon.
They have these booths and themost popular booth at teacher's
convention is what?
The puppy booth.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, foster, fostering home and they are
partnered with the bone andbiscuit, and so sometimes I go
in and they have all these cutelittle tiny puppies.
Yeah, and everybody gets theirpuppy fix at the teacher's
convention but they also takedonations.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
So having the puppies there, they're tapping into
this study itself absolutely.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Absolutely.
But what I love also is at thetable.
You can buy snacks for yourdogs, like treats and things
like that, or sometimes theyhave bandanas, and I like to do
that.
I like to give for those thingsbecause we can use those with
our dogs.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
And ginger, and it's a good cause.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
And it's a good cause .
Speaker 1 (22:55):
All right, that's pet science for this week.
Hello everybody, here's someways you can keep the Science
Podcast free.
Number one in our show notessign up to be a member of our
Paw Pack Plus community.
It's an amazing community offolks who love pets and folks
who love science.
We have tons of bonus Bunsenand Beaker content there and we
(23:18):
have live streams every Sundaywith our community.
It's tons of fun.
Also, think about checking outour merch store.
We've got the Bunsen stuffy,the Beaker stuffy and now the
ginger stuffy.
That's right, ginger, thescience cat, has a little
replica.
It's adorable.
It's so soft, with the giantfluffy tail, safety glasses and
(23:41):
a lab coat.
And number three if you'relistening to the podcast on any
place that rates podcasts, giveus a great rating and tell your
family and friends to listen too.
Okay, on with the show.
Back to the interviews.
It's time for ask an expert onthe science podcast, and I have
Rachel Paul, who's a NAGPRAprogram specialist, and we'll
get into what that is in asecond.
Rachel, how are you doing?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Good.
Thank you so much for having meon.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yay, where are you in the world?
Where are you calling into theshow from?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
I'm calling in from the state of Oregon right now in
the US Little town it's not solittle of Eugene.
I do want to take a moment andacknowledge that the town of
Eugene and where my job is inthe university because I work at
the University of Oregon is onKalapuya land, whose descendants
(24:31):
are primarily citizens of theConfederated Tribes of the Grand
Ronde and the ConfederatedTribes of the Salense Indians.
And if you are curious aboutwhere you are and whose
ancestral homelands you might beon, a really fantastic resource
to check out is a websitecalled native-landca.
It was started in Canada andit's a great starting point if
(24:55):
you are curious about theindigenous groups in your area.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Thank you for the wonderful land acknowledgement.
That was a great way to key ineverybody who's listening to
what we're going to be talkingabout Just quickly.
Oregon's a beautiful place tolive.
I've been down through thatarea south of Canada.
That whole Pacific Southwest ispretty down there south of
Canada.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
that whole Pacific Southwest is pretty down there.
Yeah, I'm originally fromCalifornia, so I was not used to
the rain.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yes, a little rainy compared to California.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Oh yeah, much more, but I do have to say I enjoyed
not getting sunburned everysingle day of the summer.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
So there you go.
I was wondering if we couldtalk just quickly about your
training with NAGPRA and whatwe're going to be talking about
in a second.
What's going on with there?
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Of course.
So NAGPRA is an acronym.
It stands for the NativeAmerican Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act.
It was a federal law that waspassed in the 90s in the United
States, so it covers theentirety of the United States,
although some areas have somestricter laws than others.
This is even though the act waspassed 30 years ago.
(26:12):
A lot has changed in the fieldrecently and there has been a
lot more pressure to fullycomply with the spirit and the
letter of the law, so there is alot more emphasis and detail on
those aspects.
But my general background is inarchaeology.
I'm currently in the process ofgetting my master's in applied
(26:36):
anthropology, with a focus onarchaeology, of course.
And my master's thesis isactually on Mayan ceramics,
nothing to do with Nagpra at all.
I fell into the Nagpra world byaccident, but also by being
curious.
Nagpra was always this thing.
That was just an aside inarchaeology.
(26:58):
So when we talk aboutarchaeology, we talk about like
the sites and the history andthe various methodologies, and
then there was always just likea little kind of footnote,
sometimes, sometimes a littlebit more than that, but it was
like oh yeah, nagpra is a thingwe have to do.
We have to be careful whencoming across like human remains
(27:21):
or certain things, but that'sthe thing for other people to
worry about.
Like we sometimes worry about it, but you know, um, so it was a
thing that was just to the sidefor me until, oh gosh, it must
have been 2022.
Yeah, propublica, a nonprofitnews organization, released a
(27:48):
series of really damningarticles about NAGPRA and the
failure of many museums andinstitutions to comply with
repatriation.
And when I saw this article, Iwas like, oh wow, does the
NAGPRA coordinator at theuniversity I was currently going
(28:08):
to, oregon State, know thatthis is out Like completely out
of the blue?
I sent her this email.
In my opinion, it felt veryunhinged because I was just like
, hey, you don't know me, but Iknow your job's difficult.
And I saw this article came outand I hope you know about it.
If you didn't know about it,now you do, and you might be
(28:30):
getting some questions from thepublic about your job and how
Oregon State is doing net prep.
And she was actually reallyimpressed that I reached out and
so I got a lot more involvedand ended up becoming an intern
for her at Oregon State and,yeah, from there I did another
(28:53):
internship and then I got thisposition at U of O.
So that's my background.
I know that went in a fewdifferent directions, but my
overall background isarchaeology.
I just got sidelined into thismore museum and Nagpra aspect of
it.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
When you were young were you interested in ancient
civilizations, ancient artifacts, on the whole archaeology angle
.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I was to an extent, Actually.
When I was young, I wasconvinced I was going to be a
biologist of some sort.
Yeah, I was really into biologyand animals and all sorts of
things.
I took a few classes, though,and turns out I didn't
(29:43):
particularly love it as much asI needed to for a career, and so
I headed into a moreanthropology focus and from
there fell into archaeology.
Thanks to a great mentor, I wasat UC Davis at the time.
Yeah, I've always been likethat.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
So no whips and hats in your past.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
No, I did enjoy the Indiana Jones movies when I was
younger, and they do actuallyserve a really great example of
what archaeology used to be like, which is a little scary,
honestly.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
A little problematic, eh, oh, yes.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
But yeah, not super into it, but I did enjoy history
.
I'd always been interested inthe human experience, but I
never really put a label on it.
When I was a camp counselor, Iactually really enjoyed finding
stories from cultures from allover the world and I would tell
(30:43):
those to the kids as likebedtime stories and it was
really cool just having them geta glimpse into a different
story that they'd never heard ofbefore but have so many of the
same themes that they've seenover and over again.
That was something I reallyenjoyed doing and that does tie
into with anthropology, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Okay, so I think we got a really good picture of
your background.
I appreciate that, rachel.
Yeah, if you could just go alittle bit more into I know we
got the acronym what NAGPRAstands for.
If you could just go a littlebit into more of what it's all
about and maybe some of theeffects that it will have on, or
(31:25):
the effects that it should haveon, archaeology or science even
.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah, more and more people are becoming familiar
with repatriation in general,and we've heard of some more of
the more famous cases that comeacross the news, such as, I have
to say, I think the most famousexample right now would be the
Elgin marbles or the Parthenonmarbles from Greece and how
(31:51):
Greece wants the British Museumto repatriate them back to
Greece.
Greece wants the British Museumto repatriate them back to
Greece.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
NACPRA is repatriation.
Repatriation is returning tothe original land that it's from
.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Yes, more of returning to the original
descendants.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Oh, descendants, okay .
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Yeah, descendants or culture or community.
Sometimes we can return items tolike very specific individual
people If we know who exactlycertain items or remains came
from, but sometimes it is to alarger group or community and it
(32:32):
gets very complicated very fast.
I can tell you that much.
So repatriation in general, inmy opinion, has been more and
more on the forefront ofpeople's thoughts, while NAGPRA
itself has been a law, again fornot a whole lot, not as much
(32:52):
progress has been made as asshould have been made, honestly,
and there's reasons why thathappened in general, but sorry,
I totally lost my train of wordsthere.
So in general, repatriation, inmy opinion, has been more and
more on people's minds and it isreturning certain items that
(33:19):
could be culturally significant,that are important or valuable
in some way, to directdescendants or to communities or
to groups that are somehowaffiliated with the original
people that had those items,with the original people that
(33:40):
had those items.
So specifically in NAGPRA thelaw dictates that there are a
few categories of items that canbe returned through this
process.
While other items can bereturned, those items are not
subject under the NAGPRA law, soit would be basically off the
goodwill of people to returnthem.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
We're moving further away from, like the finders,
keepers kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Yes, we really are.
So, yeah, the specific itemsthat fall under NAGPRA would be
human remains, associatedfunerary objects or funerary
objects that we know to befunerary objects but are not
associated with specific remains, and then this very broad
(34:26):
general category called items ofcultural patrimony, and these
are items that would be used in,like religious ceremonies or
significant rituals or have somesort of value and importance to
a community, where the itemitself, like, belongs to the
(34:48):
community and not to a specificperson.
Gotcha, yeah, I don't know howyou'd even figure that out,
right?
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yeah, it can be hard to figure out.
Yeah, I don't know how you'deven figure that out, right?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Yeah, it can be hard to figure out.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Yeah, okay, gotcha.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Yeah, and there are some lines of evidence we can
use.
There are things like paststudies, past records we can use
like all kinds of scientificmethodology.
Use like all kinds ofscientific methodology.
But some really important linesof evidence would be like
(35:23):
tribal histories and tribalknowledge to support the
classification of these itemsbut also to support the return
of these items For furtherclarification, for the items of
cultural patrimony.
If you think about like a placeof worship and the things that
would be in that place ofworship they don't necessarily
belong to the person who wouldbe like leading the worship or
(35:47):
to the people that like attendthat building.
They belong to the wholecommunity.
So those are some of the itemswe're talking about when we say
items of cultural patrimony.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Yeah, I got it right.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Okay, cool.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Yeah, and he remains.
So that's like bones and suchand things that they were buried
with, and then fairly largereligious symbols and artifacts
that belong to communities.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, exactly.
And artifacts that belong tocommunities?
Yeah exactly.
And so, with the passage ofNAGPRA, a huge ethical question
popped up into the field ofarchaeology, and this idea is
that we, as researchers, do nothave an inherent right to study
(36:35):
any and all material we want tostudy.
Some of these items, like thedescendant communities wouldn't
necessarily want us to study, orthey would want to direct the
study themselves and not havethese items be separated from
(36:55):
themselves, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
They want to be part of the process or at least have
a say.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Exactly, yeah, and previously lots of horrible
history.
But many institutions andmuseums have human remains for
people to study and for, likeundergraduate students, to take
classes on the human remainsthat are in those rooms.
(37:23):
Were those people, did theyever consent to have the remains
studied in that way, and didtheir descendants ever consent
to have those studied, thoseremain studied in that way?
Speaker 1 (37:39):
yeah, I can see.
If you just decide to go dig upsomebody's grave today, people
would have a problem with that,with you hauling those bones
into some place to look at.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Exactly yeah, and if you know a little bit about the
history of medical schools, theydid used to do actual gray
robbing it was lucrative forsome people to go get the parts
for the doc say, back in the dayexactly, yeah, exactly.
But there was this I don't knowhow to describe it it the graves
(38:16):
of especially indigenous peoplewere just really easy to
exploit and easier to take thoseremains without any knowledge
of the descendants or the peoplewho are tied to those human
remains.
So that's where it's becomingthis huge.
(38:37):
It became this huge issue whereyou know most of the remains
that were in universities andrepositories were Native
American remains the ProPublicaarticle I mentioned earlier.
If you go on that you canactually look up in the United
(38:57):
States and see how many sets ofhuman remains certain
institutions have, and whilethat database may not be 100%
accurate and there are someother smaller issues with it,
overall other smaller issueswith it, overall I feel like
(39:24):
that article does show, like,how widespread and how massive,
like scale wise, this issue wasand just how many places just
had human remains that peoplejust didn't know about about.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
So we're at the difficult point of realizing
that this was not great whathappened, yet it's a great
teaching tool.
So is that the big dilemmaright now, like how do you
compromise on that?
Or is there no room forcompromise because those remains
were ill gotten?
Quote unquote.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Because those remains were ill-gotten.
Quote unquote yeah, in myopinion, there is a lot of room
for compromise and there is alot of room for collaboration,
but, as you can understand, itcan be very hard to collaborate
when there is a lot of mistruston both sides a lot of mistrust
(40:19):
on both sides and so a lot ofthe collaboration that has been
done or needs to be done in thefuture relies on building
relationships and building alittle bit of trust between,
like, researchers and the peoplewho have been taken advantage
of.
So, in my opinion, likeundergraduate students who are
(40:40):
not going into osteology, whoare not going into a medical
field, they don't need to bestudying human remains.
Like, why do you need actualremains when there's really
great bone replicas and we havereplicas for all of the ancient
hominin ancestors that, like,people study too?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
there's really no reason for that, in my opinion
yeah, I see the irony there too,because you wouldn't let
undergrad students handle thoseprecious real specimens of the
early hominid some of them.
Yet it's historically it wastotally okay to handle the human
remains, right.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
I can see the irony there, right yeah, exactly, um,
and for the people wereupsetting like actual human
remains would be beneficial fortheir study.
Osteologists and people needingspecific expertise in human
remains.
There are ways in which you canobtain human remains with
(41:46):
consent.
I'm sure you've heard of someof the body farms in the States.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Absolutely.
I've talked to researchers thatworked on it.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Yeah, exactly.
There are ways people candonate their bodies with consent
, but also with NAGPRA itself.
Not all items necessarily needto be repatriated.
This is a small sticking pointnot everybody totally
understands.
But under NAGPRA you have tojust offer the things to be
(42:19):
repatriated.
In some cases tribes will sayit's okay, you can keep them, or
you can keep them and studythem.
It's just having their inputand making sure you have their
consent is what's key.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
The big point is that it seems like the researchers
are asking, and I'd imagine thatcomes across as a lot more
empathetic than historically.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Oh, yes, yes, and in most cases, yes.
Tribes do want the humanremains returned and in most
cases, if the human remainscan't be returned for whatever
reason, they're usually not okaywith them being studied.
But there are some exceptionsto that and the fact of the
(43:09):
matter is just right now thereare so many human remains in
these museums and repositoriesthat even if all of the Native
American remains went back,there would still be plenty for
researchers to study if theywanted.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
That's a good point, because I imagine some there's
always the devil's advocate,people who argue the other way.
They're like, okay, this isgreat and all, but if we
repatriate all of these humanremains, then we won't have
anything left to study.
So it sounds like that argumentfalls a little flat.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Yeah, so that was.
Some of the biggest opponentsof NAGPRA itself were always
fear mongering and oh, there'sgoing to be nothing left in
museums, there's going to benothing left for researchers to
study and everyone's careers aregoing to be ruined.
But none of that has happened.
The only peoples whose careersgot ruined fully deserved it for
(44:08):
a variety of reasons, but ingeneral, that really hasn't
happened and while progress onreturning and offering these
items and human remains up forrepatriation has been incredibly
slow, overall, I think it leadsto better research and more
(44:32):
meaningful studies, because ifyou're involving the people who
are directly impacted by yourresearch or who are directly
connected to the subjects you'restudying, there's going to be
better, more meaningful research.
You're going to look into thequestions that matter to these
(44:56):
descendant communities.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
They would also probably, in some circumstances,
provide invaluable backgroundinformation that a researcher
would never have access to hadthey not asked or had that
discourse.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Oh, absolutely, absolutely there.
Yeah, it so much.
Historically in academia, likeNative American groups were
never really consulted on theirhistories or, honestly, really
anything about them, other thanjust to make like, oh wow, look
(45:36):
at this.
Them, other than just to makelike, oh wow, look at this.
Sorry, totally lost my train ofwords there.
Most depictions and inquiriesabout Native Americans and other
marginalized groups have beento make or show this perception
of wow, what an interestinglittle community.
(45:59):
And then it's passed over,there's no real depth to it and
it's very much like talkingabout the community without
hearing from the communityitself, and that's been very
much the norm in museums and inacademics historically.
(46:20):
Here I am like talking aboutthis and I'm not Native at all.
It sometimes puts me in aninteresting position because
while I'm not Native, I am inthis weird I don't know weird,
but I am in this job where I'mvery much like constantly
thinking about like nativeissues and having to make sure,
(46:46):
like I know, certain things aregoing on.
So there's a lot of differentfactors at play here and a lot
of interesting dynamics.
I guess is the overall sum ofthat, if that made any sense.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Yeah, it did.
You can hold a bone of somebodyin your hand and analyze it
clinically and what part of thebody it was from, and was it
male or female, potentially, andhow old it is, but that bone
was somebody at one point, justlike you and I talking, and that
somebody had people that lovedthem and they have descendants,
(47:26):
and that I think sometimesscience loses that heart, the
heart of it, when we're a littletoo clinical.
You might find this a littlehumorous, rachel.
There was a skit in, I forget,on the cbc on this.
There's a tv show on in canada.
It was called.
This hour is 22 minutes and itwas this white professor had got
(47:47):
this native american artifactand they were like pondering
over what it could be used forand they came up with this
elaborate thing that it was usedfor and then it was in a museum
and then these two FirstNations, older gentlemen and a
young boy were looking at it andthe young boy was like reading
the description and he asked thegrandpies really, and he's like
(48:10):
, no, it was a spoon, that'swhat it was.
You could have asked me.
It's a spoon, and it was justthis really funny skit that had
the anthropologists.
Archaeologists had just askedthey wouldn't need to be sitting
there pondering elaboratereasoning.
That probably was incorrect, soI know I thought it was a.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Yeah, I just jogged in my memory as we were talking
right now yeah, of course, andthat's exactly like what's at
the heart of some of this.
I could speculate all day aboutcertain things, but because I
am not Native American myself,there are some things I just
don't know, and there are goingto be many things I will never
(48:51):
know, and that's part of whythis collaboration between
academia and Native Americans orother marginalized groups is so
important, because you're justtotally misrepresenting and
showing a very different pictureof what's actually going on
(49:19):
picture of what's actually goingon.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
So I guess this is important for folks in academia
to wrestle with and ponder andI'm glad we're having this
discussion Before we wrap upthis section how can people who
are listening think about this,applying this to their life
today?
Do you have any messages forfolks like me who aren't an
archaeologist I teach chemistryor other people who are
listening?
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah, of course, I did think about this really hard
.
So the one thing I want peopleto take away is to question
what's missing from a story.
If you go into a museum and yousee a display about Native
Americans or other marginalizedgroups, ask yourself what is
(50:03):
missing from this story?
What am I not seeing?
What's not being presented?
Very commonly in museums?
They'll skip over hundreds ofyears of history, because that's
when the forced relocationshappened or awkward thing to
talk about in the.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
It's not as glamorous as whatever or something else.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
Right, it's something pretty horrifying that north
american government exactly, oranother thing is the voices of
modern day people connected tothose groups.
Are they presenting thismarginalized group in a very
specific historical context?
This kind of myth that somepeople think that Native
(50:52):
Americans just kind of extinct,when that's very much not true.
Native Americans just kind ofextinct when that's very much
not true.
But part of the reason that isperpetuated is because a lot of
people learn about NativeAmericans from museums and
they're only shown in likenatural history museums and only
shown what life was like beforecolonization, what life was
(51:17):
like before colonization.
So when you're missingeverything afterwards, you're
not getting the full story andyou're not really understanding
what's going on with the group.
Yeah, basically, just, I reallywant people to think critically
and think what's missing hereand this applies to so many
things, like when we seesomebody like the scientists,
(51:38):
like being very clinical andtalking about something in very
academic terms.
What's missing?
Is there a human connection, isthere a human story behind this
that we're not getting?
Speaker 1 (51:53):
So that's a great message.
There's this there.
Think about what's missing.
What's the puzzle piece?
That's a great message.
The there's a there.
Think about what's missing.
What's the puzzle piece that'smissing?
Speaker 3 (51:59):
I like that sorry I know I've talked a lot about so
many different things.
Did you have any otherquestions for me about that?
Speaker 1 (52:08):
no, I think we've covered.
I myself went into this ratherignorant.
I did look up the acronym andit's in Canada.
We have been working towardsthis goal of it's called truth
and reconciliation as a nation.
I'll cut this just because it'snot necessarily related to the
(52:28):
discussion.
So this NAGPRA seems like aversion of truth and
reconciliation, but specific forarchaeology, anthropology,
which is pretty interesting.
I've said this story before onthe podcast.
I was probably in my early 30swhen I was at a teacher's
(52:50):
convention, because I teach highschool chemistry and at a
teacher's convention you cantake all these different pd
sessions professionaldevelopment one of them was on
is called residential schoolsand I was like, oh, that's
interesting.
I wondered what that is.
I thought it was like boardingschools, like harry potter,
that's what I thought it was.
I went and I was like horrifiedbecause I was not taught any of
(53:14):
that in school.
I had worked with First Nationspeople and they didn't talk
about it and it was just likethis shocking, awful thing the
residential school systems ofCanada.
So, personally, that wassomething that happened in my
life that I guess relates tothis NAGPRA stuff and the truth
and reconciliation part.
Speaker 3 (53:35):
It does.
It does very much.
I was never taught about theresidential schools either, and
we had them in the U S as well.
There was a lot of history Iwasn't taught.
I think it was after Igraduated college I learned
about, like some of the horrificthings that Columbus did, which
is pretty, pretty nasty.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
What are?
If you're a, if you're a whiteguy or white woman and your
ancestors came over there?
There's some pretty nasty stuff.
Speaker 3 (54:03):
That happened yeah yeah and yeah, it definitely is
all very related.
And in understanding how ourpast has been taught and what
sort of responsibility we haveover the research we do and how
(54:27):
the past is taught, I thinkreally also what is at the heart
of this as well.
And while NACRA itself doesmainly cover anthropologists and
archaeologists who did tons andtons of excavations, nagpra
technically covers anyinstitution that has received
(54:48):
federal funding.
Owner and you find artifacts onyour land.
As long as it's not humanremains, they could be artifacts
that would be items of culturalpatrimony.
They wouldn't necessarily haveto be returned under NAGPRA.
In addition, any federallyfunded institution, you'd be
(55:10):
surprised how many end up havinghuman remains.
There's high schools and abunch of random places that you
wouldn't think had human remains, that had Native American human
remains.
So this issue does extend waybeyond universities and museums,
but they tend to get thebiggest focus because they are
(55:34):
the ones with the largestcollections.
Speaker 2 (55:37):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
Yep, okay cool.
It's a very deep conversationand I appreciate you having.
It is an important one.
I'm just maybe I'll I'll keepthis section, then we'll move to
what I'm going to say here andthen we'll move to the last two
questions, if that's okay,rachel.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
Yeah, that's totally okay.
I get that this is a reallydeep topic and I know it's again
.
It's not fun, it's notglamorous, but I do think having
a bigger conversation about theethics of how we study and how
we do research is reallyimportant in general in science.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
Yeah.
So I guess, as we wrap up thissection, rachel, we I in
tongue-in-cheek and teasingly, Ialways reference Indiana Jones
whenever I'm talking to anarchaeologist archaeologists,
(56:43):
yes, um.
And there is a line thatindiana jones says that it is
pretty like it's prettyproblematic now to think about
what it would mean, and that'she's yelling.
That belongs in a museum.
He said that a couple times andI don't know if it does.
You can't just take somethingnow Was somebody's, that was a
culture's item at some point.
It doesn't necessarily give youthe right to put it in the
(57:06):
museum.
Speaker 3 (57:07):
That is correct.
That is 100% correct.
I do have to say one cool thingabout NAGPRA and this focus on
more Indigenous voices is thatthere have been a lot more
smaller local museums started byIndigenous groups.
So that they can present theirown stories in their own ways.
Speaker 1 (57:31):
Oh, I like that.
Speaker 3 (57:33):
Yeah, exactly, and exhibit the objects they want to
exhibit and show.
And there has been a lot morecollaboration between museums
themselves and thesemarginalized groups in order to
do the same thing in largerspaces, because while NACRA
(57:54):
itself only covers NativeAmerican things and human
remains, there are many othergroups who were also exploited
in a similar way.
Speaker 1 (58:12):
Just yeah, just on very different, just in very
different circumstances.
I was chuckling as you weretalking, not the exploitation,
so hopefully people get that.
I was chuckling becausesomething just came to mind that
my wife is ukrainian, right,very proud ukrainian, comes all
of her on her mom's side, veryukrainian, and I'm just thinking
how offensive it would be forme to just start a ukrainian
(58:34):
museum and without, withoutconsulting Ukrainians and just
try my best to figure out whatUkrainian culture is like.
Just how crazy that would soundexactly things that would get
wrong.
I it just is.
It would be insane, it would beabsolutely insane to just
decide to start, especially inAlberta, where I, where I live
(58:57):
in canada, there's a lot ofukrainian settlers.
I'm not just to decide, I'mgonna.
I'm gonna get a bunch ofukrainian artifacts and make my
own museum but not consultukrainians.
Speaker 3 (59:08):
Yeah, this is wild yeah, it would be absolutely
wild, or sorry.
I live downtown, I can pausewhile the siren passes.
It'd also be wild for thinkabout, like, how do you think
russia teaches people aboutukraine's and ukrainian culture?
It's pretty state driven, so myguess there's some things they
(59:33):
leave out yeah, exactly how wedo our research, but also how we
tell the stories behind theresearch matters a lot.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
That's a great place to leave our chat.
Speaker 3 (59:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (59:45):
Yeah, Rachel, thank you so much for talking about
your job.
It's a very deep discussion.
We have a couple standardquestions we ask all our guests
about.
One is a pet story.
I was wondering if you couldshare a pet story from your life
with us.
Speaker 3 (59:57):
Oh, yes, of course.
So my parents have a dog.
Her name is Millie, and Milliehas trained our neighbor to give
her treats every time she barks.
Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Oh no.
Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
Yes, she has, she truly has.
So my parents' previous dog wassuper friendly and loved
everybody and their house andthe neighbor's house are really
close to each other.
You can lean over the fencedeal and he would always go and
say hi to the dog and she wouldwag her tail and be so happy to
(01:00:32):
see him and all this stuff.
Millie in general is veryindifferent towards people.
She loves my parents.
They're her favorite people,like I'm very clearly number
three, like there's no, and theneighbor was like a little
miffed that like Millie wasn'texcited to see him so he just
(01:00:53):
started bringing her treats andso now anytime she hears them
move outside, she barks at himuntil he brings her over a treat
.
Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
Oh man, unintended consequences.
Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
But he got some love from that dog in its own way.
Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
Yeah, no, Millie's great she.
She now wags her tail when shesees him.
Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
And what kind of dog is Millie?
I apologize if I missed that.
Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Oh no, you didn't miss that.
We're not really sure.
We think she's like a blackmouth cur, which was like a
pioneer type dog, but we're notreally sure.
We actually got her from arescue that takes pets out of
Texas.
Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
So you just, you don't know with rescues
sometimes.
Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But yeah, she actually drove ina car from a few hundred miles
away, because Texas has prettymuch only kill shelters, I think
.
So there are like a lot ofnonprofits that like try and get
pets out of, like certainstates that have a lot of kill
shelters, I think.
So there are like a lot ofnonprofits that like try and get
pets out of like certain statesthat have a lot of kill
shelters and try and get themadopted or into no kill shelters
(01:02:07):
and other states, and that'swhere we got Millie.
Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
That's a good story.
Thanks for sharing it.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
I myself have a pet turtle, but I don't know how
many people find turtlesinteresting, so my wife would.
Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
We have two turtles as well.
They're two red ear slidersthat she rescued from a school.
They're illegal you can't getred ear sliders but they've
somehow.
A teacher got them and theylive for 50 years.
They've outlived, like theteachers who've had them.
They've retired and moved on.
So now we have the twored-eared sliders in our house.
Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
I forgot you guys had the red-eared sliders.
Yeah, my turtle's African side,neck turtle, looks very much
like a red-eared slider, butlike more grays and browns and
doesn't have any of the red oryellow.
Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
But like similar size .
Okay, more camouflage-y downand like rocks and mud kind of
thing yes, yes exactly cool.
What's the turtle's name?
Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
her name's Gertie, gertie the turtle like that yes,
also.
Oh, man, this is gonna make melook like a crazy turtle person,
but I actually rescued Gertieand when I first got her she had
pneumonia and I ended up havingto give her shots injections
every five days for six months.
(01:03:25):
She's finally pneumonia free.
She's good, nice and healthy.
But yeah, I gave my turtleweekly injections weekly
injections.
Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Yeah, like the turtles are a lot of work.
They those amphibians, youamphibians, and snakes and
reptiles, and what you have isit?
They don't require the samekind of like work that a dog or
dog might, but like their upkeepis not something for the faint
of heart oh no that's somethingthey remind everybody about,
with turtles for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
Yes, yeah, I had a turtle previously.
I knew what I was getting into,gertie, and I specifically
wanted a rescue turtle because Iknew that turtles are not often
well taken care of.
So she might have a diminishedlifespan, but she could still
live 25, 50 years.
Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
It's wild how long those turtles live.
It's just insane.
Yeah, we don't know how.
We really don't know how oldCarl and or Sagan are.
That's our two turtles, butthey've out.
They've outlived the careers ofa couple of teachers.
So they are ancient.
They've outlived the careers ofa couple of teachers.
So they are ancient Wild.
Thanks for sharing your petstory, rachel.
(01:04:40):
As we close, we challenge allof our guests to leave us with a
super fact.
It's something you know thatyou tell people at gatherings,
cocktail parties, randomly shoutat trivia night.
It blows people's minds.
Do you have a super fact for us?
Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
I hope it's considered a super fact.
So, people's minds, do you havea super fact for us?
I hope it's considered a superfact.
So in oregon, do you knowcrater lake yeah, I know crater
lake absolutely so crater lakewas actually a volcano oh yeah,
crater.
Yeah, crater lake wasoriginally a volcano that
erupted 7,700 years ago and thevolcano itself was called Mount
(01:05:20):
Mazama.
Is called Mount Mazama, butactually there are tribal oral
histories that record theeruption of Mount Mazama.
That happened over 7,000 yearsago.
Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
Wow, that's wild.
You know what the irony is Like.
About two weeks ago I wastalking to another scientist who
lives in Oregon and they'relike yeah, you got to wait.
If you're ever here, go checkout crater Lake, and so I've
Googled it.
So now I know exactly whatyou're talking about.
I did not know it was a volcano, though that is very cool.
Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
Yeah, I, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's like a dead
volcano now, or whatever it'scalled.
I don't know anything aboutvolcanoes.
Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
That's a cool fact.
Thanks, rachel.
We're at the end of ourdiscussion.
Thanks so much for talking withus about NAGPRA.
Hopefully it's something that'svery interesting, not on
people's radar and something tothink about.
It's a rather profounddiscussion, rachel.
Are you on social mediaanywhere Can people connect or
(01:06:27):
follow, or do you have a website?
Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
I don't have any social media.
If people are interested, I dohave an email social media.
Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
If people are interested, I do have an email.
It's just rpaul at uoregonedu.
Are you comfortable with meputting that in the show notes.
Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
if people want to ask questions, that is my official
work email, so if it isquestions about NAGPRA related
issues, that would be okay.
Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
Okay, perfect.
Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
I was just going to say thank you so much for having
me on.
I know this is not a super fundiscussion, but I appreciate the
chance to talk about some ofthese issues and maybe get
people to start thinking aboutthese things.
Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
That's it for this week's show.
Thanks for coming back weekafter week to listen to us, and
a special shout out to all ofour supporters on the Paw Pack.
It's like our Patreon group.
We'd love for you to sign up,so check out the show notes.
One of the perks of the toptier members is you get a shout
out every episode.
Take it away, chris.
Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Amelia Fetig Rhi, oda Carol Hainel, jennifer Challen,
linnea Janik Karen Chronister,vicky Otero, christy Walker,
sarah Bram, wendy, diane Masonand Luke Helen Chin, elizabeth
Bourgeois, marianne McNally,catherine Jordan, shelley Smith,
laura Stephffensen, tracyLeinbach, anne Uchida, heather
(01:07:58):
Burbach, kelly Tracy Halbert,ben Rather, debbie Anderson,
sandy Brimer, mary Rader, biancaHyde, Andrew Lin, brenda Clark,
brianne Haas, peggy McKeel,holly Burge, kathy Zerker, susan
Wagner and Liz Button.
Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
For science, empathy and cuteness.
Hello science enthusiasts.
I'm Jason Zukoski.
And I'm Chris Zukoski, we'rethe pet parents of Bunsen,
beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The science animals on social media.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
If you love science.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And you love pets.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You've come to the right spot, so put on your
safety glasses and hold on toyour tail.
This is the Science Podcast.
Hello everybody and welcomeback to the Science Podcast.
We hope you're happy andhealthy out there.
This is episode three of seasonseven.
So it's been freezing cold thislast week, with temperatures
(00:44):
around minus 30 to minus 40Celsius, if you can believe it,
so there hasn't been muchexploring outside.
It's been even too cold for me.
Bernoulli does fine, beaker doesokay in her snow pants, but I
think at those temperatures evenit's not safe for Bernoulli.
And, of course, bunsen is stillin rest.
We think he's improving like.
(01:06):
His mobility is getting betterday by day.
It's going to be a long haulfor him With that bulging disc.
He's got what is it?
Three and a half weeks of restleft, but we do notice he's
improving.
He's more sure-footed, he'smoving quicker, even though he
shouldn't.
We just got to keep the rest on, so hopefully he gets back to
as close to 100% as possible.
(01:29):
All right, well, what's on thescience podcast this week?
In science news we break down afun study about ear wiggling
and in pet science animalscience we have a study about
how human-animal interactionscan increase the amount donated
to worthy causes.
It's a great little study whereChris and I maybe get a little
off track.
Our guest in Ask an Expert isRachel Paul, who's going to be
(01:51):
talking to us a little bit aboutthe ethics of putting artifacts
in museums from cultures youdidn't really ask if you could
have them from.
It's a really cool discussion.
All right, on with the show,because there's no time like
Science Time.
This week in Science News wehave a somewhat whimsical study
(02:15):
in Science News item.
There might be a little wiggleroom here to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Like that wiggle room .
That's super funny.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So, chris, can you wiggle your ears?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I cannot, and I am so jealous that you can wiggle
your ears on a whim I can wigglemy ears, and I have for as long
as I can remember.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
I never had to try, I just could do it right and and
it's something that I justthought was so cool about you.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
And I would say wiggle your ears and you would.
And that's something that Ijust thought was so cool about
you.
And I would say wiggle yourears and you would.
And that was something that youdid just for me.
You don't just wiggle your earsfor anybody no, it's also weird
.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
You just don't go around doing it and guess who
else in my family can, couldwiggle their ears I think cam
can he can a little bit.
Yep, my grandpa.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Oh yes, your grandpa for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, my grandpa could wiggle his ears and he
would do that to delight thegrandkids.
The little kids just loved itwhen he would wiggle his ears.
That's what our study's about,because apparently, if you can
wiggle your ears, it's perhaps athrowback to our ancient
ancestors.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So what does that mean about me?
I cannot wiggle my ears.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Only about 10 to 20% of people can wiggle their ears
voluntarily.
So that's like me, and theability to wiggle your ears is
controlled by the auricularmuscles.
These are considered vestigialin humans.
You can train them withpractice, but for most the
muscles aren't strong orwell-connected enough to move.
(03:51):
You either have it or you don't, but we all have auricular
muscles.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Okay, that's really interesting, jason.
What do we use auricularmuscles for, then?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Jason.
What do we use auricularmuscles for then?
Okay, the auricular muscles,again, are a throwback to the
ability to wiggle the ears, butwhen you strain to hear, like if
there's a faint sound or you'renot really sure you're really
trying to make out a word, thoseauricular muscles activate, the
ancient ear-wiggling musclesactivate.
This comes from a study inFrontiers in Neuroscience
(04:28):
published at the end of January.
These little muscles likelydon't contribute to hearing, but
they're more active than wepreviously thought.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Okay, so I can't will myself to hear better by trying
to wiggle my auricular muscles.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
But if somebody's talking really faint like this
hey Chris, what was I saying?
Partner?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
You said hey, chris, and then you went just to try
and trick me.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
But the harder it is to hear, the more those
auricular muscles will activate.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Okay Now, recently you reposted some content about
Ginger listening to music and inthe video you could see that
she was turning her earsbasically around in order to
hear that sound.
Her little ears are likesatellite dishes.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
They're so cute when she's listening, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I know, I know she's listening, but she's also
ignoring.
But what about humans?
Do our ears do that?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
No, we can't.
We have relatively rigid earsand we can't move them like that
.
Even when I wiggle them, theyjust go up and down, they don't
move around like a fuzzysatellite dish.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Okay, so no fuzzy satellite dishes for us.
Can you tell me a little bitabout the scientific experiment?
How did they set it up?
Speaker 1 (05:48):
As mentioned, this comes from Frontiers in
Neuroscience, and somescientists conducted a study on
20 people with normal hearing.
The participants listened to arecorded voice while distracting
podcasts played in thebackground.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So just like our house, I guess, so Maybe they
used our podcast in thebackground.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
So just like our house, I guess.
So Maybe they used our podcastin the study.
That'd be funny.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
That would be funny, but this is what our house is.
Jason is listening to noise allthe time.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yes, it's because I'm making content right.
It's probably annoying toeverybody else, but I have to.
I don't want to get into techtalk, but there's a knack to
putting your reels with music inorder to have more people
listen.
But anyways, the folks in thestudy had electrodes placed
around their ears to recordtheir muscle activity and the
(06:38):
auricular muscle which isresponsible for lifting the ear
up and down.
If you can wiggle your ears andif you can't, you still have
them it activated when listeningconditions were difficult.
Now that's the study, and maybe, Chris, you could fill us in on
the evolutionary perspective ofwhat the deal is here.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Okay, so millions and millions of years ago these
muscles may have helped ourhuman ancestors collect sounds
and unfortunately today thesmall amount of muscle activity
likely doesn't improve yourhearing.
Otherwise I would be, you know,exercising my ears just like I
(07:20):
exercise my other muscles.
Now, scientists haven't testedwhether the activity, the muscle
activity, aids in hearing, butthe activity of these muscles
could serve as a measurement ofa person's hearing effort.
So for me, when I'm trying tohear my students talk, sometimes
I have to actually crane myneck in because some of them
(07:44):
talk so quietly or they don'twant to be heard in the
classroom.
So it's I'm trying to get themto talk and I have to go in
closer and they're like oh, whyare you getting so close?
Probably because you're talkingso quietly and I cannot
exercise my ear wiggle to hearyou better.
But the cool thing about thisstudy is the data that they
(08:06):
attained could improve hearingaid technology by detecting when
a person is struggling to hearand then adjusting accordingly.
So that would be cooltechnology for hearing aids for
sure.
So, as your auricular musclesactivate, the hearing aid jacks
itself up right, yes, Mine wouldgo on to full power, but I
(08:27):
don't have hearing aids, I justcrane my neck and move closer to
hear better.
Like, what big eyes you have,oh, better to see you with.
What big teeth you have, betterto eat you with, I guess.
And then what big ears you haveBetter to hear you with.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
There's some funny comments near the end of the
study, which one of themactually, shockingly, is like
what I did with my ear wiggling.
So everybody's ear muscles varyin size, so that makes studying
those auricular muscles tough.
Some people, as they'relistening, can actually feel
their ears move towards thesound.
(09:06):
I do that.
So when I'm straining Iinvoluntarily flex my ear
muscles and my ears perk up.
You know that term they perk up, my ears literally do that,
which is wild.
And then it says here furthersome people use their ear
(09:26):
muscles for practical purposes,like adjusting their glasses.
I did that all the time, likeyou.
You knew me when I woreeyeglasses.
I got laser eye surgery but Iwould wiggle my ears to get my
glasses where I wanted them,hands free I know there's
nothing you can't do.
(09:47):
No, there's lots of things Ican't do, but I can wiggle my
ears, so some people have apretty good knack for wiggling
their ears and just use thatability throughout your life.
And if you don't, you're notmissing much, right?
You're not missing much of theability to bring your glasses up
as they're sliding down yournose.
That's basically what I didwith my glasses.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Jason, I find it fascinating.
I find it a fascinatingbiological trait and I think
it's super cool, Just liketongue rolling or other things,
but I just think it's cool.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
There you go.
That's science news for thisweek.
This week in pet science, moreanimal science.
We're going to go to the zoo,zoo, zoo.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I remember that's Putt Goes to the Zoo, and it's
from a video game that we usedto play with our kids.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Duncan loved Putt.
And what was the other one?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Pajama Sam.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Oh, my God, pajama Sam.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Pajamasam oh my God, Pajamasam.
I don't know Pajamasam.
This is pretty niche.
I don't know if peoplelistening will know about Putt
and Pajamasam and Freddy Fish.
We can't forget Freddy Fish.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
No, we can't.
And I even say things likethunder and lightning aren't so
frightening all the time.
Or Havarti Provolone it'sreally pronounced Provolone, but
it doesn't rhyme properly.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
I say all these quotes from these video games we
actually use that with duncanwhen he was little, so if we
ever lost him, it was like thecall and answer, like havarti,
and then he would say provolone,like in the supermarket because
, like, lots of kids will belike mom and then 72 moms look.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
But if you say havarti, then provolone, then
you know you're gonna match upwith your kid.
Yeah, and I, I dounderstandarti, then provolone,
then you know you're going tomatch up with your kid.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah, and I do understand we're saying
provolone wrong, but it justworked better the other way.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
It did.
It worked better.
The other way they played agame.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
It was tic-tac-toe with different cheese and the
flim-flam.
What was it?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
It was the flim-flam chimney jam flapper gapper
that's in my bag.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
All right, we may have lost some of our audience
as we've gone off the rails, butwe are going to the zoo, which
precipitated this wholeconversation, looking at human
animal interactions in wildlifetourism.
Right, so I love the zoo.
The zoo is one of my favoriteplaces to go and last year my
(12:08):
colleague Jackie Shukin, whoteaches the biology component of
the interbaccalaureate programat our school, I went with her
as a chaperone to the zoo withthe high school kids the biology
high school kids, and it's asmall class.
I think there was like 25 kids,so two chaperones to 25 kids.
We get to the zoo and guess howmany tours were at the zoo,
(12:33):
chris?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Did you go on the edutrex?
Because I've looked into goingon these.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
No, it was self.
We just went on a self-guidedzoo tour.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Oh, okay, because I always want to go and access the
edutrex, which I did when Itook our grade nines.
But with the high school, wethey're like no.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, these are grade 12 students.
Many of them are 18, right, sothey're adults.
Right, they're the last year oftheir school, but there were
hundreds of elementary schooltours there.
And so we get off the bus in abig line to get into the zoo and
these kids are just liketowering over all these small
(13:14):
children and because they're alllike kindergarten and grade one
, teachers and the teachers arelike stressed out of their mind
because they don't want to loseany of these kids and they're
like do you have your walkingbuddy?
Who's where's your walkingbuddy?
So then I started to give all ofour students a hard time.
I'm like you guys better haveyour walking buddy or I'm going
to lose my mind.
(13:34):
Where's your walking buddy?
So they all took me serious andthey got into pairs to have a
walking buddy to get into thezoo.
But in the zoo, as we'regetting to this story, a walking
buddy to get into the zoo, butin the zoo, as we're getting to
this story, they always haveshows where they have an animal
there to show off and explain asan educational kind of
presentation.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
We've been to some of those like the tiger and the
lion yeah, or birds of prey,vultures and stuff like it's
feeding time and then come watchthe feeding lunch, yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Or they're like this is Benny and it's a penguin, and
so they bring the penguin outand you're like, oh my God, it's
the cutest thing I've ever seen.
It's really engaging, rightSuper engaging, to have a live
animal there to talk about.
Now.
This study gets into how havingthose human-animal interactions
(14:28):
affect donations, because zooshave an operating budget and
wildlife tourism requires peopleto pay to go see them and
that's rolled back into animalconservation.
The study talks about theTaronga Zoo in Australia and
what's going on with thesehuman-animal interactions.
(14:49):
Chris.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
This one was specifically during a bird
presentation and the donationsystem allowed the visitors to
pay by giving money to a bird.
They were looking at threedifferent ways or three
different treatments that testedvisitor donation behavior.
So the first one was that thebird itself was physically
(15:11):
accepting money from visitors.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
It was a parrot.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And it was so cool, thank you.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
It was taking money from people it was a parrot and
it was so cool.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Thank you, money from people taking so much money to
a parrot you would.
You would stand there and itwould be like a slot machine,
like a vlt I love parrots you do.
One of the other ways that theytested visitor donation behavior
was having a bird present butnot not taking those donations.
So the bird was visible but nottaking or really involved in
(15:40):
the donation collection at all,just hanging out.
And then the third donationbehavior that was tested was not
having a bird present at all,so just having the standard
donation box.
And then on top of that theyhad a separate factor assessed
the impact of a donor reward.
So a badge system, yeah, sosome audience.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
You donate and you get a little badge, kind of
thing.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, and so some audience members received a
message about receiving a badgefor donating more than five
Australian dollars, and othersreceived no message about the
badge.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
That's weird that we call it the Australian dollar,
because I'm pretty sure theAustralians just call it dollars
.
We don't call our moneyCanadian money, we just call it
dollars, right.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yep.
I don't know I call itAustralian dollars because in
math we do money conversions.
So convert from Canadian to US,from Canadian to Australian
dollars, or Australian dollarsor the pound.
We do conversions.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
I'm always confused by the British, like a shilling.
What's a shilling that's soconfusing to me?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
We had a conversation about this in the car and it
was so bizarre.
I was like looking it up and Isaid this is like fictitious.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Sorry, sorry English people, I love that you have
shillings.
It's probably like the Canadianloonie and toonie.
It's just so normal for us.
But it is whimsical when peoplecome to Canada and they get
their loonies, which is a $1coin, and their toonies, which
is a $2 coin, because ourAmerican friends don't have that
.
And it was like, why do youhave little duckies on your
(17:27):
money coins?
And I'm like they're loons.
There's Canadian loon.
It's important, but anyways.
So let's get to the some of thefindings from the study, hey,
but anyways, all right.
So let's get to the some of thefindings from the study, hey
yeah, for sure so maybe it's alittle shocking in places and
not in others.
so more visitors donated withwhen the bird took donations
(17:47):
than the other two conditions.
Literally, that makes sense,because if just the act of
giving a parrot some money is agift, enough to yourself, right?
The parrots get me money andyou're like, oh my God, here's
$10.
So it's a game.
Now the counterintuitive or theshocking part was larger
donation amounts were given whenthe bird was not taking
(18:10):
donations.
So while more people donated tothe bird in the situation where
the bird was just chilling onthe side, bigger donation
amounts were given.
Also, the badge messagingplayed a crucial role in
increasing donation amounts,especially when there was no
(18:32):
bird present at all, when therewas no bird present at all.
So if people knew that if theygave more than five bucks they'd
get a badge, they're like, oh,I'm going to give more than five
bucks then, so I can get abadge.
And that makes sense becausepeople love collecting stuff.
Pokemon just won't go away.
Pokemon is wild.
Right now, annalise iscollecting Pokemon cards.
That's Adam's girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
I love it and I get FOMO when I don't get the badge.
So, it's definitely a motivatorfor me to donate.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Zero, motivation for me, zero.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
And even if it's a digital badge, I'm for it.
I'm like, yes, that's perfect.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
It's the gamification right.
Some implications for zoos inthe future is that physical
interaction with animals isn'tnecessary to inspire donations.
Just having the animal there orhaving a badge system is enough
to get people to donate.
However, obviously, thepresence of animals alone can
influence visitor engagement andgenerosity.
(19:30):
You see the bird and you'remore connected to giving to the
zoo.
See the bird and you're moreconnected to giving to the zoo.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So did you hear that the Calgary zoo got two new
cougar cubs?
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Oh my God, really.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yes, now Alberta, fish and wildlife rescued them.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Oh, this store.
I've heard this is acontroversial story, Chris.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
I know, yeah, this is all I.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
this is a controversial story, chris, I
know.
Yeah, this is all okay in ourlittle area of the world.
This is quite controversial.
Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, so maybe people will be one of them.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Right, the whole story here, chris.
Just for people who are curious, this is a cougar that has been
known to the Canmore area andit lived in Grotto Canyon and
that's where we hike.
We've hiked Grotto Canyon howmany times in our life, like
five, six times.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah, quite a few.
We like it there.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, so this cougar has been coexisting with
everybody in that area and thecougar was shot?
No, yeah, it was shot by ahunter.
Yeah, so it's quite the scandalbecause it had two little
babies the scandal because ithad two little babies.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
So like zoos are very important for animal
conservation and educationprograms, but on the flip side,
it's where are they gettingtheir animals from?
And this is definitely atragedy here in our province.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, it's a tough thing and it's controversial
right now, of course, because itwas a mom that was killed who
had babies.
But Alberta does allow acertain amount of cougars to be
hunted, because they need tokeep the numbers of cougars at a
certain level or they haveinappropriate interactions with
humans and then they start toeat too much of the prey.
(21:34):
And then they start to eat toomuch of the prey.
That's a tough situation rightnow because the forestry and
parks is defending the hunterbecause the hunter went through
all of the proper channels.
You're allowed to hunt femalecougars, but you're not supposed
to hunt female cougars who havecubs, and perhaps the hunter
didn't see that.
So I think a cool implication,maybe for shelters or people who
(21:57):
are donating money, is havinganimals present, and they do
this at teacher's convention,because what do they have?
We are going to teacher'sconvention together soon.
They have these booths and themost popular booth at teacher's
convention is what?
The puppy booth.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, foster, fostering home and they are
partnered with the bone andbiscuit, and so sometimes I go
in and they have all these cutelittle tiny puppies.
Yeah, and everybody gets theirpuppy fix at the teacher's
convention but they also takedonations.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
So having the puppies there, they're tapping into
this study itself absolutely.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Absolutely.
But what I love also is at thetable.
You can buy snacks for yourdogs, like treats and things
like that, or sometimes theyhave bandanas, and I like to do
that.
I like to give for those thingsbecause we can use those with
our dogs.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
And ginger, and it's a good cause.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
And it's a good cause .
Speaker 1 (22:55):
All right, that's pet science for this week.
Hello everybody, here's someways you can keep the Science
Podcast free.
Number one in our show notessign up to be a member of our
Paw Pack Plus community.
It's an amazing community offolks who love pets and folks
who love science.
We have tons of bonus Bunsenand Beaker content there and we
(23:18):
have live streams every Sundaywith our community.
It's tons of fun.
Also, think about checking outour merch store.
We've got the Bunsen stuffy,the Beaker stuffy and now the
ginger stuffy.
That's right, ginger, thescience cat, has a little
replica.
It's adorable.
It's so soft, with the giantfluffy tail, safety glasses and
(23:41):
a lab coat.
And number three if you'relistening to the podcast on any
place that rates podcasts, giveus a great rating and tell your
family and friends to listen too.
Okay, on with the show.
Back to the interviews.
It's time for ask an expert onthe science podcast, and I have
Rachel Paul, who's a NAGPRAprogram specialist, and we'll
get into what that is in asecond.
Rachel, how are you doing?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Good.
Thank you so much for having meon.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yay, where are you in the world?
Where are you calling into theshow from?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
I'm calling in from the state of Oregon right now in
the US Little town it's not solittle of Eugene.
I do want to take a moment andacknowledge that the town of
Eugene and where my job is inthe university because I work at
the University of Oregon is onKalapuya land, whose descendants
(24:31):
are primarily citizens of theConfederated Tribes of the Grand
Ronde and the ConfederatedTribes of the Salense Indians.
And if you are curious aboutwhere you are and whose
ancestral homelands you might beon, a really fantastic resource
to check out is a websitecalled native-landca.
It was started in Canada andit's a great starting point if
(24:55):
you are curious about theindigenous groups in your area.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Thank you for the wonderful land acknowledgement.
That was a great way to key ineverybody who's listening to
what we're going to be talkingabout Just quickly.
Oregon's a beautiful place tolive.
I've been down through thatarea south of Canada.
That whole Pacific Southwest ispretty down there south of
Canada.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
that whole Pacific Southwest is pretty down there.
Yeah, I'm originally fromCalifornia, so I was not used to
the rain.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yes, a little rainy compared to California.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Oh yeah, much more, but I do have to say I enjoyed
not getting sunburned everysingle day of the summer.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
So there you go.
I was wondering if we couldtalk just quickly about your
training with NAGPRA and whatwe're going to be talking about
in a second.
What's going on with there?
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Of course.
So NAGPRA is an acronym.
It stands for the NativeAmerican Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act.
It was a federal law that waspassed in the 90s in the United
States, so it covers theentirety of the United States,
although some areas have somestricter laws than others.
This is even though the act waspassed 30 years ago.
(26:12):
A lot has changed in the fieldrecently and there has been a
lot more pressure to fullycomply with the spirit and the
letter of the law, so there is alot more emphasis and detail on
those aspects.
But my general background is inarchaeology.
I'm currently in the process ofgetting my master's in applied
(26:36):
anthropology, with a focus onarchaeology, of course.
And my master's thesis isactually on Mayan ceramics,
nothing to do with Nagpra at all.
I fell into the Nagpra world byaccident, but also by being
curious.
Nagpra was always this thing.
That was just an aside inarchaeology.
(26:58):
So when we talk aboutarchaeology, we talk about like
the sites and the history andthe various methodologies, and
then there was always just likea little kind of footnote,
sometimes, sometimes a littlebit more than that, but it was
like oh yeah, nagpra is a thingwe have to do.
We have to be careful whencoming across like human remains
(27:21):
or certain things, but that'sthe thing for other people to
worry about.
Like we sometimes worry about it, but you know, um, so it was a
thing that was just to the sidefor me until, oh gosh, it must
have been 2022.
Yeah, propublica, a nonprofitnews organization, released a
(27:48):
series of really damningarticles about NAGPRA and the
failure of many museums andinstitutions to comply with
repatriation.
And when I saw this article, Iwas like, oh wow, does the
NAGPRA coordinator at theuniversity I was currently going
(28:08):
to, oregon State, know thatthis is out Like completely out
of the blue?
I sent her this email.
In my opinion, it felt veryunhinged because I was just like
, hey, you don't know me, but Iknow your job's difficult.
And I saw this article came outand I hope you know about it.
If you didn't know about it,now you do, and you might be
(28:30):
getting some questions from thepublic about your job and how
Oregon State is doing net prep.
And she was actually reallyimpressed that I reached out and
so I got a lot more involvedand ended up becoming an intern
for her at Oregon State and,yeah, from there I did another
(28:53):
internship and then I got thisposition at U of O.
So that's my background.
I know that went in a fewdifferent directions, but my
overall background isarchaeology.
I just got sidelined into thismore museum and Nagpra aspect of
it.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
When you were young were you interested in ancient
civilizations, ancient artifacts, on the whole archaeology angle
.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I was to an extent, Actually.
When I was young, I wasconvinced I was going to be a
biologist of some sort.
Yeah, I was really into biologyand animals and all sorts of
things.
I took a few classes, though,and turns out I didn't
(29:43):
particularly love it as much asI needed to for a career, and so
I headed into a moreanthropology focus and from
there fell into archaeology.
Thanks to a great mentor, I wasat UC Davis at the time.
Yeah, I've always been likethat.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
So no whips and hats in your past.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
No, I did enjoy the Indiana Jones movies when I was
younger, and they do actuallyserve a really great example of
what archaeology used to be like, which is a little scary,
honestly.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
A little problematic, eh, oh, yes.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
But yeah, not super into it, but I did enjoy history
.
I'd always been interested inthe human experience, but I
never really put a label on it.
When I was a camp counselor, Iactually really enjoyed finding
stories from cultures from allover the world and I would tell
(30:43):
those to the kids as likebedtime stories and it was
really cool just having them geta glimpse into a different
story that they'd never heard ofbefore but have so many of the
same themes that they've seenover and over again.
That was something I reallyenjoyed doing and that does tie
into with anthropology, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Okay, so I think we got a really good picture of
your background.
I appreciate that, rachel.
Yeah, if you could just go alittle bit more into I know we
got the acronym what NAGPRAstands for.
If you could just go a littlebit into more of what it's all
about and maybe some of theeffects that it will have on, or
(31:25):
the effects that it should haveon, archaeology or science even
.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah, more and more people are becoming familiar
with repatriation in general,and we've heard of some more of
the more famous cases that comeacross the news, such as, I have
to say, I think the most famousexample right now would be the
Elgin marbles or the Parthenonmarbles from Greece and how
(31:51):
Greece wants the British Museumto repatriate them back to
Greece.
Greece wants the British Museumto repatriate them back to
Greece.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
NACPRA is repatriation.
Repatriation is returning tothe original land that it's from
.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Yes, more of returning to the original
descendants.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Oh, descendants, okay .
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Yeah, descendants or culture or community.
Sometimes we can return items tolike very specific individual
people If we know who exactlycertain items or remains came
from, but sometimes it is to alarger group or community and it
(32:32):
gets very complicated very fast.
I can tell you that much.
So repatriation in general, inmy opinion, has been more and
more on the forefront ofpeople's thoughts, while NAGPRA
itself has been a law, again fornot a whole lot, not as much
(32:52):
progress has been made as asshould have been made, honestly,
and there's reasons why thathappened in general, but sorry,
I totally lost my train of wordsthere.
So in general, repatriation, inmy opinion, has been more and
more on people's minds and it isreturning certain items that
(33:19):
could be culturally significant,that are important or valuable
in some way, to directdescendants or to communities or
to groups that are somehowaffiliated with the original
people that had those items,with the original people that
(33:40):
had those items.
So specifically in NAGPRA thelaw dictates that there are a
few categories of items that canbe returned through this
process.
While other items can bereturned, those items are not
subject under the NAGPRA law, soit would be basically off the
goodwill of people to returnthem.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
We're moving further away from, like the finders,
keepers kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Yes, we really are.
So, yeah, the specific itemsthat fall under NAGPRA would be
human remains, associatedfunerary objects or funerary
objects that we know to befunerary objects but are not
associated with specific remains, and then this very broad
(34:26):
general category called items ofcultural patrimony, and these
are items that would be used in,like religious ceremonies or
significant rituals or have somesort of value and importance to
a community, where the itemitself, like, belongs to the
(34:48):
community and not to a specificperson.
Gotcha, yeah, I don't know howyou'd even figure that out,
right?
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yeah, it can be hard to figure out.
Yeah, I don't know how you'deven figure that out, right?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Yeah, it can be hard to figure out.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Yeah, okay, gotcha.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Yeah, and there are some lines of evidence we can
use.
There are things like paststudies, past records we can use
like all kinds of scientificmethodology.
Use like all kinds ofscientific methodology.
But some really important linesof evidence would be like
(35:23):
tribal histories and tribalknowledge to support the
classification of these itemsbut also to support the return
of these items For furtherclarification, for the items of
cultural patrimony.
If you think about like a placeof worship and the things that
would be in that place ofworship they don't necessarily
belong to the person who wouldbe like leading the worship or
(35:47):
to the people that like attendthat building.
They belong to the wholecommunity.
So those are some of the itemswe're talking about when we say
items of cultural patrimony.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Yeah, I got it right.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Okay, cool.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Yeah, and he remains.
So that's like bones and suchand things that they were buried
with, and then fairly largereligious symbols and artifacts
that belong to communities.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, exactly.
And artifacts that belong tocommunities?
Yeah exactly.
And so, with the passage ofNAGPRA, a huge ethical question
popped up into the field ofarchaeology, and this idea is
that we, as researchers, do nothave an inherent right to study
(36:35):
any and all material we want tostudy.
Some of these items, like thedescendant communities wouldn't
necessarily want us to study, orthey would want to direct the
study themselves and not havethese items be separated from
(36:55):
themselves, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
They want to be part of the process or at least have
a say.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Exactly, yeah, and previously lots of horrible
history.
But many institutions andmuseums have human remains for
people to study and for, likeundergraduate students, to take
classes on the human remainsthat are in those rooms.
(37:23):
Were those people, did theyever consent to have the remains
studied in that way, and didtheir descendants ever consent
to have those studied, thoseremain studied in that way?
Speaker 1 (37:39):
yeah, I can see.
If you just decide to go dig upsomebody's grave today, people
would have a problem with that,with you hauling those bones
into some place to look at.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Exactly yeah, and if you know a little bit about the
history of medical schools, theydid used to do actual gray
robbing it was lucrative forsome people to go get the parts
for the doc say, back in the dayexactly, yeah, exactly.
But there was this I don't knowhow to describe it it the graves
(38:16):
of especially indigenous peoplewere just really easy to
exploit and easier to take thoseremains without any knowledge
of the descendants or the peoplewho are tied to those human
remains.
So that's where it's becomingthis huge.
(38:37):
It became this huge issue whereyou know most of the remains
that were in universities andrepositories were Native
American remains the ProPublicaarticle I mentioned earlier.
If you go on that you canactually look up in the United
(38:57):
States and see how many sets ofhuman remains certain
institutions have, and whilethat database may not be 100%
accurate and there are someother smaller issues with it,
overall other smaller issueswith it, overall I feel like
(39:24):
that article does show, like,how widespread and how massive,
like scale wise, this issue wasand just how many places just
had human remains that peoplejust didn't know about about.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
So we're at the difficult point of realizing
that this was not great whathappened, yet it's a great
teaching tool.
So is that the big dilemmaright now, like how do you
compromise on that?
Or is there no room forcompromise because those remains
were ill gotten?
Quote unquote.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Because those remains were ill-gotten.
Quote unquote yeah, in myopinion, there is a lot of room
for compromise and there is alot of room for collaboration,
but, as you can understand, itcan be very hard to collaborate
when there is a lot of mistruston both sides a lot of mistrust
(40:19):
on both sides and so a lot ofthe collaboration that has been
done or needs to be done in thefuture relies on building
relationships and building alittle bit of trust between,
like, researchers and the peoplewho have been taken advantage
of.
So, in my opinion, likeundergraduate students who are
(40:40):
not going into osteology, whoare not going into a medical
field, they don't need to bestudying human remains.
Like, why do you need actualremains when there's really
great bone replicas and we havereplicas for all of the ancient
hominin ancestors that, like,people study too?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
there's really no reason for that, in my opinion
yeah, I see the irony there too,because you wouldn't let
undergrad students handle thoseprecious real specimens of the
early hominid some of them.
Yet it's historically it wastotally okay to handle the human
remains, right.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
I can see the irony there, right yeah, exactly, um,
and for the people wereupsetting like actual human
remains would be beneficial fortheir study.
Osteologists and people needingspecific expertise in human
remains.
There are ways in which you canobtain human remains with
(41:46):
consent.
I'm sure you've heard of someof the body farms in the States.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Absolutely.
I've talked to researchers thatworked on it.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Yeah, exactly.
There are ways people candonate their bodies with consent
, but also with NAGPRA itself.
Not all items necessarily needto be repatriated.
This is a small sticking pointnot everybody totally
understands.
But under NAGPRA you have tojust offer the things to be
(42:19):
repatriated.
In some cases tribes will sayit's okay, you can keep them, or
you can keep them and studythem.
It's just having their inputand making sure you have their
consent is what's key.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
The big point is that it seems like the researchers
are asking, and I'd imagine thatcomes across as a lot more
empathetic than historically.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Oh, yes, yes, and in most cases, yes.
Tribes do want the humanremains returned and in most
cases, if the human remainscan't be returned for whatever
reason, they're usually not okaywith them being studied.
But there are some exceptionsto that and the fact of the
(43:09):
matter is just right now thereare so many human remains in
these museums and repositoriesthat even if all of the Native
American remains went back,there would still be plenty for
researchers to study if theywanted.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
That's a good point, because I imagine some there's
always the devil's advocate,people who argue the other way.
They're like, okay, this isgreat and all, but if we
repatriate all of these humanremains, then we won't have
anything left to study.
So it sounds like that argumentfalls a little flat.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Yeah, so that was.
Some of the biggest opponentsof NAGPRA itself were always
fear mongering and oh, there'sgoing to be nothing left in
museums, there's going to benothing left for researchers to
study and everyone's careers aregoing to be ruined.
But none of that has happened.
The only peoples whose careersgot ruined fully deserved it for
(44:08):
a variety of reasons, but ingeneral, that really hasn't
happened and while progress onreturning and offering these
items and human remains up forrepatriation has been incredibly
slow, overall, I think it leadsto better research and more
(44:32):
meaningful studies, because ifyou're involving the people who
are directly impacted by yourresearch or who are directly
connected to the subjects you'restudying, there's going to be
better, more meaningful research.
You're going to look into thequestions that matter to these
(44:56):
descendant communities.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
They would also probably, in some circumstances,
provide invaluable backgroundinformation that a researcher
would never have access to hadthey not asked or had that
discourse.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Oh, absolutely, absolutely there.
Yeah, it so much.
Historically in academia, likeNative American groups were
never really consulted on theirhistories or, honestly, really
anything about them, other thanjust to make like, oh wow, look
(45:36):
at this.
Them, other than just to makelike, oh wow, look at this.
Sorry, totally lost my train ofwords there.
Most depictions and inquiriesabout Native Americans and other
marginalized groups have beento make or show this perception
of wow, what an interestinglittle community.
(45:59):
And then it's passed over,there's no real depth to it and
it's very much like talkingabout the community without
hearing from the communityitself, and that's been very
much the norm in museums and inacademics historically.
(46:20):
Here I am like talking aboutthis and I'm not Native at all.
It sometimes puts me in aninteresting position because
while I'm not Native, I am inthis weird I don't know weird,
but I am in this job where I'mvery much like constantly
thinking about like nativeissues and having to make sure,
(46:46):
like I know, certain things aregoing on.
So there's a lot of differentfactors at play here and a lot
of interesting dynamics.
I guess is the overall sum ofthat, if that made any sense.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Yeah, it did.
You can hold a bone of somebodyin your hand and analyze it
clinically and what part of thebody it was from, and was it
male or female, potentially, andhow old it is, but that bone
was somebody at one point, justlike you and I talking, and that
somebody had people that lovedthem and they have descendants,
(47:26):
and that I think sometimesscience loses that heart, the
heart of it, when we're a littletoo clinical.
You might find this a littlehumorous, rachel.
There was a skit in, I forget,on the cbc on this.
There's a tv show on in canada.
It was called.
This hour is 22 minutes and itwas this white professor had got
(47:47):
this native american artifactand they were like pondering
over what it could be used forand they came up with this
elaborate thing that it was usedfor and then it was in a museum
and then these two FirstNations, older gentlemen and a
young boy were looking at it andthe young boy was like reading
the description and he asked thegrandpies really, and he's like
(48:10):
, no, it was a spoon, that'swhat it was.
You could have asked me.
It's a spoon, and it was justthis really funny skit that had
the anthropologists.
Archaeologists had just askedthey wouldn't need to be sitting
there pondering elaboratereasoning.
That probably was incorrect, soI know I thought it was a.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Yeah, I just jogged in my memory as we were talking
right now yeah, of course, andthat's exactly like what's at
the heart of some of this.
I could speculate all day aboutcertain things, but because I
am not Native American myself,there are some things I just
don't know, and there are goingto be many things I will never
(48:51):
know, and that's part of whythis collaboration between
academia and Native Americans orother marginalized groups is so
important, because you're justtotally misrepresenting and
showing a very different pictureof what's actually going on
(49:19):
picture of what's actually goingon.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
So I guess this is important for folks in academia
to wrestle with and ponder andI'm glad we're having this
discussion Before we wrap upthis section how can people who
are listening think about this,applying this to their life
today?
Do you have any messages forfolks like me who aren't an
archaeologist I teach chemistryor other people who are
listening?
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah, of course, I did think about this really hard
.
So the one thing I want peopleto take away is to question
what's missing from a story.
If you go into a museum and yousee a display about Native
Americans or other marginalizedgroups, ask yourself what is
(50:03):
missing from this story?
What am I not seeing?
What's not being presented?
Very commonly in museums?
They'll skip over hundreds ofyears of history, because that's
when the forced relocationshappened or awkward thing to
talk about in the.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
It's not as glamorous as whatever or something else.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
Right, it's something pretty horrifying that north
american government exactly, oranother thing is the voices of
modern day people connected tothose groups.
Are they presenting thismarginalized group in a very
specific historical context?
This kind of myth that somepeople think that Native
(50:52):
Americans just kind of extinct,when that's very much not true.
Native Americans just kind ofextinct when that's very much
not true.
But part of the reason that isperpetuated is because a lot of
people learn about NativeAmericans from museums and
they're only shown in likenatural history museums and only
shown what life was like beforecolonization, what life was
(51:17):
like before colonization.
So when you're missingeverything afterwards, you're
not getting the full story andyou're not really understanding
what's going on with the group.
Yeah, basically, just, I reallywant people to think critically
and think what's missing hereand this applies to so many
things, like when we seesomebody like the scientists,
(51:38):
like being very clinical andtalking about something in very
academic terms.
What's missing?
Is there a human connection, isthere a human story behind this
that we're not getting?
Speaker 1 (51:53):
So that's a great message.
There's this there.
Think about what's missing.
What's the puzzle piece?
That's a great message.
The there's a there.
Think about what's missing.
What's the puzzle piece that'smissing?
Speaker 3 (51:59):
I like that sorry I know I've talked a lot about so
many different things.
Did you have any otherquestions for me about that?
Speaker 1 (52:08):
no, I think we've covered.
I myself went into this ratherignorant.
I did look up the acronym andit's in Canada.
We have been working towardsthis goal of it's called truth
and reconciliation as a nation.
I'll cut this just because it'snot necessarily related to the
(52:28):
discussion.
So this NAGPRA seems like aversion of truth and
reconciliation, but specific forarchaeology, anthropology,
which is pretty interesting.
I've said this story before onthe podcast.
I was probably in my early 30swhen I was at a teacher's
(52:50):
convention, because I teach highschool chemistry and at a
teacher's convention you cantake all these different pd
sessions professionaldevelopment one of them was on
is called residential schoolsand I was like, oh, that's
interesting.
I wondered what that is.
I thought it was like boardingschools, like harry potter,
that's what I thought it was.
I went and I was like horrifiedbecause I was not taught any of
(53:14):
that in school.
I had worked with First Nationspeople and they didn't talk
about it and it was just likethis shocking, awful thing the
residential school systems ofCanada.
So, personally, that wassomething that happened in my
life that I guess relates tothis NAGPRA stuff and the truth
and reconciliation part.
Speaker 3 (53:35):
It does.
It does very much.
I was never taught about theresidential schools either, and
we had them in the U S as well.
There was a lot of history Iwasn't taught.
I think it was after Igraduated college I learned
about, like some of the horrificthings that Columbus did, which
is pretty, pretty nasty.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
What are?
If you're a, if you're a whiteguy or white woman and your
ancestors came over there?
There's some pretty nasty stuff.
Speaker 3 (54:03):
That happened yeah yeah and yeah, it definitely is
all very related.
And in understanding how ourpast has been taught and what
sort of responsibility we haveover the research we do and how
(54:27):
the past is taught, I thinkreally also what is at the heart
of this as well.
And while NACRA itself doesmainly cover anthropologists and
archaeologists who did tons andtons of excavations, nagpra
technically covers anyinstitution that has received
(54:48):
federal funding.
Owner and you find artifacts onyour land.
As long as it's not humanremains, they could be artifacts
that would be items of culturalpatrimony.
They wouldn't necessarily haveto be returned under NAGPRA.
In addition, any federallyfunded institution, you'd be
(55:10):
surprised how many end up havinghuman remains.
There's high schools and abunch of random places that you
wouldn't think had human remains, that had Native American human
remains.
So this issue does extend waybeyond universities and museums,
but they tend to get thebiggest focus because they are
(55:34):
the ones with the largestcollections.
Speaker 2 (55:37):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
Yep, okay cool.
It's a very deep conversationand I appreciate you having.
It is an important one.
I'm just maybe I'll I'll keepthis section, then we'll move to
what I'm going to say here andthen we'll move to the last two
questions, if that's okay,rachel.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
Yeah, that's totally okay.
I get that this is a reallydeep topic and I know it's again
.
It's not fun, it's notglamorous, but I do think having
a bigger conversation about theethics of how we study and how
we do research is reallyimportant in general in science.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
Yeah.
So I guess, as we wrap up thissection, rachel, we I in
tongue-in-cheek and teasingly, Ialways reference Indiana Jones
whenever I'm talking to anarchaeologist archaeologists,
(56:43):
yes, um.
And there is a line thatindiana jones says that it is
pretty like it's prettyproblematic now to think about
what it would mean, and that'she's yelling.
That belongs in a museum.
He said that a couple times andI don't know if it does.
You can't just take somethingnow Was somebody's, that was a
culture's item at some point.
It doesn't necessarily give youthe right to put it in the
(57:06):
museum.
Speaker 3 (57:07):
That is correct.
That is 100% correct.
I do have to say one cool thingabout NAGPRA and this focus on
more Indigenous voices is thatthere have been a lot more
smaller local museums started byIndigenous groups.
So that they can present theirown stories in their own ways.
Speaker 1 (57:31):
Oh, I like that.
Speaker 3 (57:33):
Yeah, exactly, and exhibit the objects they want to
exhibit and show.
And there has been a lot morecollaboration between museums
themselves and thesemarginalized groups in order to
do the same thing in largerspaces, because while NACRA
(57:54):
itself only covers NativeAmerican things and human
remains, there are many othergroups who were also exploited
in a similar way.
Speaker 1 (58:12):
Just yeah, just on very different, just in very
different circumstances.
I was chuckling as you weretalking, not the exploitation,
so hopefully people get that.
I was chuckling becausesomething just came to mind that
my wife is ukrainian, right,very proud ukrainian, comes all
of her on her mom's side, veryukrainian, and I'm just thinking
how offensive it would be forme to just start a ukrainian
(58:34):
museum and without, withoutconsulting Ukrainians and just
try my best to figure out whatUkrainian culture is like.
Just how crazy that would soundexactly things that would get
wrong.
I it just is.
It would be insane, it would beabsolutely insane to just
decide to start, especially inAlberta, where I, where I live
(58:57):
in canada, there's a lot ofukrainian settlers.
I'm not just to decide, I'mgonna.
I'm gonna get a bunch ofukrainian artifacts and make my
own museum but not consultukrainians.
Speaker 3 (59:08):
Yeah, this is wild yeah, it would be absolutely
wild, or sorry.
I live downtown, I can pausewhile the siren passes.
It'd also be wild for thinkabout, like, how do you think
russia teaches people aboutukraine's and ukrainian culture?
It's pretty state driven, so myguess there's some things they
(59:33):
leave out yeah, exactly how wedo our research, but also how we
tell the stories behind theresearch matters a lot.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
That's a great place to leave our chat.
Speaker 3 (59:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (59:45):
Yeah, Rachel, thank you so much for talking about
your job.
It's a very deep discussion.
We have a couple standardquestions we ask all our guests
about.
One is a pet story.
I was wondering if you couldshare a pet story from your life
with us.
Speaker 3 (59:57):
Oh, yes, of course.
So my parents have a dog.
Her name is Millie, and Milliehas trained our neighbor to give
her treats every time she barks.
Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Oh no.
Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
Yes, she has, she truly has.
So my parents' previous dog wassuper friendly and loved
everybody and their house andthe neighbor's house are really
close to each other.
You can lean over the fencedeal and he would always go and
say hi to the dog and she wouldwag her tail and be so happy to
(01:00:32):
see him and all this stuff.
Millie in general is veryindifferent towards people.
She loves my parents.
They're her favorite people,like I'm very clearly number
three, like there's no, and theneighbor was like a little
miffed that like Millie wasn'texcited to see him so he just
(01:00:53):
started bringing her treats andso now anytime she hears them
move outside, she barks at himuntil he brings her over a treat
.
Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
Oh man, unintended consequences.
Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
But he got some love from that dog in its own way.
Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
Yeah, no, Millie's great she.
She now wags her tail when shesees him.
Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
And what kind of dog is Millie?
I apologize if I missed that.
Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Oh no, you didn't miss that.
We're not really sure.
We think she's like a blackmouth cur, which was like a
pioneer type dog, but we're notreally sure.
We actually got her from arescue that takes pets out of
Texas.
Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
So you just, you don't know with rescues
sometimes.
Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But yeah, she actually drove ina car from a few hundred miles
away, because Texas has prettymuch only kill shelters, I think
.
So there are like a lot ofnonprofits that like try and get
pets out of, like certainstates that have a lot of kill
shelters, I think.
So there are like a lot ofnonprofits that like try and get
pets out of like certain statesthat have a lot of kill
shelters and try and get themadopted or into no kill shelters
(01:02:07):
and other states, and that'swhere we got Millie.
Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
That's a good story.
Thanks for sharing it.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
I myself have a pet turtle, but I don't know how
many people find turtlesinteresting, so my wife would.
Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
We have two turtles as well.
They're two red ear slidersthat she rescued from a school.
They're illegal you can't getred ear sliders but they've
somehow.
A teacher got them and theylive for 50 years.
They've outlived, like theteachers who've had them.
They've retired and moved on.
So now we have the twored-eared sliders in our house.
Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
I forgot you guys had the red-eared sliders.
Yeah, my turtle's African side,neck turtle, looks very much
like a red-eared slider, butlike more grays and browns and
doesn't have any of the red oryellow.
Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
But like similar size .
Okay, more camouflage-y downand like rocks and mud kind of
thing yes, yes exactly cool.
What's the turtle's name?
Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
her name's Gertie, gertie the turtle like that yes,
also.
Oh, man, this is gonna make melook like a crazy turtle person,
but I actually rescued Gertieand when I first got her she had
pneumonia and I ended up havingto give her shots injections
every five days for six months.
(01:03:25):
She's finally pneumonia free.
She's good, nice and healthy.
But yeah, I gave my turtleweekly injections weekly
injections.
Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Yeah, like the turtles are a lot of work.
They those amphibians, youamphibians, and snakes and
reptiles, and what you have isit?
They don't require the samekind of like work that a dog or
dog might, but like their upkeepis not something for the faint
of heart oh no that's somethingthey remind everybody about,
with turtles for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
Yes, yeah, I had a turtle previously.
I knew what I was getting into,gertie, and I specifically
wanted a rescue turtle because Iknew that turtles are not often
well taken care of.
So she might have a diminishedlifespan, but she could still
live 25, 50 years.
Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
It's wild how long those turtles live.
It's just insane.
Yeah, we don't know how.
We really don't know how oldCarl and or Sagan are.
That's our two turtles, butthey've out.
They've outlived the careers ofa couple of teachers.
So they are ancient.
They've outlived the careers ofa couple of teachers.
So they are ancient Wild.
Thanks for sharing your petstory, rachel.
(01:04:40):
As we close, we challenge allof our guests to leave us with a
super fact.
It's something you know thatyou tell people at gatherings,
cocktail parties, randomly shoutat trivia night.
It blows people's minds.
Do you have a super fact for us?
Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
I hope it's considered a super fact.
So, people's minds, do you havea super fact for us?
I hope it's considered a superfact.
So in oregon, do you knowcrater lake yeah, I know crater
lake absolutely so crater lakewas actually a volcano oh yeah,
crater.
Yeah, crater lake wasoriginally a volcano that
erupted 7,700 years ago and thevolcano itself was called Mount
(01:05:20):
Mazama.
Is called Mount Mazama, butactually there are tribal oral
histories that record theeruption of Mount Mazama.
That happened over 7,000 yearsago.
Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
Wow, that's wild.
You know what the irony is Like.
About two weeks ago I wastalking to another scientist who
lives in Oregon and they'relike yeah, you got to wait.
If you're ever here, go checkout crater Lake, and so I've
Googled it.
So now I know exactly whatyou're talking about.
I did not know it was a volcano, though that is very cool.
Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
Yeah, I, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's like a dead
volcano now, or whatever it'scalled.
I don't know anything aboutvolcanoes.
Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
That's a cool fact.
Thanks, rachel.
We're at the end of ourdiscussion.
Thanks so much for talking withus about NAGPRA.
Hopefully it's something that'svery interesting, not on
people's radar and something tothink about.
It's a rather profounddiscussion, rachel.
Are you on social mediaanywhere Can people connect or
(01:06:27):
follow, or do you have a website?
Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
I don't have any social media.
If people are interested, I dohave an email social media.
Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
If people are interested, I do have an email.
It's just rpaul at uoregonedu.
Are you comfortable with meputting that in the show notes.
Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
if people want to ask questions, that is my official
work email, so if it isquestions about NAGPRA related
issues, that would be okay.
Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
Okay, perfect.
Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
I was just going to say thank you so much for having
me on.
I know this is not a super fundiscussion, but I appreciate the
chance to talk about some ofthese issues and maybe get
people to start thinking aboutthese things.
Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
That's it for this week's show.
Thanks for coming back weekafter week to listen to us, and
a special shout out to all ofour supporters on the Paw Pack.
It's like our Patreon group.
We'd love for you to sign up,so check out the show notes.
One of the perks of the toptier members is you get a shout
out every episode.
Take it away, chris.
Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Amelia Fetig Rhi, oda Carol Hainel, jennifer Challen,
linnea Janik Karen Chronister,vicky Otero, christy Walker,
sarah Bram, wendy, diane Masonand Luke Helen Chin, elizabeth
Bourgeois, marianne McNally,catherine Jordan, shelley Smith,
laura Stephffensen, tracyLeinbach, anne Uchida, heather
(01:07:58):
Burbach, kelly Tracy Halbert,ben Rather, debbie Anderson,
sandy Brimer, mary Rader, biancaHyde, Andrew Lin, brenda Clark,
brianne Haas, peggy McKeel,holly Burge, kathy Zerker, susan
Wagner and Liz Button.
Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
For science, empathy and cuteness.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com