Zuni Knowing

Location: New Mexico, USA

by Mallery Quetawki

 

Editor’s note: Mallery Quetawki is a member of the Pueblo of Zuni Tribe, New Mexico and Artist-In-Residence at University of New Mexico, College of Pharmacy, Community Environmental Health Program.

 

Several Native American communities are located within close proximity to abandoned uranium mines (AUMs) in the Southwestern United States.¹ Uranium and other heavy metals have the potential to disrupt physiologic function inside the human body, through DNA damage or other types of cellular disruptions. Many complex chemical and biological interactions occur over time, starting from the route of exposure to the actual physiological impacts of prolonged contact with these contaminants. These mechanisms can be challenging to understand.

Effective communication and transparency are key when working with research participants and patients. Public health educators, practitioners, and researchers often have to be creative in translating science for non-scientific audiences. Team members at the University of New Mexico’s Community Environmental Health Program (CEHP) partner with Native American populations residing near AUMs and have learned through their prior engagement efforts that each community has their own language, cultural identity and traditional ancestral knowledge that may conflict with Western thoughts and ideas. They grappled with the question: How do we maintain transparency and achieve understanding while being respectful to the Native American communities and individuals involved?

 

I. Art as Translation

 

Part of the answer came in 2016 during a sheep roast in Tachee/Blue Gap, a community on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. This was an annual meeting where the Community Environmental Health Program’s (CEHP) Center for Native American Environmental Health Equity Research (Native EH Equity) external advisors presented updates on research to people on the reservation. The community members, although grateful for the research and the project update, expressed that they did not understand the information presented to them. Many of the scientific terms could not be translated into the local Indigenous languages. Meeting participants suggested that the center translate the science with a visual aid, such as art, rather than relying exclusively on language interpretation and scientific graphics.

Johnnye Lewis, PhD, co-director of the Center for Native EH Equity and founder and director of CEHP, was familiar with my culturally-related artwork depicting human anatomy at the Zuni Comprehensive Community Health Center in Zuni Pueblo, which was well-received by Zuni tribal members and health care providers alike. She invited me to her office and pitched the idea of using art as a tool for translation. This was an opportunity for me to branch out into a research-focused direction, and I understood its importance and the potential positive outcomes within my community.

To date, I have created nineteen acrylic paintings and several culturally-relatable digital images created with graphic illustration apps. Before creating each visual, I conduct direct interviews with researchers, community members, and keepers of traditional knowledge. I also study the scientific and health research literature, like peer-reviewed journals and textbooks. To even begin describing basic scientific terminology for the grandmothers and grandfathers back home, it almost requires one to be a scientist, a member of the local tribe(s), and a fluent-speaker of the Native language, all packaged into one. However, I would not be able to create this art without help from the experts at CEHP.

Using this art as a method of translation has facilitated effective communication between scientists, practitioners, and Indigenous communities, resulting in greater mutual understanding. The art is on ,display in the CEHP center and helps provide a welcoming atmosphere for all involved in their programs. Native-themed design, symbolism, and iconography that is familiar to our partner tribes is also featured in community engagement material such as posters, pamphlets, and health-study roadmaps and timelines.

 

II. CEHP Overview

 

The University of New Mexico’s Community Environmental Health Program (CEHP), led by Lewis, is a multi-center program that is currently working to understand toxicity in multiple generations of Indigenous communities with chronic exposures to metal mixtures in abandoned mine waste. CEHP partners with other academic institutions, tribal governments and community members themselves. Multidisciplinary teams work cohesively across the following programs and centers:

• The Center for Native Environmental Health Research Equity (Native EH Equity)
• The Navajo Birth Cohort Study (NBCS)/Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) pediatric cohort
• The University of New Mexico’s Metal Exposure and Toxicity Assessment on Tribal Lands of the Southwest (METALS) Superfund Research Program Center

 

III. Abandoned Uranium Mines

 

There are about 160,000 abandoned hard rock mine sites in proximity to tribal lands in the Western United States. About 1,000 of the abandoned uranium mines (AUMs), or waste sites, occur on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico and Arizona.¹ In 77 percent of those AUMs, screening by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows gamma radiation more than twice as high as the naturally occurring levels in the area.² In addition, these sites are sources of exposure to the various toxic metals present in the mine waste. Communities have lived in proximity to these underground, surface and open-pit mines and their associated abandoned waste sites for more than 70 years. Native communities have potential for increased exposure and higher sensitivity to toxicity due to reliance on local resources and understudied genetic and epigenetic metabolic distribution differences. Indigenous communities often rely heavily on local resources, such as local wells for water and surface water for traditional harvesting of vegetation and minerals for food, paint, and medicinal purposes. Most of the AUMs and waste piles remain unmarked, with no proper signage to warn people of potential hazards.

 

IV. Ancestral Knowledge and Indigenous Ways of Knowing

CEHP and its partners include community members in the process of research data collection, translation of results, and policy mitigation, so that our dialogue among stakeholders, policy makers, trustees, communities. and researchers remains open and transparent.

CEHP Community partners each have a unique culture and language. In the Southwest, the Navajo and Pueblo of Laguna have their own languages, Diné and Keres, respectively, and cultures. CEHP also collaborates with the communities of the Northern Plains, which also retain their languages and culture. The Cheyenne River Sioux speak Lakota, and the Crow, or Apsáalooke, speak the Crow language. There are many differences between each of the four core tribes, yet there are key similarities that bring these groups together. CEHP harnesses these similarities into translation methods so that they are inclusive of everyone involved.

 

V. Zinc Intervention: A Case Study

 

The Thinking Zinc study by CEHP’s METALS program is an example of successfully integrating Indigenous knowledge, language, art, and Western science, while remaining respectful to cultural beliefs.³ The staff at the METALS program asked communities to supplement with zinc at the daily recommended level. They knew that zinc could reduce or reverse metal toxicity in cell systems and animal models. They wanted to test whether zinc could provide the same benefit to community members living among AUMs.

Community liaisons, other Indigenous staff members, PIs, and researchers collaborated across languages and communications tools to explain this study to community partners and work together on the protocol. Navajo Nation liaisons and others who are fluent speakers of Diné have found words, much like the Code Talkers did in World War II, to describe the project. The Diné word for zinc was actually found in a memoir by the Navajo Code Talker Chester Nez: Beesh Dootł’izh (metal + blue, the one that is).⁴ Researchers used Diné to introduce the intent of the study, then they presented the results in the Native perspective through art that represents the scientific mechanisms.

To further place the study in a traditional context, community liaisons included examples and samples of traditional foods that contain natural zinc. The food clarified the intent to supplement and sparked a revitalization of interest in traditional foods in the community. CEHP’s Navajo Birth Cohort Study video collection has had increasing views on how to make blue corn mush, an ancestral food high in zinc.⁵ By creating all of these linkages, CEHP and its community liaisons have been able to successfully present ideas that were once too complex for words and too broad to simplify with basic graphics.

DNA Repair (Fig. 1) was used as the cover art for the Thinking Zinc study. This piece depicts a strand of beads, representing DNA, that has come undone. The needle at the end of a string is beginning to repair the beading. Based on my community interviews and research on bead working, I was able to incorporate a Crow design into the painting and use a floral motif as a symbol for regrowth and healing.

Taboo discussions were avoided by working around the words and adding positive ideas instead. Comparing the re-stringing of a strand of beads to DNA repair, instead of focusing on the potential negative impacts of damaged DNA, was a more effective way of communicating zinc’s potential to the Native American audience. Culturally, it is better to mention ways to correct or intervene than it is to talk of illnesses and ailments that may result from metal exposures. When people are able to conceptualize what is happening on the land and in their bodies, they are better able to create the dialogue around more in-depth health concerns. Then, researchers can more effectively demonstrate the relationships between metals, DNA damage and the role of zinc in restoring balance.

 

For this study, I created three more paintings depicting zinc proteins. Figure 2 shows DNA damage and a complete DNA model through the Native lens. The zinc intervention will also be looking at immune function. Immune Response (Fig. 3) and Autoimmunity (Fig. 4) are paintings of this mechanism, which cannot be seen with the naked eye but can be visualized using art.

Both immunological pathways and our spiritual beliefs are sets of complex ideas that work together for the protection of the health of an individual. Just like the varieties of leukocytes and antibodies of the immune system, our spirit animals of strength are ever present to defend us from potentially harmful invaders. Our totems and belief in the supernatural power of spirits are our guides in life that we feel keep an individual healthy in terms of mind, body, and soul. In the Immune Response painting, I introduce the buffalo, bear, and war pony as those animal totems we seek for strength. I also included other methods of spiritual protection, such as turquoise, arrowheads, and sweat lodges. In the Autoimmunity painting, these animals are attacking one another just like the processes involved in an autoimmune disorder. This dichotomy of ideas, when presented visually as an intertwined whole, brings the “ah-ha!” moment to both sides of our collaborations and creates a mutual language for easier communication.

Native culture and belief systems, although esoteric, can be appreciated by a range of audiences if all interests are represented. The paintings created for this multi-center program have been able to reach both cohorts and scientists in ways that foster mutual understanding. With the collaboration that comes from this mutual understanding, Indigenous communities have a sense of ownership of the research being done on their lands. As a Native person, I know that we want to be informed and that we appreciate consent with full disclosure and due diligence. Our livelihoods and spirituality are deeply connected to the lands in which we live. What hurts the land hurts us. In order for our hearts to be aligned with the work done by non-Native researchers and academics, we need a shared understanding of both the necessity of the research and the respectful approach to the people of the area of concern. Indigenous knowledge, art, and Western science can create a cohesive movement toward a common goal. To continue the harmonies in the cycle of life, an oath to the planet and its protection begins at birth for Indigenous persons, and this can be adopted by researchers to integrate this dimension into their work.

 

 

 

Research reported here was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Numbers P42ES025589, and P50ES026102; and by the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health under cooperative agreement UG3OD023344. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

This material was also developed in part under Assistance Agreement No. 83615701 awarded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center. It has not been formally reviewed by EPA. The views expressed are solely those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of the Agency. EPA does not endorse any products or commercial services mentioned in this publication.

We would also like to acknowledge the support of Mallery Quetawki’s work by the University of New Mexico NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center and the University of New Mexico College of Pharmacy for institutional support that aided development of the Artist-in-Residence program.

 

ENDNOTES

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