[In process]
Background*
Part 1**
Part 2*** From a follow-up to the newslist discussion about anthropology and climate change–
Q. “So…what can we do to solve this problem? Can we think like engineers?”
Please, don’t. Not even anthropological engineers. For example, see this — (more…)
Categories: AI/AN · Alaska · Eskimo · Kuskokwim · NZ · New Mexico · Pueblo · anthropology · communities · environmental change · planning · public involvement · sanitation · sciencing · solid waste
Tagged: 13C4, Biocultural Science, Bumsted
This article comes via NationTalk, native newswire, employment and tender service
Study probes link between soapstone and cancer - Waterloo Record
Forty-six-year-old Jimmy Cookie feels dizzy and has trouble breathing every time he carves into a slab of soapstone.
Now, University of Manitoba researchers are looking at whether Cookie’s lung problems could be linked with the traditional soapstone carving that’s popular in his home community of Sanikiluaq, Nunavut.
Soapstone (also known as steatite or soaprock) is a metamorphic rock, a talc-schist. It was used prior to the invention of pottery or ceramics for bowls in the Americas. It also conducts heat well and is mostly inert, thus its use for stove (cooking) utensils, sinks, and laboratory countertops. Alaska soapstone (now rare) can be transformed into gorgeous sculptures.
Although chemically inert for the most part, the stone is a soft material and scratches easily into fine, fibrous particles (talc, actually. In some rocks, a form of asbestos I believe The soapstone dust composition showed breathable asbestos fibers from the amphibole group (tremolite-actinolite). The results suggest talc asbestosis occurrence among soapstone handicraft workers.). The dust can penetrate lungs deeply and irritate the tissues leading to talcosis or talc pneumoconiosis (similarly to silicosis or asbestosis).
Wikipedia isn’t very helpful on the mineralogy and the physical structure. See the articles cited here–
http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=17249489
MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2004 Jul 23;53(28):627-32.
Changing Patterns of Pneumoconiosis Mortality — United States, 1968–2000
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Pneumoconioses are caused by the inhalation and deposition of mineral dusts in the lungs, resulting in pulmonary fibrosis and other parenchymal changes. Many persons with early pneumoconiosis are asymptomatic, but advanced disease often is accompanied by disability and premature death. Known pneumoconioses include coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP), silicosis, asbestosis, mixed dust pneumoconiosis, graphitosis, and talcosis. No effective treatment for these diseases is available. This report describes the temporal patterns of pneumoconiosis mortality during 1968-2000, which indicates an overall decrease in pneumoconiosis mortality. However, asbestosis increased steadily and is now the most frequently recorded pneumoconiosis on death certificates. Increased awareness of this trend is needed among health-care providers, employers, workers, and public health agencies.
One of the classic cases of cancer from use of minerals in traditional arts is
Malignant mesothelioma. A cluster in a native American pueblo.
Driscoll RJ, Mulligan WJ, Schultz D, Candelaria A
N Engl J Med. 1988 Jun 2; 318(22): 1437-8
Unfortunately, there isn’t a publicly available copy on the Internet and no access to journals in Bethel. As I remember the article–
Mesothelioma is an asbestos caused lung cancer. In this case a cluster was found that had nothing to do with brake repair or mining. Instead, people discovered the fire resistant mat they used for soldering silver jewelery also whitened dance moccasins when used as a buffing surface. In addition, the mat had a tendency to flake after substantial use as a fireproof work surface. The mat was an old-fashioned fire resistant mat, made of asbestos.
Site Search Tags: lungs, carving, arts, asbestosis, Canada, Pueblo, dust, PPE, respirator, mining, Nunavut, Inuit
Categories: Eskimo · HazArt · Pueblo · health
Tagged: 13C4, Analytical Anthropology, Biocultural Science, Bumsted
As part of the HazArt project | Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H) of Traditional Indian Artisans and Craftspeople Project (HazArt) | we tested the ambient air quality during a firing of black-on-black (reduced) pottery. This field project was a collaboration of Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc., Sandia National Laboratory, and Tewa Women United.
The project was recorded August 1993 by Catalina Reyes of KUNM for National Native News. Her story was broadcast that September.
Principals on the broadcast are
Field location was the pot firing shed (stable) of the late Maria and Julian Martinez, San Ildefonso Pueblo, great-grandparents to Ms Sanchez and Garcia. Read earlier post,
| Maria Martinez’s open-source earthenware |
This digitized audio file does not represent the quality of the original audiotape. The audio is copyright. I’m sorry the quality is not good. I’ll get it improved eventually. There are photos of the project, in deep storage. These too will one day be available.
The following picture shows the traditional firing. Please read the story and view the pictures at
click to play
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Categories: ES&H · HazArt · Pueblo · public involvement · published
Following up on
there is an on-line exhibit, fairly superficial, but will give a taste of the quality and history.
Technorati Tags: Tewa, Pueblo, ES&H, traditional+art,
Site Search Tags: Tewa, Pueblo, ES&H, traditional+art, pottery
This newstory gives the background to the revitalization of Pueblo traditional pottery styles in the early to mid-20th century. Kathy Sanchez and her sister were colleagues in the HazArt study of potential occupational hazards. | Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H) of Traditional Indian Artisans and Craftspeople Project (HazArt) |
Maria Martinez… drew no lines between art, community, and reverence for life…. According to Vernon G. Lujan, the director of the Poeh Museum in Pojoaque, N.M., which is devoted primarily to Pueblo art, Martinez spearheaded a revival of the Pueblo tradition of familial collaboration. Her art, he said, could not be separated from who she was as a woman, mother, wife, and lifelong community resident.
…
Martinez’s great-granddaughter Kathy Wan Woe Povi Sanchez recalls the ways in which her ancestor transmitted cultural values…. Sanchez is a potter who seeks to live her life in her great-grandmother’s footsteps. Defining herself as an activist (she is also co-director of Tewa Women United), she sees environmental protection as part and parcel of making pottery. “I etch or paint my pottery with stories of caring for Mother Earth,” she said. “When I’m at Indian Market, I tell people the stories. It’s an opportunity to speak the truth about the air, the water, and the earth.”Lujan explained, “Without a doubt they revived a unique Tewa way of firing at zero oxidation that had gone out of existence. At a certain point in the firing they smothered the pot with cow dung and let it bake and smoke for several hours.”
by Soledad Santiago, The New Mexican, August 18, 2006
Read the rest
[revised 2008july15, 2008july19]
“Friday morning people from various pueblos hustled in the hot sun to prepare for the weekend’s 35th Annual Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Arts & Crafts Show.”
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/46448.html This link no longer works.
A direct link to this year’s show is
2008-07-15
http://www.eightnorthernpueblos.com/
My apologies. There has not been a permanent link to ENIPC, Inc or to the show so I was pleased to find this one. However, evidently the link now belongs to a cyber squatter. This is too bad because more and more people rely on the world-wide web to start contacting people and organizations. [As readers coming here are aware] If anyone knows of the new webpage, please let me know.
The Santa Fé New Mexican website isn’t any help either, that I can find.
The Artisans and Craftsmen Show is held the third week in July. The permanent grounds are located in Okay-Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo) between Santa Fé and Taos.
The name has changed but it is still the best opportunity to see contemporary arts and crafts and to speak with the artisans and craftspeople.
Have fun. Be sure to have the mutton sandwich.
Bepuwave, visitors, some 400 plus now. If I can provide better information for next year, please let me know in the comments. Please say hello to folks for me (I’m currently just 80 miles upstream from the Bering Sea).
Highway locations of the eight northern Indian Pueblos
related posts here
Categories: Pueblo
Tagged: 13C4, Biocultural Science, Bumsted
December 2, 1992
Larry Calloway, Albuquerque Journal (http://www.larrycalloway.com/biography.html)
Dear Mr. Calloway:
As you pointed out in your column yesterday, there are federal (as well as state and tribal) environmental laws against pothunting **. These secular sanctions need to be publicized better.
It is incorrect, however, to state as you did, that the supernatural sanctions which seem to apply to those who behave without respect toward those who came before, ancestral Pueblo people, are “superstitions.” It is further incorrect to suggest, though many do, that the spiritual or supernatural realm is anti-Science.
Religion and Science are two ways of knowing the world. Science is appropriate for knowing natural phenomenon while religion is appropriate for knowing supernatural phenomenon. The world, the environment —within which people act and of which people are an essential part since the time of knowing —cannot itself be holistically learned of without the complementary epistemologies of Science and Sprituality.
Science cannot be good Science (done well) without relying in part on the knowledge of experts, especially Science of complex, non-linear dynamic systems (i.e., people and their cultural, physical, biological environment) nor by ignoring an entire realm of acting phenomena. The way to that realm is Spritiual.
Thus, Science done well cannot know the world by itself, in the absence of the Spritiual. Science and Spiritual can’t be antagonists or opposites. They are complements. And knowledge is never ignorance (superstition).
Sincerely,
mpb
2007-06-05
from Calloway’s column
MORE WEIRDNESS: The lead story in the current issue of High Country News begins with a similar letter. After picking up some pottery pieces at Chaco Canyon, a young man wrote, he pulled his shoulder while wind surfing, had his Southwest books drenched by a malfunctioning washing machine and started having fights at work.
Another, last June, returned Chaco pot shards with this confession: “The guilt has been a great punishment and it feels good to return the artifacts. Incidentally, I would have returned the items to the park the day we left, but we had two flat tires about 20 miles south of the park.”
Without an exact location where they were taken, the fragments are of little archaeological value. But the letters have been posted, too, at Chaco Culture National Historical Park as warnings.
The implicit message from our government here is superstitious.
Steal a shard and the Gods will get you. The government message goes against Science (unless guilt psychology is a science).
Still, government is always supporting Science. It’s a major activity of government to support Science and its industrial, agricultural, medical and military applications.
Superstition is largely ignored. It is a victim of discrimination. It is homeless. Superstition needs a program. Superstition needs a federal grant.
** pothunting
http://www.cr.nps.gov/seac/protecting/html/appendix.htm
Site Search Tags: Chaco, Pueblo, pothunting, superstition, religion, NM, tourism
Categories: HazArt · New Mexico · Pueblo · sciencing
The pamphlet can be downloaded in Microsft Word format (click or right click to download) It is 6 pages with embedded graphics and available under a Creative Commons license.
When I figure out how to make a smaller (and updated) format of the original document, I will post that instead.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
Pueblo Crafts & Healthy Lungs, 1994
pamphlet about lung protection for Environment, Safety, and Health of traditional Indian arts and crafts (HazArt), a collaborative, community-based project of the northern Indian Pueblos in New Mexico grassroots science.
M. Pamela Bumsted
While I directed the ES&H programs–
This label was attached to portable ashtrays which had been donated by Winston-Salem to the local college. We then distributed these to visitors at the big Eight Northern Indian Artisans and Craftsmen Show (1993). The labels were made to size in MS-Word (tables) then cut apart and slipped into the back of the foil lined pockets (which covered the tobacco ads).
Most people were grateful—to use themselves at the outdoor show or to give to friends and family who smoked.
We did get a few angry people, but I don’t think they understood the joke. Note that we put our contact info on the label (always, always on handouts. Otherwise, how can the public follow up with questions or understand what THEIR programs were doing?)
Site Search Tags: health, Pueblos, art, public+involvement
Categories: Pueblo · health · public involvement
Survey of Environment, Safety, and Health Concerns of Traditional Indian Artisans and Craftspeople (Summer 1993)
(more…)
[please note contact info is out of date]
Press Release
For More Information, Call:
| Karen Young, Coordinator, Northern Pueblos Institute, Northern New Mexico Community College, 505-747-2194
M. Pamela Bumsted, Ph.D., Assoc. Director, Environmental Office, Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, 505-852-4265 |
For Release October 4, 1994
|
Pueblo Crafts and Healthy Lungs Start of Press release The Environmental Office of Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc. and the Northern Pueblos Institute of Northern New Mexico Community College announce the availability of a technical pamphlet on lung protection for artisans and craftspeople: Pueblo Crafts and Healthy Lungs. The pamphlet is part of the Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H) of Traditional Indian Artisans and Craftspeople Project. This project is a joint effort of the Environmental Office of Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc., Northern Pueblos Institute of Northern New Mexico Community College, the Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing Technology Transfer Training Initiative (ECMT3 I) of the US Department of Energy and Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque (Organizations 6611, 7711, 7712), and the Hazardous Materials Management Program of Santa Fé Community College.
(more…)
FOR RELEASE ON 18 JULY 1993
The Environmental Office of Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc. and the Northern Pueblos Institute of Northern New Mexico Community College are interested in knowing if artists and craftsmen are concerned about whether there are health, safety, or environmental risks to themselves or others from their occupation. We have developed a questionnaire to be distributed at the21st Annual Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Artists and Craftsman Show, to be held at Santa Clara Pueblo on July 17 and 18.
(more…)
Stable carbon isotopes do not date but nevertheless lead full lives. mpb
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