Center for World Indigenous Studies

Native American communities have gone through probably the worst of situations in North America that people can go through. North America’s indigenous peoples have experienced the devastating depopulation of their tribes that followed the “discovery of the New World” as American Native Holocaust. To survive mass genocide after the arrival of the Europeans and grapple... more →

There has been a revolution in the Fourth World, of sorts, underway for the better portion of the last twenty-five years: Self-governing nations recognized by individual states’ governments and even in the international community. This last Spring the Catalan’s–more than six million strong–claimed and received Spanish governmental recognition of their status as a nation. The... more →

In this 2003 report by CWIS associate scholar Anke Weisheit, traditional medicine in contemporary Uganda is examined as, “a complex combination of activities, order of knowledge, beliefs, and customs.” In this article announcing an award for developing herbal medicine and preserving traditional knowledge, Anke observes that these locally produced remedies are “serious science.&#... more →

In Ghana there are few orthodox medical practitioners and many traditional healers. By some estimates for every orthodox medical partitioner there are 200,000 people and for every traditional healer there are 200 people. Ghana’s first President Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah strongly supported and facilitated government policy for the dominant role of traditional healers in Ghanaian... more →

There’s a small room attached to the senior center that serves as the museum for the Quileute tribe on the central coast of Washington. On display are artifacts — mostly baskets — that depict large canoes of Indians in pursuit of Humpback whales. Now days, they no longer hunt whales, but still fish salmon and... more →