CALL FOR PAPERS

Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx (LACL) Indigenous STEM Conference

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

April 11-13, 2023

Keynote address by Professor of Mesoamerican Astronomy,

Dr. Jorge Moreno, Pomona College

Selected papers to be published in the conference proceedings.

Western science is often bounded and rigid due to hundreds of years of positivism, and therefore, slow to consider alternative methods and epistemologies in STEM fields. When Indigenous knowledges are invoked in North America through frameworks such as Native Science, TEK (Traditional Ecological Knowledge), or Two-Eyed Seeing, these conversations mostly focus on uplifting peoples and cultures from North America to bring about justice to damages done to their cultures and knowledge systems through settler colonialism. This conference aims to highlight the many Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx (LACL) Indigenous models and epistemologies that explain the world around us – in North and South America. Western science is often thought of as the only or best method at our disposal to find and create explanations for what is happening in the world around us. However, throughout human history, Indigenous knowledges across continents have persevered through oral and written traditions, and even through symbolism in artistic and functional creations, such as pottery, pictographic art, textiles, beading, and weavings.  While Western practices are known by many, here we center LACL and local Indigenous science frameworks bridging its teaching, research practices, and knowledge to the academic and general forums. LACL Indigenous perspectives can enrich teaching, research agendas, methodologies, epistemology of science, as well as scientific knowledge systems.

This conference will challenge us to reconsider the relationship between STEM and philosophy, sociology, theology, economics, political science, and the Arts. We seek to expand our awareness of the STEMs of the First Nations, address the limitations of a single Western scientific method,  and reveal the worlds of truths LACL Indigenous STEM possible. The two-day conference will be hosted at the bucolic University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and next to the live music scene in Amherst and Northampton. The conference will open with ceremony, include up to 15 panels, and includes a dinner dance. We invite abstracts and panels (maximum of 4 presenters, including moderator).