The two-day symposium was organized by Native American studies and anthropology professor Sergei Kan. Wednesday's schedule focused on the panelists' individual experiences and research, while today's will address the future of collaborative research and Native culture.
The panelists include archeologist and MacArthur Foundation award winner Sven Haakanson, Marshall University graduate humanities program director Eric Lassiter, mother-daughter pair Theresa Carter and Daniela Nieto, and award-winning Alaskan writers Richard Dauenhauer and Nora Marks Dauenhauer.
The speakers represent numerous fields, including anthropology, oral traditions and folklore and find commonality in their approaches toward studying Native cultures. Each subscribes to the method of collaborative research and "collaborative ethnography," Kan said.
"Collaborative research can represent a kind of power relationship but also an intellectual partnership between Native people and scholars," Kan said. "It's only now becoming really equal."
The panelists discussed the importance of building relationships, developing trust, maintaining honesty, remaining dedicated, asserting community ownership and acting ethically.
Haakanson, who is of Alutiiq descent, works as the curator of Native American anthropology at the Burke Museum in Seattle. Haakanson received a grant to display particular crafts in a series of small exhibits, which are accompanied by an artist who specializes in the craft and teaches it to the Native community.
The exhibits, which have previously featured basket weaving, fish skin sewing, reindeer skin sewing and hunting tools, serve to not only to preserve Native American culture but also to revitalize it.
"It is important to get that information back into a living context," Haakanson said.
Lassiter, who studies the Kiowa Tribe's songs and language, has performed research on the tribe by collaborating with Kiowa Natives Carter and Nieto.
"We don't share a lot of things with a lot of people," Carter said. "Some of what researchers say isn't true, so it's hard to trust researchers."
Lassiter has built strong ties with Kiowa tribe by interacting with the community through music.
"[Lassiter] learned our songs but also our language," Carter said. "He has a gift. He learned the songs but also understood them."
Nora Dauenhauer, who is a leading scholar in Tlingit language and folklore, shared memories of instances when researchers incorrectly translated their conversations.
"In collaborating with the scholars of our time and those that came before, it was really awful because the problem is that Tlingit is spoken by me and the rest of my family, and English is spoken by the scholars who came to collect material to be printed," she said.
The symposium allowed students to engage with Native leaders and learn about the growing interdisciplinary field of Native American studies.
"For Native students, they're great role models and for non-Native students also it is useful and exciting to hear these panelists speak," Kan said.
Native American culture is currently undergoing both positive and negative change, he said.
"On the one hand you have loss elders are passing away, some languages and Native American communities are dying out or changing," Kan said. "On the other hand you have younger people getting interested in this kind of research, some tribes have more money to spend on programs to study culture, new media and programs to use to study and learn Native languages."
John Topping '64, who attended the symposium and studies the influence of climate change on indigenous people, said it is equally important to obtain consent from Native tribes to share information and to preserve and record Native culture. Knowledge of Native American language is dwindling, particularly in smaller tribes.
Two other symposiums earlier this year also celebrated the 40th anniversary of the NAS program. The first symposium discussed sovereignty and Native American contemporary policy and the second explored Native American literature.
