Birding 2024

4/18, Home, Kent Co., Walker, MI

• Barred Owl calling
• White-throated Sparrow calling

         Blandford Nature Center, Walker, Kent Co., MI

• Eastern Towhee Pipilo erythrophthalmus
• Golden-crowned Kinglet
• Blue-headed Vireo calling

4/16, Blandford Nature Center, Walker, Kent Co., MI

• Brown Thrasher calling

4/15, Blandford Nature Center, Grand Rapids, Kent Co., MI

• female Hooded Merganser

4/9, Aman Park, Ottawa Co., MI

• Catbird

4/8, Aman Park, Ottawa Co., MI

As the eclipse progressed, the birds stopped singing and frogs got quiet. My eyes kept trying to adjust to the dimmer light, as if dusk were coming on, and the light had an eerie quality. The shadows got longer.

3/29, Aman Park, Ottawa Co., MI

• Golden-crowned Kinglets (many)
• Killdeer

3/21, Blandford Nature Center, Walker, Kent Co., MI

• Fox Sparrow calling
• Cardinals
• Robins
• Crows
• Blue Jays
• Red-winged Blackbirds
• White-breasted Nuthatch
• Tufted Titmice
• Chickadees
• Grackles
• Red-bellied Woodpecker
• Downy Woodpecker
• Hairy Woodpecker
• Juncos
• House Finches
• Goldfinches

3/16, home, Kent Co., Walker, MI

• Phoebes calling
• several groups of Sandhill cranes

3/2, traveling (ponds on Maynard), Kent Co., Grand Rapids, MI

• Turkey vultures
• Sandhill cranes

2/26, Blandford Nature Center, Walker, Kent Co., MI or Aman Park, Ottawa Co. ?

• Brown Creeper

2/23, Blandford Nature Center, Walker, Kent Co., MI

• Pine Siskin

Wildflowers 2024

4/22, Aman Park, Ottawa Co., MI

• Buttercups (common / Ranunculus acris)
• Cut-leaved Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata)
• Dutchman's Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria)
• Early Meadow Rue (Thalictrum dioicum)
• False Rue-Anemone (Enemion biternatum)
• Spring Beauties (Claytonia virginica)
• Spring Cress (Cardamine douglassii)
• Squirrel Corn (Dicentra canadensis)
• Trillium (common / Grandiflorum)
• Trout lilies (Erythronium americanum)
• Violets (common)
• Violets (yellow / Viola pubescens)
• Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica)
• Wild Blue Phlox (Phlox divaricata)
• Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense)
• Wintergreen berries (Gaultheria procumbens)
• Wood Betony (Pedicularis canadensis)
• Large-flowered Bellwort budded but not quite blooming

4/9, Aman Park, Ottawa Co., MI

• Trout lily
• Buttercups

4/8, Aman Park, Ottawa Co., MI (Eclipse!)

• Bloodroot
• Mayapples are up but still furled

3/29, Aman Park, Ottawa Co., MI

• Cut-leaved Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata)
• Dutchman's Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) in the shelter of a fallen log
• False Rue-Anemone (Enemion biternatum)
• Sharp-lobed Hepatica (Hepatica acutiloba)
• Spring Beauties (Claytonia virginica)
• Wild Leeks/Ramps (Allium tricoccum) are up

3/28, Aman Park, Ottawa Co., MI

• Round-lobed Hepatica (Hepatica americana)
• Pink Spring Cress (Cardamine douglassii)

 3/16, Blandford Nature Center, Grand Rapids, Kent Co., MI

• Spicebush
• Violets

Professional Development 2024

2/16/24

Bardwell, Belinda, and M. Megan Woller-Skar. "Challenges and successes of using Two-Eyed Seeing to teach Indigenous science at a predominantly white institution." Journal of Great Lakes Research 49 (2023), S78–S83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jglr.2023.01.003 

Discusses designing a 1-credit Biology seminar that incorporated 6 Indigenous Knowledge Keeper presenters in Fall 2021. They got a FTLC Teaching Innovation Grant to pay each speaker a $500 honorarium. Then the Bio dept and the CLAS Dean's office paid for the honoraria. Now there is a long-term commitment from Inclusion and Equity and the CLAS Dean's office (personal email from Meg, 2/15/24). Monica Johnstone also wrote about the project in CLAS ACTS January 2022: "The Joy of Multiple Ways of Knowing."

So this is the pilot for incorporating Native teachers (without PhDs) into courses. We want to have Indigenous teachers co-design curriculum for additional courses, and to pay them honoraria for that process, which is more sustainable long-term. But to do that, we need to entice GV faculty to participate in developing or redesigning courses. (The grant we get might pay for the Indigenous co-designers, I hope.) 

2/15/24

From May 2023: Cotto, Jannan. "The Problem of Pretendians: The Academy and Beyond" presentation at the Inclusive Pedagogy Retreat, GV University Libraries.

Pretendians she listed:  Margaret Peschel,Wendy Makoons Geniusz, Andrea Smith, Susan Taffe Reed. 

Jannan recommended the research of Kim TallBear. 

Looks like I should be browsing this journal periodically: American Indian Culture and Research Journal (AICRJ). 

Also, Lin Bardwell reminded me to read Decolonizing Methodologies : Research and Indigenous Peoples by Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2021)

1/23/24

Littletree, Sandra, Nicola Andrews, & Jessie Loyer. (2023). Information as a relation: Defining Indigenous information literacy. Journal of Information Literacy, 17(2), pp. 4–23. https://doi.org/10.11645/17.2.8  

This is a fantastic article! The authors define Indigenous IL as using info to gain or create knowledge while practicing relationality, reciprocity, and respect (p.4), and the "skills needed to conduct respectful research with Indigenous peoples, materials, and lands" (p.5). The Indigenous librarians are "accountable to ancestors, future generations, and the knowledges they are reclaiming" (p.18), and they "serve to position libraries as welcoming spaces where Indigenous knowledge systems, sovereignty, survivance, and joy can all flourish" (p.18).

Things to remember when working with Indigenous students: 

• Pay attention to their physical, emotional, and spiritual health. As librarians, we are caregivers, and need to care for students outside of classes too. E.g., provide food and drink in the library or in our offices, inquire about how they are/their lives, be open about our own views/lives (p.14-15).
• Help them plan for the times when the info they find in library research is harmful, asking how they will cope when that happens. (E.g., ceremony, spending time in nature, consulting elders/family, listening to their dreams, creating art....) 
• Remind students that Indigenous info also includes "oral histories, songs, dances, ... and...beadwork, drums, wampum belts, winter counts, etc." (12) and the land itself, food ways, weavings, jewelry.... 
• Do they know what their own "protocols for using and receiving information" (p.5) are?
• We have to also ask permission to share these types of info (p.13), in what season/s, and how info sharers want to be acknowledged. What are the boundaries, respectful ways around info? 
• How can they respond to the info? We all have "a reciprocal relationship with information" (p.16), and "their perspective is just as important as all the other Western research" (p.12). How will students help their communities with what they've learned? How will they practice accountability to "ancestors, future generations" (p.18)? "[R]esearch is a conversation with their communal histories made personal" (pp.16-17).
• Should we have Indigenous IL outdoors, "to hear protocols for sharing knowledge" (p.13)?

Here's an interesting assignment by Jennifer O'Neal, interviewed in this article: "find five to ten sources by Native authors or from Native sources...requires students to determine if the author is Native, and if they are, to describe what tribe they are from as well as their perspective" (12).