AIA-Westchester Sponsored Annual CCA Lecture Presents:

Sonya Atalay

(Provost Professor, UMass Amherst Department of Anthropology)

“Braiding New Research Worlds: Archaeology, Storywork & Wellbeing”

Friday, April 24, 2026, 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM

807 Schermerhorn Hall

Register Here

Please note that all non-Columbia University affiliates must register for a QR campus access code.

The seminar will also be available on Zoom

Abstract: In this talk, I present my work on a series of land-based research projects with Indigenous communities. Centering Anishinaabe epistemologies and concepts of well-being, I explore how reclaiming traditional knowledge, ancestral remains, Indigenous language, and sacred cultural places can contribute to well-being and healing from historical trauma. I discuss Indigenous arts-based research and knowledge mobilization methods — such as collaborative comics, storybaskets and counter mapping, and virtual reality applications — as part of Indigenous storywork, demonstrating how lessons drawn from reclaiming tangible and intangible heritage provide a model for imagining decolonized research futures.

Bio: Sonya Atalay is Professor of Anthropology at MIT and Provost Professor in UMass Amherst’s Anthropology Department. She is a public anthropologist and archaeologist who studies Indigenous science protocols, practices and research methods carried out with and for Indigenous communities. Dr. Atalay is the Director and PI of the  Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science (CBIKS), a National Science Foundation funded Science and Technology Center. She has expertise in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and served two terms on the National NAGPRA Review Committee, first appointed by the Bush administration and then for a second term by the Obama administration. Dr. Atalay has produced a series of research-based comics in partnership with Native nations about repatriation of Native American ancestral remains, return of sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony under NAGPRA law.