The historical impact of Indigenous peoples’ cultural influence on astronomy is being erased, an Innu astrophysicist told an Humber Polytechnic audience.
Humber's President's Lecture Series hosted its second event of this year last Wednesday, featuring Laurie Rousseau-Nepton, a new faculty member at the University of Toronto and the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Her work as a resident astronomer at the Canada-France-Hawai'i Observatory was showcased in the National Film Board series, North Star. Rousseau-Nepton, the first Indigenous woman in Canada to obtain a PhD in astrophysics, is focused on finding ways to incorporate local cultures and a diversity of world views into her teaching and research.
This includes the intersectionality of Indigenous traditions and astronomy.
She said her mentor, Camille Poitras, a faculty member at Laval University, inspired her work as a woman astrophysicist.
“Camilla was the only woman of the astronomy department, and I'm so glad that I picked her, because in a very natural way, whenever I had ideas or questions, she was not judging me, and she was really pushing me to move forward and telling me that I had great ideas,” she said.
“I feel fortunate because I know that not everybody has the luxury of having an advisor that, that really lifts them up and I want to strike how important that is because many people then can leave the field that they're in if they don't feel like they are competent and at the right place and I was the only woman of about 15 graduated students," Rousseau-Nepton said.
"And there (were) many times, unfortunately, where I didn't (feel) like I was in the right place,” she said.
She said that during the beginning of her research in Hawai'i, there was a telescope being built on Mauna Kea, a volcano that is culturally important to native Hawaiians. The volcano is a connection point between the sky and the earth that is "extremely significant for the native Hawaiians there," Rousseau-Nepton said.
"There's a science reserve very close to the summit where many, many telescopes (were) installed since the late '60s and early '70s, all the way up to today. There was a clash in between those two groups,” she said. “When I landed there, it was just after a very large protest that happened there in the community for the building of a large telescope called the 30 Meter Telescope.”
Rousseau-Nepton said that was the moment she realized her research could harm the surrounding communities.
"I felt torn apart, for I think the first time in my life I was not proud to be an astronomer, but I learned a lot from that,” she said. “It can be positive and negative, and you have to factor in all sorts of things. And talk to them. Because even if you think that you know and you understand, sometimes you don't. And you have to ask a lot of people first.
"And I brought that back with me to Canada,” Rousseau-Nepton said.
She translated a portion of the book Moi, Mestenapeu, by André Mathieu, which explains the significance of stars for Indigenous peoples.
“One of our elders that passed away, he was born in the early 1900s, was explaining how he knew very well how the stars were moving, that you could rely on the fact that if you're traveling on a moonless night, you'll guard yourself only with the stars. You rely on the Earth's rotation speed and the time division,” she said. “You can learn it very quickly. And can you imagine, like your grandmother or great-grandmother telling you something like this?”
She said that there is an Innu ideology that people have a version of themselves in the sky and on earth.
“It was believed that there were these two worlds that were kind of parallel worlds, the sky world and the earth world, but they were both occupying the same space," Rousseau-Nepton said. "And you'd always be a version of yourself on Earth and a version of yourself in the sky.
"And the version of yourself in the sky is called the Mishtapeu, or the great man, the great woman,” she said.
“That great person has the knowledge of all of the generations from the past. And through your dreams, you can connect to yourself in the sky. And maybe, if you're lucky in mind, opening your mind is going to tell you information that will be useful for you," Rousseau-Nepton said.
"It's going to tell you how to live a good life, make good decisions, and so on. I find it very beautiful because, um, in that philosophy, it's almost saying that all of the information to live a good life is already within you,” she said.
