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Elders teach that everything on the land is reflected in the sky. The stars serve as a map, a text, a law book, and a memory space. Emerging research in collaboration with Indigenous and First Nations communities is revealing a wealth of knowledge about the movements of the stars and the myriad ways changes in stellar properties are read to interpret seasonal change, atmospheric conditions and much more. Western science is also realising that many of the discoveries attributed to European thinkers had been observed, understood, and encoded in traditional knowledge long ago but was never given proper recognition or credit due to the casual dismissal of non-Western ways of thinking as myth and legend. But our connection to the stars, and the foundations of these ancient knowledge systems, are under constant threat. The advent of satellite networks overlapping the rapidly decreasing numbers of stars we can see due to light pollution is actively erasing this connection. This talk will discuss some of the astronomical traditions and their links to land and sky, and why the erasure of the stars is a form of ongoing cultural genocide. |
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