Cosmic Queries – Native Skywatchers with Dr. Annette Lee

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

StarTalk begins right now.

This is StarTalk, I’m Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this is Cosmic Queries edition, which I love, you love it too, because you all send us questions all the time.

And I got with me Negin Farsad.

Negin, welcome back.

Hi, Neil, it’s so good to be here.

Hi-yo, welcome back.

And you’re still at it, you’re still host of Fake the Nation, one of the best podcast titles ever.

Oh, thank you so much.

Yeah, we’re still going hard at Fake the Nation.

Fake the Nation, and I think you even extended me an invitation to return.

Oh my, yes, let’s see what happens there.

And on the Cartoon Network, you’re like, are you hosting a comedy festival?

Did I read that right?

I’m a part of the Adult Swim Comedy Festival, and I’m just gonna be doing some standup, and it’s gonna be really fun.

Cool, cool.

And I always thought it was odd that your profession is defined by whether you’re standing or sitting.

There’s sit down comedy, there’s lay down comedy.

Like what?

No other profession are we all talking about whether your legs are straight or not.

This is weird.

Yeah, this is one of the many ways that comedians define themselves.

Yes.

By various forms of ligament and joint movement.

Yeah, I’m gonna be a stand up astrophysicist.

There you go.

I have a colleague, Professor Annette Lee.

Welcome to StarTalk Cosmic Queries.

Hello, happy to be here.

Yeah, yeah, there you go.

And so your expertise, well, you not only sort of have the astrophysics chops, but you also have a deep appreciation for art and culture, and not just any culture, but sort of indigenous cultures and their historical relationship and current relationship to the night sky.

Have I encapsulated that accurately enough?

Yes, and I also just wanna say that it’s important for me to say a little introduction, which is Mitakue Oyasen to all my relations, everyone here in this circle.

I greet you with a good heart.

My name’s Annette Lee.

I am mixed race Lakota.

And I am here on the land we call Mni Sota Makoche, which is the land where the water reflects the sky.

You’re a professor of astronomy in the Department of Physics at St.

Cloud State University.

That’s right.

And where is that?

About an hour north of Minneapolis.

Because St.

Cloud sounds like that’s not of this earth.

It was really set up for you.

There she is, sitting on a cloud.

Sitting on a cloud.

So I find that to be a beautiful tradition to recognize the relationship of Indigenous peoples to the land that you’re occupying at any given time and place.

And I’ve been able to see some of that and even participate in some of it in recent years during travels to Australia and to New Zealand.

And even I was at an Indigenous League designated part of the Grand Canyon where we were filming part of Cosmos.

And it was just a, it’s such a beautiful tradition.

So thanks for bringing that to StarTalk.

Yeah, so with that, I just want to say that this is the original territory of the Dakota and later Ojibwe people.

So these are my communities.

And it’s really important to acknowledge both that history and this present relationship.

And I think the thing that you’re talking about is one of the most important points, because like as astronomers, it’s all about like looking at the stars and there are so many amazing, you know, physical properties and mysteries as well that we do in the research area, you know, black holes, whatever.

But in our indigenous knowledge systems, it’s this idea that we are related to earth and sky.

And we even in Lakota have a word for it, it’s kapemene.

And kapemene is as it is above, it is below.

So it has to do with everything in the sky is reflected or mirrored on the earth.

And most importantly, we are a part of that because we come from the stars, we carry earth and sky within us.

As our bones are made of earth, our physical atoms, and then our spirits come from the stars.

So this idea of earth and sky and our participation is embedded in so much of what we’re talking about here.

It’s just not just in Lakota and First Nations teachings, but also throughout all indigenous people.

So when you said you were in Maori territory or in Australia, Aboriginal lands, it’s exactly that.

I’ve even heard this concept is in the Bible.

So it’s like throughout human history and throughout time, this idea that there’s this relationship between the above and below and our participation, that’s the key part, our participation in this cosmic mirroring.

So back to you.

Annette, isn’t what you…

That’s our show right there.

We’re done.

Negin, there’s nothing you and I could say.

Let’s go have a beer now, because this…

We should just shut up.

I feel like I just took ketamine, you know what I mean?

We just transported into another dimension.

Also, Annette, you’re really blowing my mind, because I thought the first person to look at the stars and notice some stuff was some white guy in Europe.

So you’re telling me that might not be accurate from my teachings in elementary school.

Wait, so, Negin, you can add a chapter to your how to make white people laugh.

Tell them, no, you weren’t the first.

Apparently not the first, guys.

Isn’t that hilarious?

You thought you were the first and you weren’t.

So, Annette, what does it mean precisely when I learned that you were director and founder of Native Skywatchers?

What is that?

So, back in 2007, I started an organization where Indigenous led grassroots, and it’s all about revitalizing our Indigenous connection to the sky, which is sky and earth, and our participation in it.

And it started out with just our local Ojibwe and Dakota Lakota community, knowledge holders and elders.

And it was actually fueled by this amazing thing.

So, I’m also a Planetarium director, and I would be doing Planetarium shows, and just by nature, I’d be pointing out like, well, there’s Leo the lion, but there’s also the Ojibwe lion, Moshi Beju.

And it would be like, isn’t it cool that the Greek lion’s head is the Ojibwe lion’s tail?

Like, what are the chances that anyone would see a lion anyways in that pattern of stars that looks like a backwards question mark?

So I was pointing out these Ojibwe and Dakota Lakota connections.

We’re just being polite saying that it’s their tail rather than it’s their butt.

No, because Moshi Beju is called the great panther, but it’s also called curly tail.

And it’s also like the cat, the mountain lion, which are indigenous to Minnesota.

So they just turned their head into a butt.

It’s the tail.

It’s a really important part.

There’s all these stories about it.

But now we know where Neil’s head is.

You can bring that in.

I have young kids that are boys, so they’re always talking about butt and farts.

Anyway, I was in the Planetarium, and I’m just in the element.

You’re in the dark.

You’re feeling the magic of the Planetarium and pointing out these stars.

And then afterwards, this teacher, she was from a nearby reservation.

So clearly, at least half her class was visibly Native.

And she ran up to me after the show and was like, where did you get this?

How do I get any resources?

How do I find out anything about this?

There’s nothing available.

And yet she told me the Minnesota State Science Standards had one of their benchmarks was to bring in how people from all cultures have participated in science and in particular.

So it was ripe for the plucking right there.

Right, exactly.

And so then with some NASA support, we were able to do our first series of educator workshops.

And we created star maps and then curriculum and planispheres and videos.

Just let me tell people, NASA is very good at funding programs that train educators because that’s the greatest leverage point you have in the whole system of learning.

So it’s really delighted to hear that they took a role in this as well.

So sorry, I interrupted, Dawn.

Oh, well, no, it was great because at the time, embarrassingly, I didn’t even know about these state standards.

And so when she told me this, I said, well, this is what I do.

This is my community.

This is my work.

And, you know, come to the workshop.

And so really, it was kind of like that, what do you call that, that perfect moment, like being the perfect person, the perfect place, the perfect person, the perfect place, the perfect time.

The planets align.

And that’s where we started.

And then since then, we’ve…

Wait, wait, just, I’m going to make it clear.

So Negin, because she’s an actual astrophysicist, she knows the planets aligning is a meaningless reference.

So I had to like pry it out of her and make her say it.

Okay.

That was astrophysicist’s inside jokes.

I’m happy to step outside the box.

No problem.

Anytime.

So, yeah, we just kind of went on from there.

And now it’s exploded with we have international partners and relationships and not just our Ojibwe, like local Ojibwe and Dakota Lakota.

But we do that as well as national work.

Right now, we have a cohort with Hawaiian at the Volcano School, with Maya, with African American, down in Mexico, the Comkeq.

It goes on and on.

The Australian Aboriginal, I have Maori collaborators.

So we are so excited to be global.

Yep, excellent.

So what started as just a simple encounter became now this movement, which I think is brilliant and beautiful.

Now, I noticed from your resume, you also have an MFA in fine arts.

Is that correct?

Yes, definitely.

I’m really proud.

So how does that fold into your efforts here?

Did you criticize the drawings of constellations?

I could do better.

I could do better than stick figures.

I do have a really high bar when it comes to visuals, but where it comes together is that I have been a practicing visual artist for, I mean, I can remember being in art shows and winning awards for art in grade school.

I’ve always loved art, but just like I’ve always loved math and astronomy.

People asked me what came first, and I said, well, you know, you could say both because I was just born like this.

Like I always love the stars.

I always loved sitting under the stars.

And I always loved like the analytics, the math, doing math, and I always in science and I’ve always loved doing art.

And so basically to me where it comes together is we’ve been doing a tremendous amount of video productions and digital media.

And this is really taken off because as with COVID, we got another NASA grant.

And this project was called Two-Eyed Seeing.

And this was just last year.

And let me explain.

This is called Etowaptamonk.

Etowaptamonk is the Mi’kmaq word for two-eyed seeing.

And this comes from my colleagues over in Nova Scotia, Carol Anakwood and her elders.

And basically it means to see with the best in one eye with the indigenous way of knowing.

And to see with the best in the other eye, the Western science way of knowing.

But the key part to see with both eyes for the benefit of all.

They call it the gift of multiple perspectives.

I have an astigmatism in one eye.

Where does that leave me?

No, no, we leave you out.

You’re not invited to that party.

That means it’s like slightly off-centered.

I think there’s a place for that because everyone should be slightly off-centered.

Well, wait, no, Negin, the world is messed up enough.

We can’t have you and your astigmatism defining anything that comes out of you.

Yeah, no, I’m the one drawing those stick figures.

That’s another beautiful concept.

Thanks for sharing that.

I just want to remind people this is a Cosmic Queries, and we took this topic out to our Patreon members who get exclusive access to this question and answer session.

So they get their questions.

Everyone gets to hear it, but they get to ask the questions.

So, Negin, you have a first question for us.

Yes, Daniel Kulikowski, who’s a fellow Minnesotan, says, I’m wondering what your views are on the current state of light pollution around the world and any negative impacts it has on people’s feelings and perceptions about the night sky.

Well, that’s a big topic.

Let us take a break.

And when we come back, we’re going to find out what Annette has to say about pollution, because in astronomy, light pollution is equivalent in the damage that it does to our access to the universe as air pollution is in its damage to our lungs.

Is that too far?

Did I go too far on that?

Not at all.

There you go.

Not far enough.

See, Negin, what can we do?

What are we going to do with it then?

This is her show.

Hey, I’m Roy Hill Percival, and I support StarTalk on Patreon.

Bringing the universe down to earth, this is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

We’re talking about what the universe looks like to Indigenous people.

And it looks a little different from what you’ve probably been taught in school.

And we’ve got one of the world’s experts on that, Professor Annette Lee at St.

Cloud.

So, Negin, we left off with a question about light pollution, and who’s that from again?

That’s right, Daniel Kulikowski was asking about your views on the current state of light pollution around the world and if there’s any negative impacts on people’s feelings and perceptions about the night sky.

Good, what do you have?

So, we have with light pollution.

I’m going to start there.

I’m going to say, yes, I am very concerned about light pollution.

I’ve done a lot of work with the International Dark Sky Association.

And the idea is that from an Indigenous practice and way of life, the sky and our connection with the sky, it’s an essential.

It’s not an option, it’s not an accessory.

It’s the place where we come from.

The stars are not just physical, distant, abstract balls of plasma or gas.

Those are our relatives, our oldest living relatives.

And we even have in Lakota, there’s teachings that the stars are the breath of the spirits.

So it’s about like a family reunion.

It’s blocking that level of connection.

And I want to say that so much of my work, it does have to do with the crisis in STEM education and bringing in more pathways for our black and brown indigenous students.

But it’s also about wellness because we have a problem, right?

If students don’t have a reason for living, if they’re in so much pain and crisis and trauma that they’re literally giving up on life.

And I’m talking about the youth suicide statistics, which are sky-high here in Minnesota, no pun intended.

But the rate is like three times higher for our native youth.

And, you know, these are my kids, right?

And this is our youth suicide rate is higher in Minnesota for native kids than it is across the nation for native kids.

It’s really high.

There’s disparities in the education system.

Minnesota is always first, second or third.

And the disparity in graduation rates between majority kids and minority kids.

So back to the pollution.

You know, you thought it was about just pollution, but it’s all connected.

And the idea is that we have this teaching where we come from the stars.

And this moment of our lifetime is just a blink.

We’re here in our material form, you know, but our original form is a spiritual form from the stars.

And so we come here with purpose, right?

Let me ask you, is it only light pollution?

Because suppose Negin does a stand up thing and it comes on at night, and I’m watching her instead of going out and looking up in the sky.

Isn’t every distraction that exists in modern living that distracts us in the evening, isn’t that tantamount to light pollution?

You know, we have HBO and Disney Plus and Netflix and all of these things.

I come home and my first thought is, let me binge something or let me watch a movie or let me watch Negin doing a stand up, not a sit down, a stand up.

Aren’t you also competing with all the rest of these cultural forces?

Yes, absolutely.

We are very distracted.

We have very short attention spans.

We’re looking for the next fun thing.

But there’s something really important and fundamental about our connection to the stars.

And that there should be a place for that.

There should be a kind of protection for that.

I know that with the International Dark Sky Association, we’ve created this protected areas because we talk about the extinction, like the night sky is going extinct.

And so here in Minnesota, it’s a luxury because we can drive five, ten minutes and really see dark skies.

We can really see the Andromeda Galaxy.

We can really see the Northern Lights, right?

I mean, you’re in New York City.

Wow, I really feel bad for you.

But you have the planetarium, right?

We just we just we just we just hold together in the Planetarium Dome and put up the fake.

Can I just say in defense of myself, though, that my stand up is not the enemy of the cosmos.

If anything, it’s squid game.

So let’s just like, you know, note where popular culture is right now.

Go on.

Just blame something else instead of yourself.

OK.

You know, Annette, I actually I grew up in the desert of Southern California in a town called Palm Springs, and they have very strict light pollution laws.

So I live in New York City now, where in my estimation, we don’t have stars.

But in Palm Springs, we have a ton of stars.

I grew up with seeing a lot of stars because they were very serious about light pollution and keeping the sky very clear.

They were astigmatic stars.

And I’d often see them.

There’s two of everything, if you look through my eyes.

All right, let’s get another question.

Okay, so Jay Hunt asks, I was wondering how indigenous tribes’ constellations, identification and sky tracking has changed over the centuries.

What are some of the more famous constellations that have made it into the modern lexicon?

Oh, interesting.

So the changes over the ages.

I think one of the biggest things to say about that is the idea of loss.

We’ve lost a lot of our star knowledge and our cultural knowledge and our languages because of colonization.

In the star maps that we created, you know, working with elders and other primary sources, there’s a lot of like blank spaces.

And in a new elder, Wilfred Buck, he talks about the idea that, you know, before colonization, that map would have been filled up.

Just like what we think of now as the Greek map.

It would have been dense.

You know, every single star and even the dimmer stars, there’s constellations.

But now we look at our constellations and there’s some spaces.

And that’s part of that loss.

So I think the first thing about…

Annette, you’re bumming us out here.

How it’s changed.

Well, it’s not all bad, but because, you know, it’s not all gone.

It’s not too far gone.

We have hope.

We still have.

You know, Wilfred says, you know, it would be like we still have that 15% left and we’re rebuilding it, you know, but the 85% was lost due to colonization.

So anyways, I think that’s like what comes to my mind in just, you know, a really honest way that even though a lot of people in history class and all, we learn that colonization, you know, back in the 1400s, the 1500s, the first most important thing is that we are still living, living in the wake of that history and that event.

So where we are today has everything to do with what happened, you know, 500 years ago.

There’s, there’s no denying that.

And I think it’s extremely important to acknowledge that.

So that’s why we’re trying to build it back.

I’m working right now with Mi’kmaq elders and knowledge holders, and we’re in the process of creating their star map.

So like I said, there’s a lot of hope here too.

I don’t want to be like all negative, but also we have to be honest that this is happening and it’s a part of where we are today.

So back to the question, one of the things I go to is the Big Dipper because the Big Dipper is so popular.

It’s something that everyone in here in the Northern Hemisphere kind of knows those seven bright stars.

And so, like for example, we think of Ursa Major through the so-called Greek constellations or asterisms, the nicknames for the stars, you know, the Big Dipper.

And we also have a lot of teachings there, like one from the Innu is a bear as well, but it faces in the opposite direction.

So just like I was saying, like with the Curly Tail and the Ojibwe Mountain Lion, we have the same lion where the Greek Leo the lion is.

We have other teachings with the bear.

And the bear for us is more to do with like a medicine.

And also the bear has to do with, it’s one of the only animals that’s two-legged.

So there’s a really important story that has to do with like people, because we’re two-legged, right?

So there’s like the winged ones, the ones that crawl, there’s the four-legged, you know, like mammals and dogs.

But then there’s the two-legged.

And so we’re the two-legged, but see, the bear is kind of one of those animals that’s also sometimes two-legged.

But this is the key point.

The two-legged represent and bring wisdom.

So the bear has wisdom, and we as humans have wisdom.

So that’s kind of like what we bring, like to the whole circle.

And I think that’s really important, because it’s because we have our wisdom and we have our strong critical minds that we can get out of these situations that we’re in right now, that there is so much hope, that we can create a better future.

And that’s why we’re here talking about it, right?

So ultimately, it is totally an optimistic, and let’s create something better for our kids.

Let’s address some of the crisis.

Yeah, go ahead.

Interesting you say this.

I have a stupid observation to share with you.

If you go to CircusX and you see dogs performing, the dog that is typically walking on two legs more than other breeds of dogs is the poodle.

You ever notice that?

The poodle is walking on his two hind legs more often than other breeds of dogs.

And they say that the poodle is the smartest among the dogs.

So you’re talking about wisdom among the two-legged walkers.

I just was wondering.

I haven’t had any interaction with poodles or circus like that, but I think that’s a brilliant connection.

Wow.

Yeah, poodles do not chase their tail.

This is a non-thing for poodles, for example.

My thought about the bears is that they’re a crossover category on the two-legged and the four-legged, sort of like when Justin Bieber started singing in Spanish and he became a crossover hit artist.

That’s probably a better analogy than my poodle analogy.

Although I would say, Neil, we both sort of failed.

Yeah, and one other thing, Negin, maybe you don’t know this, but the Greek rendering of Ursa Major is a big chubby bear with a big bushy tail, but bears don’t have tails.

They don’t have big bushy tails.

So it’s an anatomically forced addition to the species simply because they were connecting the dots.

Ooh, it’s like early animation.

They’re just like exaggerating, making it up.

Yeah, I mean, they do have tails, but they’re nubby, stubby things that are barely even visible in the density of their hair.

So yeah, Annette, what do natives do with the bear’s existence or non-existence of a tail?

You know, that’s a good question.

I haven’t heard any, you know, cute stories about the…

I know in the Planetarium there’s a typical story about how the bear got its tail frozen in the lake.

Then there’s the other funny story about how…

Well, just to finish that, I think it was given some food and it turned around, it got a fish out of the lake, and then it took too long to eat it, and the tail froze in the lake, and then it stepped away and the tail broke off.

And so the early bears have tails, but the later ones don’t.

And so, and that’s a really tall tail.

Zeus came swooping down to save the bears from Hera and so he grabbed the bears by the only thing he could, their short tails, and swung them around to get enough momentum to, you know, whiz them up into the cosmos, and then that stretched out their tails.

So anyways, those are those silly Planetarium tails that we tell about the bears’ tails.

Many of those constellations that we think of as the Greek mainstream type constellations actually were borrowed from the Babylonians.

So you probably know that, Neil.

I don’t know if you’ve come across that, but especially the zodiac constellations.

Yeah, Babylonians are deep in there, and somehow there’s some kind of smoke screen where the real influence of the ancient peoples of Babylon don’t make it through, and it stops at Greece.

But half of that is, that’s right.

From my understanding, it has to do with, you know, the Greeks, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians right there along the Mediterranean Sea.

So there was a lot of, you know, sharing and mixing and warring and everything.

But yeah, you’re right, that it actually ended up just being labeled.

Now we think of it, oh, that comes from the Greek tradition.

But there’s so much more to the story, and I think that that’s really important.

I think the Babylonians gave us base 60, which is the whole foundation of our timekeeping.

Yeah, 60 seconds, 60 minutes and an hour, and then also the Egyptians brought in the idea of the 12, the 12-hour days with the sun going across and then down into the underworld.

So there’s a lot of like cultural stories and knowledges here embedded, even in just, we can just scratch the surface.

And then there’s, it’s so much more interesting than, you know, what we originally think of as just coming from one culture.

Okay, back to you, Negin.

I think the Egyptians also gave us beer so you could get drunk and look at stars.

So there’s also that.

That’s right.

Just get credit where credit is due.

Okay, so Matt Harefield has a question that requires a little bit of visualization.

If the moon was not tidally locked with the earth and instead rotated at some observable rate, making it more obviously a three-dimensional object, how do you think that would have changed the way ancient humans perceived the cosmos?

So that implies that people thought the moon was just a flat disk because it always just showed one side.

I hadn’t thought about that.

Annette, what does your research tell you about the moon?

Whoa, that’s a deep question.

Let me think.

Well, the moon, I guess off the top of my head, the thing is I don’t feel that it would change a great deal the Indigenous teachings that I’m familiar with.

I can’t speak for everyone, obviously, but because the teachings with the moon, it’s all about relationships.

And in a way, it doesn’t matter.

It’s almost like that’s a technicality.

If it’s 2D or 3D or whatever, I mean, okay, yeah, that’s cool, that’s interesting, but that’s more like a geometrical fact.

I think what’s more important is that the grandmother moon is seen as a relative, a close relative, as helping us as connected with timekeeping and connected with what we call Turtle Island.

So here in North America, this is Turtle Island.

There’s a lot of stories about this being connected with the turtle and the turtle has 28 large sections on the back, so that’s connected with the moon.

And so the turtle also is important having to do with the beginning of life, which also connects with the moon.

We think the idea of having a large moon close in was helpful for helping to nurture life and also that it created the tides.

So the tides helped the life that was existing on the earth for so long only in the ocean came out of the ocean onto the land, right?

And it just happened more recently, but this had to do with the tides and the moon is one of the main sources of the tides.

So these are like deeper connections that have to do with the turtle, the moon, the life on earth.

And I think that that is way more important.

The moon also has to do with heartbeat because of the changing phases of light and darks.

If you watch it in fast motion, it feels and looks just like a heartbeat.

So it has to do with our human heartbeat too and the drum.

I would add that it would be hard to explain a flat disc model given the curve of the shadowing as the moon goes through its crescent phase.

Spheres will give you that kind of light pattern on it, not flat discs.

So, yeah, interesting, interesting there.

We got to take another break.

And when we do, Annette, with your permission, can we go into a lightning round?

That means you have to answer questions in five seconds.

It enables us to get through more questions than we otherwise would because it’s quite luxurious to give the full hammer of your breadth of knowledge to each of these questions.

Okay, lightning, yeah, I’m going with the flow.

I’ll try it out.

I’ve never done lightning.

Yeah, yeah, it’s different.

And Negin, you have lightning questions lined up?

Oh, yeah.

Okay, all right, when we come back, Negin will send lightning bolts in the next direction on StarTalk Podcast BigQuery.

We’re back, StarTalk Cosmic Queries.

We’re talking about what the sky looks like to people who are not white.

Do I characterize that correctly?

We have a special guest here who is a world expert on this very topic, Annette Lee from St.

Cloud University, just north of Minneapolis.

So we’re in the middle of some Cosmic Queries with her, and Negin Farsad is now gonna take us into the lightning rod with her.

But before we do that, because this is our last segment, Negin, tell us how we find you on social media.

Ooh, you can find me at Negin Farsad on Instagram, on Twitter, even on TikTok.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, guys, don’t worry, I don’t dance on it, so I’ve saved you from that.

And Annette, how do we find you in the social universe?

I don’t even know what TikTok is, so, yeah, just try email, nativeskywatchers at gmail.com.

Oh, okay, all right, is there a website?

Yeah, the website, the website, nativeskywatchers.org, nativeskywatchers.com.

Oh, we got lots of cool projects that’ll make up for not being on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and all that.

That’s where we’ll find all your activities.

Very excellent.

Okay, Negin, throw some lightning bolts at Annette, see how many of these questions you can get through.

Here we go, Donna Palmieri asks, are there any astronomical discoveries made by Western scientists that Indigenous people of North America had already known?

So when it was announced, the Indigenous community was like, oh yeah, we knew that a while ago.

Where have you been?

What’s the best example of this?

Some people notice the sun, how it goes from east to west and higher and lower.

And there’s a beautiful pattern with the sun if you watch it throughout the year.

But what about the moon?

Did you ever notice the moon has a pattern of where it rises, where it sets, how low, how high?

And so this moon rising and setting pattern is a really another beautiful dance that is done in relation to the sun.

Well, so anyways, it’s kind of complicated, but basically I remember learning about it.

And then one day I was talking to an Ojibwe elder and he was like, oh yeah, short shadows walking home snowshoeing, short shadows.

So what he was talking about is in the middle of winter when there’s snowshoeing across a frozen lake, okay, like up in Canada, and at midnight the moon’s out, but the moon has a really high path across the sky in the middle of winter because it’s opposite the sun.

So the sun is low in the winter, the moon is really high.

Are you still with me?

And the moon is really high, so when you’re walking on your snowshoes across a frozen lake, and it’s 40 below, then there’s going to be a really short shadow because the moon is basically directly overhead or close to it.

So something that most like whatever mainstream or western sciences folks don’t even know about the path of the moon and the height of the moon in a seasonal pattern, it’s not necessarily even taught in typical Astro 101 classes or, you know, any level.

But this was like a everyday common like, you know, yeah, like, duh, yeah, short shadows in the winter.

And this is the benefit of simply paying attention to what’s going on in the sky and what’s going on around you, right?

Okay, so now we have to dock 90 seconds for your next question.

I only said I would give it a try, but okay.

Try slapping with another one.

Go Robert Bratcher asks, how has science education changed over the last decade?

And how will it continue to change to keep children and teens interested and what they’re learning, furthering their thirst for scientific discovery in all aspects of the science fields?

So how has it changed?

Okay, so it’s changed by what used to be the lecture model, the standard model, as the teachers, like all-knowing and the students as blank slates.

Well, all the research shows that doesn’t work.

All right, and so this idea of active learning, and then my research and other folks in the area of astronomy, education and research, the idea that we can bring culture and our humanity back into learning science, and we can have students learn more science and be more engaged.

And then the other idea is this idea of like STEM identity and science identity, that it’s not enough just to know the facts or to be good enough to know the facts, because we have half of those kids are dropping out at the college level out of STEM.

And what we need to do is to create a welcoming community.

When you say dropping out, you mean switching majors to something else.

They’re switchers.

Right, so they’re dropping out.

So they’re not dropping out of school.

It’s switching their focus.

We have a recruitment problem.

And then on top of that, we have a retention problem because they’re switching.

Even the A and B students are switching out of STEM.

And so we talk about the psychology.

A lot of the research now in STEM education has to do with the psychology.

Like, hey, well, why would they be dropping out?

It’s because they don’t feel a sense of community.

It’s because they don’t see themselves as a STEM professional.

And so creating opportunities and professional pathways where they can be like rubbing elbows with NASA scientists or, you know, world-class, working on world-class telescopes at the high school or even elementary level.

So it’s becoming more of a holistic experience as an educator and as a student.

In a word, holistic and also bringing in more of our humanity.

Like, if we’re going to do science, we don’t have to be robots.

We don’t have to be machines.

I mean, we can multitask, right, Negin?

We’re good at multitasking.

So we don’t have to pretend like we don’t have hearts or we don’t have bias.

We can just say, yeah, but we’re going to practice the methods of science as best we can, but still admit that we’re still human beings and there’s still culture happening as a part of this.

All right.

You still failed the 10-second rule there, but go on.

Negin, she’s getting a little better, maybe.

Okay, this next one, you have to say a negative three seconds.

Robert Weaver asks, what is your favorite observation of the night sky that can be seen without the assistance of a telescope?

I like that one.

Oh, I love looking at the night sky without a telescope.

There’s so many.

How am I going to fit this in a negative three seconds?

No, you’re just going to give the best thing.

The Pleiades is known as the buga negijic.

Try to say that, buga negijic.

It’s an Ojibwe word for the hole in the sky.

It’s a kind of a doorway, a star doorway between the physical plane and the spiritual plane, buga negijic.

I can just leave you hanging there, but I love to see the Pleiades.

I’m sure you know if you look to the side.

By the way, Aboriginal art in Australia.

I’ve looked at a lot of what they portrayed and the Pleiades are in practically every illustration that I saw.

And Maori.

Throughout human history, that’s probably the number one go-to where all the cultures have some amazing teachings related to the Pleiades.

I love to look to the side, and then you can use your averted vision, your rods instead of your cones, and then you see it just pop.

You have to do that, right?

Negin, you’ve done that right.

It pops.

It doesn’t matter if your eye is off center.

You can still do it.

Instead of looking directly at it, you look to the side, and you’re using your rods instead of your cones, and it just gets brighter.

It’s total magic.

You got to try it.

I feel so naked that you’re referring to my rods and cones.

I think I have that too, a little bit, in one eye.

I don’t feel like that’s a deal breaker at all.

There’s so much magic and cool stuff when we look at the sky, and that’s one of the things I love.

You can do it with the Andromeda Galaxy too.

Excellent.

In fact, just to be formal about that, the Andromeda Galaxy is the single farthest object visible to the unaided human eye in the sky.

It’s two million light years away, so it’s the farthest object.

But cool.

Negin, keep coming.

Okay, here we go.

Adventure asks, please tell me your thoughts on…

Adventure, spelled with a Y instead of an E.

Please tell me your thoughts on the commonalities and differences in cosmology, astrology, astrophysics and astronomy.

And yes, line dancers love StarTalk too.

We even have a line dance called Mars Needs Women.

Okay.

Answer that in five seconds.

Yeah, the commonalities and differences between all of these things.

I’m going to recast that question.

Please.

I’m just going to recast it.

Annette, you’ve studied cultures, indigenous cultures that are hugely geographically separated.

Presumably, they each have an origin story for the universe or for their culture or for people or for the Earth.

Is there something that you can cite that they all have in common and something that is especially different about them?

Whoa, in five seconds?

I’ll give you ten seconds.

Okay, one thing that’s common is the idea that the Earth is very old and that humans are very new and that there’s like this been different versions of life on Earth.

Like in science, we have just, you know, here was humanity, you know, evolution, right?

But in Indigenous knowledges, there’s basically the story is a lot more interesting and complex that there were different versions of humans being on Earth and then destruction happening where it started anew.

Like in Lakota, like I was talking about the bear, the mato is the bear and this idea that humans kind of got out of balance and then their Earth did this like resetting where it shook and there was disaster and flooding and fires.

And then we got another chance.

And so this is our second chance.

So anyways, this is the idea that the Earth is much older and much more to the story than just one version of humanity, I guess is the short answer.

And I guess the biblical correspondence to that would be Noah’s flood.

People existed before that and after it.

And so there’s, you know, anti-deluvian and post-deluvian stories about humans.

Yeah.

So there’s a lot of teachings I can think of too, like it has to do with, you know, before we got to the time we’re in now and like the relationship between humans and animals.

Like one thing that’s really cool is that idea that humans and animals could talk to each other.

Not in the non-verbal language like we think of today, like horse whispering or something like that, but like they literally talk to each other.

But then things got out of balance and things got too chaotic.

And so then there was this period of like destruction and then started anew with like new rules and regulations and order.

I have to say my Pomeranian and I had a really nice chat this morning.

So it was mostly about treats, but I feel like he still does some talking.

You have a Pomeranian?

Let your elders know I have a Pomeranian.

You never told me that.

Oh, yeah.

We have a different relationship.

I know that from the beginning.

That’s a small dog, right?

Yes, it’s more hair than body.

And it’s about this.

It’s no bigger than like half of a basketball.

I have one of the larger ones.

The Pomeranian is embarrassingly cute.

No animal should be that cute.

And it is.

And it knows it.

And so I just think if I were a wolf, I would just feel so bad that they took my DNA and made that thing up.

If I looked into the night sky, I think I would see many Pomeranians.

I would probably mostly see Pomeranians in the night sky.

That’s so funny.

Pomeranian major and Pomeranian minor.

Neil talked about a poodle, and Negin talked about a Pomeranian.

Wolf dog.

See, that’s a little better.

That’s a little more true to the roots.

Let’s slip in one more question.

Annette, and you got to give me only ten seconds in that.

Here we go.

George Towner asks, How did the indigenous peoples of North America create kivas that capture the rising sun on the spring and fall equinox?

An example being Chaco Canyon in New Mexico.

Somebody’s been around.

Somebody’s doing some homework.

All right, Annette, what do you have to say about that?

Holy smokes.

Well, like down in the Southwest, those are my collaborators, Nancy Maryboy and David Begay.

They are the go-to to talk to their Navajo Dine, and they can talk about the Pueblo and the Dine connections and the Chaco Canyon.

I mean, so…

And by the way, so in your website, the Skywatcher website, do we have reference to all of your other collaborators there and some of their work as well?

Yeah, yeah.

You can see that in the Two-Eyed Seeing project.

You can see the video recordings live stream, and we had our Indigenous knowledge holders working with students, Indigenous students and their teachers, and they created content related to this Indigenous astronomy and NASA science and what was most meaningful to them.

So I would highly recommend you go and check that out.

You might spend a little more time than you were thinking in that because there’s a lot of content.

As it should be.

If you did the site right, that’s what should be happening to people.

They’ll get lost in it, lost in a very good way.

So we’ve got to call it quits there.

Annette, it’s been great to have you on this and to meet a fellow Planetarium.

And we’ll find some other excuse to get you back on.

And we’ll talk Planetarium smack.

Changing the show to dog talk is what we’re changing.

I’ve never laughed so much on a live stream, a radio show.

Thanks.

It was fun.

And Negin, always good to have you as a co-host.

Oh, my gosh.

I’m going to look for you on the Cartoon Network, and I look forward to that.

Yes, thanks, Neil.

All right, we’re good here.

So again, thanks again.

I enjoyed this show.

There’s so much to learn and know about peoples of the world that aren’t always the ones that are in your face telling you what they think you should know.

It takes a little effort, and it’s richly rewarded.

And I’m glad we have folks like you who are just in there, getting the job done, and taking names.

So thanks for what you do, what you bring to the world, and for being a guest on StarTalk.

I’m Neil deGrasse Tyson.

I’m your personal astrophysicist, and as always, I believe in you.