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#11 Kelly McDonough: Indigenous Science and Technology
46 Plays2 months ago
Kelly McDonough is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas, Austin. We'll be discussing her new book Indigenous Science and Technology: Nahuas and the World around Them (2024). This is a work in Nahua intellectual history, and it examines how Nahuas have explored, understood, and explained the world across pre-invasion, colonial, and contemporary eras.
Some of the topics we discuss are competing conceptions of science and technology, whether only Western science is real science, Nahua science and technology, and the Nahua focus on balance and interrelatedness—among many other topics. We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.
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Transcript
Introduction to A-Tech Podcast with Dr. Kelly McDonough
00:00:17
Speaker
Hi everyone, and welcome to the A-Tech podcast. Today we're joined by Dr. Kelly McDonough. She is associate professor at the University of Texas in Austin, and we'll be discussing her book, Indigenous Science and Technology, NALWAS and the World Around Them, just published 2024.
00:00:37
Speaker
This is a work in NAWWA intellectual history. It examines how NAWAs have explored, understood, and explained the world across pre-invasion, colonial, and the contemporary eras. Welcome, Dr. McDonough. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
00:00:53
Speaker
i Is it okay if I call you Kelly?
Dr. McDonough's Background and Nahuatl Studies
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah, please do. Awesome, okay. Well then, Kelly, um could you start maybe by telling us a bit about yourself? We're we're curious, Sam and I are curious, what sparked your interest in Nahuatl culture and and just for those who aren't familiar, ah can you also just tell us who the Nahuatl people are?
00:01:15
Speaker
Sure, of course. and I know a lot of people wonder, um you can maybe hear in my voice that I'm a Minnesota native. People wonder how, and you can't see this if you're listening to a podcast, but I am a pale redhead. So they're wondering, what is she doing, doing intellectual history in Mexico and specifically working with Nahuatl people? So that's a great question.
00:01:41
Speaker
um I will say ah there are two main points that pushed me down this path. One is that I'm Ojibwe on my father's side, so that's a Native American tribe in where white earth, so white earth reservation in Minnesota. So I've always been aware of and interested in um indigenous life, whether it's in the US s or anywhere else. um And then the second piece is that I pretended I was semi-retired when I was in my 20s. And I backpacked through Mexico and um lived in Mexico for a time. And that's where
00:02:25
Speaker
I became interested in Mexico and the language and the people.
Graduate Studies and Inspiration from Colonial Codices
00:02:30
Speaker
So I came by it relatively honestly. Once I hit graduate school, um I took a course on colonialism.
00:02:41
Speaker
And we read a book called, a beion deloman see those vision of the Vanquish, it was little excerpts of ah colonial period codices that um were the voices of indigenous people. And it was all sort of this these stories about defeat and endings, and that's not my family's story. I mean, obviously, there's defeat, and there's sadness, and there are all of these ah negative things, but I know that life goes on. And so I raised my hand and I said, well, then what happened? And the professor looked at me and he said, e of it they're mythical. He's like, you got to go back to Mexico.
00:03:20
Speaker
but but
00:03:23
Speaker
So I went back to Mexico. um I started taking a Nahuatl language class. Nahuatl is the language of Nahuatl people. Nahuatl is the native language of Nahuatl people. Nahuatl is spoken today by about two million people, but it was the common language of the Aztecs. So people tend to recognize Aztecs. So Aztecs were Nahuatl.
00:03:52
Speaker
but not all Nahuas were Aztecs. There were lots more tribes, I don't think you would call them tribes, I would say socio-political, unified ethnic groups that would consider themselves to be Nahuas. So i I started studying Nahuatl because Nahuatl is the best documented indigenous language in all of the Americas. There's lots of colonial material and I was interested in land dispossession and there's lots of information in you know testimony from native speakers of NOAA in archives across the world. So that was how I started. I've been studying NOAA for 18 years now. And since that first summer um intensive, I've had ongoing classes because I'm
00:04:41
Speaker
Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, apparently, um but I have had 18 years of conversations with now our people. So that has really informed the kind of work that I do.
00:04:53
Speaker
Very cool. yeah As I mentioned before we started taping, my grandfather spoke some Nahuatl, and so I also grew up in Mexico City, so I have a little bit of a experience with Nahuatl culture. um Just so that we maybe be situary situate ourselves geographically. So of course, he spoke Nahuatl in central Mexico, Mexico City, or I guess Tenochtitlan, which is where the Aztec capital was, or the Mexica capital. So many clarifications we have to do with the labels here.
00:05:23
Speaker
um But how how far, maybe west, did the Oaxacan speak Nahuatl? Or where else was it spoken? No, um folks in Oaxaca speak many other indigenous languages, for example, Mije and Zapotec.
00:05:39
Speaker
um Nahuatl was definitely an imperial language and so it spread a lot further. It goes all the way to the west of Mexico to Guadalajara, goes all the way to the north, actually up to the border since in the 16th, 16th century, early 17th century, Los Galans went to the border to quote-unquote pacify the Apaches and they ended up instead intermarrying. So and then all the way down to um today's El Tabador because Nahuatl nobility, ah warrior culture, ah warriors joined in. Once they decided that yes, they were going to work with the Spaniards, they joined in on the conquests and continued on as um allies actually of Spaniards as they continue the conquest.
AI Ethics and Technology Discussion
00:06:30
Speaker
right right Many people don't know how how many native groups allied with the with the Spaniards. but okay Let's begin to shape our discussion here towards the the Promised Land at the end of ah the road here. so um let's Let me just put all the cards on the table here. Sam and I, when we planned these talks out, the main focus, of course, is AI ethics, technology ethics. One of the things we have to get straight on sometimes is like what is, you know obviously, what is AI, but what is technology? and so That's one of the things that brought us to your book. you know there's This is a rich conversation to be had.
00:07:11
Speaker
Thinking about not only technology as a process but science itself as a process so this is where i want to begin to you know talk about your book. In the introduction you write about how it is that we should how it is that you can see both of the process of science and so let me i guess the me.
00:07:33
Speaker
Let me start this way you know by by ah goading you. So someone might say, you know well, you know of course, Western science is the only real science. And so I want you to tell us, what is it about that that you disagree with? And maybe tell us a little bit about how you think of science. Sure. Thanks for that question. it's ah It's a great opener.
00:07:57
Speaker
um I think that, ah yes, there are a lot of people that would say Western science is the only science. That said, I'm definitely not the first person to say that that's not the case. There have been decades worth of, you know, there's scholarship over decades of folks trying to make the point of all cultures have science and it's not always, and it's you know, it's not always exactly like Western science. So these people have been making this argument for a really long time. I have been, and it hasn't really landed very well, um because a lot of people are really wedged to the idea of um um Western science as the only science.
00:08:44
Speaker
I am really convinced by feminist science studies scholar Sandra Harding's definition of science. It's a really capacious definition where she says, and I hope I get the quote right, any and every culture, any and in every culture's institutions and systematic empirical and theoretical practices of coming to understand how the world around us works. And I think a Western scientist would not necessarily disagree with that.
00:09:13
Speaker
here And so I've taken that to um think about Nahuatl culture specifically, although I've long been irritated by being told many times that indigenous people do not have science. And I tend to write toward irritations. So anytime I'm like, well, that crazy, I'm like, aha, that's that's a research topic. So um I tried to look at what science looked like from now on perspective, you know not not
00:09:59
Speaker
discarding Western science. I think there's a lot to be said. In fact, I've got a a little vignette in my book about a nano physicist who's a NAWA. um So I'm not saying oh you know out with Western science, but I'm saying there is some specificity to how NAWA people learn about, engage with,
00:10:23
Speaker
uh, intervene in the world around them. And that's what I really wanted to get a handle on. And I wanted to get a little bit beyond this idea of indigenous knowledges. I think that, you know, a lot of scholars have used that term and I respect that, but it tends to be really nebulous. And a lot of people think about indigenous knowledges are like mystical.
00:10:46
Speaker
and And they're not always, you know, they're very serious. And I wanted to spend some time taking Nahuatl science seriously. Yeah, I feel like that criticism about indigenous science being mystical sometimes, that criticism, if someone says it, it kind of cuts both ways because I've seen some people talk about string theory like that's a little bit mystical. so Sure.
00:11:13
Speaker
You also have a a ah conception of technology that I really, really like. I think a lot of people in philosophy are probably used to thinking of science as a process, right, or as a verve rather than noun, but maybe not with technology. And so i have I have this cool graph that you have, I'm staring at, I wish the listeners could ah could see it, but maybe tell us a little bit about technology as a system or as ah as a verve as well as a noun.
00:11:44
Speaker
Sure.
Technology as Social Process and Interaction
00:11:45
Speaker
um'm I'm building this idea of the of technology also as a process from two other scholars, anthropologist Alfred Gell and then historian Marcy Norton. And they've both given really expansive ideas of what our technology is. Because a lot of times when we say technology, we immediately think tool without thinking about what did it take to get to that tool. So it's this sum total. It's people who are creating, building upon, sharing materials, tools, other tools, right? Knowledges, practices, theories, um so that they can meet their social, political, and economic needs. I mean, that's why we create tools, but there it isn't just
00:12:34
Speaker
I guess I'm always trying to say that there is this continuum that and in science figures and in this. I know that a lot of times folks think of science as being um very much theoretical and technology being very much applied and that just really is not the case. Both have physical, ah both have, ah you know, application and theory built into them and To have science, you need technology, and to have technology, you need science. So they're they're really going back and forth in sort of a dance. um I think what's also really important with the way that I'm thinking about technologies is that technologies, same with science, shaped and deployed within very specific social contexts. And then they're also really reliant upon social relationships.
00:13:23
Speaker
And in those relationships, you've got, you know that again, that circulation. So I'm trying to think about it more in terms of what I think I think i talk about it in the book as a noun verbing as opposed to just technology as a noun.
00:13:38
Speaker
Right, right. and um And this makes me think, you know, I think people that engage with technology ethics kind of see this readily because there's such a thing as like algorithmic bias. And and they say, well, you know, the algorithm, it just does what it does. It just got trained on this data. But we recall that the data that led to that enabled the training was itself a social process, right? It was gathered from people.
00:14:05
Speaker
With their biases and so that is manifested in the algorithms and so this is a i love this definition or this conception of technology. um And yeah we'll get to will get to will keep bringing it back as we talk about now with science and technology.
00:14:21
Speaker
You write that the Nahuas didn't use the terms science and technology, or or I guess in Spanish, ciencia, technologia, but they use different words. um So maybe can you tell us a bit about the words that they did use to describe their science and technology? And if if you feel it appropriate, you can get into the etymology. I don't know if that's always super awesome to ah to you know like recall on the spot, but you know you can just let us know.
00:14:50
Speaker
Well, uh, you know, I, I knew from my, uh, long-term relationships in NOAA communities that there wasn't a direct translation for science or technology. And so I spent quite a long time talking to different, uh, different NOAA people about, well, how would you say science and how would you say technology? And what does that mean? And I think the longest conversation or, you know,
00:15:20
Speaker
I think this was months of ongoing conversations and he was so tired of me by the time we were done as a NAWAT teacher, who's a dear friend of mine, Eduardo de la Cruz. We finally came to the agreement that, um and i I love this about NAWAT, it's an action noun.
00:15:41
Speaker
So it has that noun verbing aspect of it without me even thinking of that. It's an action noun called yeshe kolistri and it means a practice or an interaction or an experience with someone or something else.
00:15:56
Speaker
And so yikikoa is a verb that means it's to test or to sample or to taste or to know something. And then leastly is this action piece. That's a big etymology. And so one of the things when Eduardo was trying to convince me of this particular term, he was saying, don't forget about when you see elders. Elders are not saying to children, this is how we do things. They're not giving a a master class.
00:16:27
Speaker
Children are observing and so all of the time during ceremonial contexts with elders and you know quotidian context too elders are saying she keep that watch this or observe this that's how Noah's learned of course Noah's learning universities too, but this is a primary way of learning through observation and through practical experience. So we wanted to use that as um the idea of science to think about knowledge is acquired through observation and interactions with humans and other than humans. And then
00:17:08
Speaker
Technology actually came a little more easily, and this was Eduardo, Tla Chi Chi Wa Listri, and Tla means something, Chi Chi Wa means to adorn or dress or embellish, and then Listri is the being or doing of something. So it means, and I love this, something one uses to make something else.
00:17:30
Speaker
And that could be an idea, a theory of practice, a rock, um somebody else's hands. um And so I really liked that tlachichi, well, at least I liked that version of it. So, you know, I knew that.
00:17:46
Speaker
coming in that writing this book I would have folks that would say you're you're talking about for the most part I'm talking about 16th century Mexico they're saying well so but using the term science is anachronistic and I say yes but I'm not talking about the kind of science that you're talking about so it's not um but I uh I also knew that there would be a gap between English Spanish and Nahuatl definitions And so I tried to bridge those. I think there are still gaps and that's great because that's what younger scholars get to fill in.
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah, I absolutely love that the those words for science and technology, the novel words, because it's already embedded in there, the sensory aspect, right? There's a lot of talk about how something smells and how something looks and how something sounds, a lot of talk about sounds. And so the the empirical part is there, like you have to experience it to to to learn about it. And there's also that social aspect.
00:18:46
Speaker
and that, you know, philosophers of science were trying to define science for centuries and they didn't get to that social aspect until like the 20th century. And so it's, but it's always been in there in Western science as well as in Nawa science, but you know, the Nawa's made it very explicit. And so I, you know, I really liked that technology too. I'm not going to try to pronounce that, but that is, that's definitely a a wonderful ah term, good visuals that it that it gives you.
00:19:16
Speaker
Okay, so you explore a wide range of topics in your book.
Highlights from Dr. McDonough's Book
00:19:22
Speaker
Let me see, healing practices, water technologies, communicative technologies. Can you just give us an overview of some of the topics you explore and maybe you can share like the overall picture of of the novel engagement with technology that emerges from your study of their use of technology.
00:19:42
Speaker
So that's kind of the million dollar question. Let me try to be concise. I want to say that there were three guiding principles for this book. um One was that all cultures have science and tech and technology and that it's specific to those cultures. Two is that the West should not be the starting point for thinking about science and tech of other cultures. you know it's It's sort of like, why should the West be the starting point for, why should, not what culture be the starting point for thinking about Western science? It shouldn't, right? We need to be specific.
00:20:16
Speaker
And then the third piece is that um indigenous appropriation and adaptation of ideas and practices of other cultures does not make indigenous people less indigenous or no longer indigenous. So one of the things that we hear a lot is that ah indigenous peoples adapted, for example, in one of the chapters I talk about alphabetic writing as a technology.
00:20:40
Speaker
And folks will say, well, it's not really indigenous writing anymore because it's not pictographic. And one of the things that I i really pushed back on that, and I'm not sure if I say it in the book, but one of the things that I i have said in talks is that Spaniards have adopted and adapted indigenous science and technology since the moment they landed in Nowak, which was, you know, today's Mexico.
00:21:10
Speaker
And they've never been told that they're less Spanish, right? Or you're not Spanish anymore. It doesn't work that way. So I really wanted to highlight how NAWA people have sort of decided to stick with some best of the oldies, but then how they've also adapted, right? And adopted and made their own technologies of other people.
00:21:39
Speaker
So I talk about, let's see, in the book, I talk about ah my first chapter starts out trying to define some features and functions of Noah science by reading the only Noah natural history that was ever written. um In the second chapter, I talk about Noah views on the body, um healing and illness,
00:22:08
Speaker
in the third chapter, if I'm going in chronological, if I'm going in the right order, I think the third chapter is about water. And I'm talking about how water with the material political and sacred life of Nawaz, past and present. And one of the things that I like the best about that chapter is I talk about um rain,
00:22:33
Speaker
management or weather management. So these um folks that have the sacred duty of managing the weather, whether making sure that it doesn't hail or pushing away clouds through ceremony, but that's a technology for water management.
00:22:49
Speaker
um i Like I said, I talk about the ah adoption and adaptation of the Roman alphabet, but also the Spanish language and Latin. And then I also talk about mapping, how Noah's mapped themselves onto territories with story. and And we can add to the topics that you covered some other well-known intellectual achievements from I think Mesoamerican or I guess indigenous American communities in general, right so astronomy, mathematics. and and you know But those are those are better known, and and so you're you're adding and enriching to that. You've mentioned before, I guess, when we were chatting about the mystical elements, but there is a ah relationship between science and religion in the Nahuatl worldview. And so I'm thinking in particular here, maybe this is a good example, or you can correct me if if you have a better example. but
00:23:48
Speaker
the indigenous healing practices, which included you know collaboration with deities and and other spirit entities. Of course, the colonialists labeled them idolatry and communing with the devil and and all that good stuff, but um I mean, not good stuff. But can you tell us a little bit about indigenous healing practices and and how they incorporate you know ideas that that might be foreign to to Western ears?
00:24:17
Speaker
Sure. I mean, you mentioned the point about collaborating with ah different ah spirit entities, deities, gods, whatever you want to call them. And I would say that for Noah's that was across the board, not just with healing or medicine. This collaboration, this intertwining was everywhere. And I think that really speaks to the importance of reciprocity in Nawa culture, ah not only with what is on the land in terms of humans and other than humans, but with with the gods. there's all that it's It's relational. Actually, this happens today too. I'm not saying that this happens for everyone, but
00:25:09
Speaker
one of the things, so Eduardo de la Cruz, my teacher that I mentioned, he's writing his, um he's actually finishing up his doctoral dissertation. And he's writing about ceremony is all the time, that everything is sacred. And so it's just, you know, that will come to bear on any practice, including healing practices.
00:25:32
Speaker
Well, then let's talk about that interrelatedness then, because that is you know one of those things that you want to, at least I want to Western culture to have a greater acknowledgement of, right? that that way it is all So how do the Nahuas put it? or This is how you put it. The Nahuas saw themselves as part of a greater ecological cosmological system with humans and other than humans existing in an ongoing reciprocal relationship. And we sort of, I think, you know, the approach to Western science is is not that, but decidedly not that. And it seems like this is this is something so useful and and something worthwhile to you know for us to adopt.
00:26:18
Speaker
And so, yeah, let's let's talk about reciprocity for for the Nahuas. Can you tell us first about, so you call them other than humans, can you tell us about the relationship between humans and other than humans? Well, I think that they're just like relations between humans and humans and humans and the gods. I think that, you know, in Western science, it definitely believes in cause and effect, right? There but there are those concepts already.
00:26:45
Speaker
For me, the way that I think about Nawa culture is that it's sort of a spider web and Nawa people are clearly aware of the fact that if you pull on one piece of the spider web, the spider web is going to change, right? that There will be some shape modification, something might break so that there's always this consciousness of everything that goes into making the web. Part of that acute sense of being interrelated is, you know, based on ideas about what good living is and what survival looked like and looks like. So again, it's, you know, culture specific. But there there there isn't this idea of separation between nature and humans or separation between humans and animals.
00:27:38
Speaker
Actually, there's this great, um there's this great, great quote in a sermon that a Franciscan friar gave in the 16th century, this Franciscan friar, berardino de sago and and he says, don't forget, you don't have to love the animals the same way that you love humans.
00:27:58
Speaker
They are not like humans. You only have to love humans. So it tells you that clearly there were these relationships and these these engagements with animals that the priest did not find.
00:28:13
Speaker
appropriate and one is that there that some animals are you know represent or are deities and so they were really concerned about that but there was there was this idea of like we're separate they're different you need to be clear on that and knowledge just didn't and frankly don't agree with that.
00:28:31
Speaker
So there seems to be ah not only a clear awareness of the interrelatedness of all living beings, all creatures, and and the environment. Is there also an assumption there of fragility, ah that that maybe we we shouldn't mess around too much with things for the Nawas? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Nawas talk about the Earth as being slippery. And that the common goal, um not necessarily good and bad It's about um maintaining balance. So you don't want too much of anything. You don't want too little of anything. You don't want um
00:29:13
Speaker
a lot of chaos or too much stagnant peace, it you know, you have to kind of it's this balancing act. And so we're not was living on earth is about being on a slippery surface. So definitely fragile and definitely challenging. But the goal always is moderation and balance.
00:29:34
Speaker
Right. So two thoughts just rang to mind, but I read a deep history of, I guess, the war between the Aztecs and the Spaniards. I think his name is Carballo. In any case, he mentioned that maybe it was you know in part the the topography of Mesoamerica that inspired in them this reverential attitude towards preserving balance because it's you know there's a bunch of volcanoes all over the place.
00:30:02
Speaker
And so i you know he mentioned that I thought I'd pepper that in for you. ah Did you have anything you wanted to say about that? and It's really anecdotal that you know being in the Valley of Mexico and being along the Pueblo plus Cala Valley with all of those volcanoes, um many of which are active today. There have been problems with Popoca Tepe, the main volcano ah in that area.
00:30:27
Speaker
being a little too volatile and spreading a lot of ash all over the place. And this was last summer, um some folks in an indigenous community at the foothills of Popoca Tepe were saying that they had been prohibited from going up any further from government authorities because of the dangers of a live volcano. But they were like, but we need to give him his, we need to give him his things. We need to give him his, but his feet are hot. We need to read his feet. We need to do all these. We need to give our offerings. Otherwise, this can be even more fast. So they're like, we have to get there. So definitely, there's even still today this idea of like, this is this is very volatile. We have specific responsibilities.
00:31:14
Speaker
to maintain some sense of balance. but Let's stay on that topic of balance. So, you mentioned that their their ethics is an ethics about the good life, what constitutes a good life. So, given the focus on balance, what sorts of of things in maybe daily life had negative value for for the Nawah? Can you tell us a little bit about that?
00:31:43
Speaker
This is actually reflected in testimonies of illness from the colonial period. We still see this today. Too much sex, not enough sex. Too much work, not enough work. Too much food, not enough food. Really rich food, really bland food. Anything that you could possibly think of throughout a regular human 24 hours. Too much sleep, not enough sleep.
00:32:12
Speaker
Right? So there's, there's this idea of there's a but specific, you know, uh, there's a sweet spot and our elders tell us where the sweet spot is and our ritual practitioners tell us where the sweet spot is. And when we get out the sweet spot, we suffer. And one of the interesting things about, uh, not what that is, it's not just the individual that suffers. It is contagious to people around them.
00:32:40
Speaker
oh can you tell us more about that sure it's there when when someone is in excess or in a state of um lack or diminishment and they have a negative manifestation, something with let's say something with the liver or something bad happens, bad you could call it bad luck. But this the individual does not assume that the bad luck will be theirs and theirs alone to bear. The individual always understands that their actions can be, they could be fine, they could have a great day and their grandmother could fall sick and it's their fault.
00:33:25
Speaker
I remember there being some sort of connection between your activities and the state of your of your body, but and you know even in... um How should I word this?
00:33:36
Speaker
moral activities had a bearing on the status of your, you know, we might call it the soul or, you know, the body. So you mentioned the liver. I remember you saying something about they believe that certain activities would dirty the liver, but they weren't activities that I typically associate with a damaged liver, like drinking too much alcohol. It might've been something else like, ah you know, spreading rumors or something. So there's there's there's an effect of your you know, out of balance actions on your actual physical person that, that, you know, it just seems like they had a clear understanding or they have a clear understanding that our activities change us and then thus, you know, lead us to, you know, more bad actions if you're taking some bad actions or something like that. So I really love those, that that connection. Sure. You could be too flashy of a dresser and that could affect your liver.
00:34:32
Speaker
The other thing to keep in mind though is that there are different ideas about what the liver is that don't necessarily correspond to Western science or anatomy. i the It's the same idea of what the liver physically is and where it is in the body. But people know what people think from their liver and they remember in their liver.
00:34:56
Speaker
So they think with their gray matter up in their head too, but it's when you ask somebody when somebody says, I remembered you, you say, I felt you in my liver. So there are different conceptualizations about what organs in the body do and how they're connected to other organs.
00:35:16
Speaker
So they they do also ah almost have sort of this parallel idea of, you know, sort of the Western anatomy version and then the more integrated version that thinks more broadly about that whole spectrum of what balance means. Right, right. Okay. Yeah, that's interesting. um I mean, I guess before we jump to another technology, I really want to talk about Chinampas.
00:35:43
Speaker
But before we we jump into that, um I guess I have a you know a question on the balance. Maybe I don't want to quite understand this part yet. So you say too much of anything is is is bad. But you know what would they say to something like a question like, ah to you know is having too much knowledge bad? Or or is can you be too kind? is that you know Are these actual negatives? What would they say about those?
00:36:13
Speaker
I don't have the answer to that for you. a I don't know. I think you would have to ask an elder. you know what what ah what ah what where is Where do we draw the line of too much and too little?
00:36:28
Speaker
Right. And is it desirable to be so selfless and so kind? Is it a ah trait? Or is it is it something that Nahuatl culture... So say saying Western culture values productivity, does Nahuatl culture value kindness and to what extent? I mean, those are other sort of philosophical questions that would be posed with one's elders. And I'm writing it down so that I can ask those questions, but i don't I don't have the answer for you.
00:36:58
Speaker
All right. I expect my name in a footnote, so I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Yes, you're duly noted. Okay, ah what let's ah let's get into water technology. This is something that I've witnessed firsthand. I you know and and i think a lot of tourists go to Sochimilco, right? And they it's not quite where all the you know farms are, but yeah, can you tell us a little bit about what maybe water technology in general from the Nahuas and then we'll move into the Chinampas.
Sophisticated Water Management Systems of the Nahuas
00:37:32
Speaker
So for water technology,
00:37:35
Speaker
I'm really focused on infrastructure in that particular chapter. One, because in the Valley of Mexico, it was so complicated to manage bodies of saltwater and body. We don't necessarily think of Mexico City as being a lake anymore, but when the Spaniards got there, it was a big lake.
00:37:56
Speaker
and it was multiple lakes that were put together. And so for agriculture and obviously having um drinking water, you had to manage salt water and sweet water in that area. And you also had to deal with massive flooding in the wet season because they are in that valley. And Nawaz, you talked about are they Aztecs? Are they Mexica? So in the Central Valley of Mexico, the dominant folks were Mexica, who we call Aztecs, but that's because that's what the at managing
00:38:42
Speaker
this really difficult to harness water source and with with dikes, with sluices, with different kinds of barriers. And it does not come up in the history of Mexico or the history of science in Mexico. This deep sophistication prior to Spanish um arrival and filling in of the lakes. So I really wanted to focus on that. And I really wanted to talk about how and why those sorts of beats of engineering came about and how they affected relationships in the central Valley of Mexico.
00:39:23
Speaker
And I did talk about chinampas. When you're in a watery area, you still have to eat. you know And you got this if you have this building population that was, I'm not sure if it's chicken or the egg, you know we you become this bountiful agricultural space. the king i don't I don't know which was first.
00:39:45
Speaker
but they had bounty and people came where people came and they had to have agricultural bounty. But they're in a Lecustre context so they build we call them a lot of times in Oh, newspaper articles and things like that, that that'll come out. We call chinampas floating gardens. And they're not floating gardens. They're raised bed gardens. So you take the really rich ah soil from the bottom of the lake and you schlep it up to the top and you just keep piling it up, piling it up, piling it up. And then between those plots of land, you have you know waterways. And so people get around by canoe or skiff.
00:40:29
Speaker
please They're Chinampa farmers today. Some do it as a hobby. um I do have a friend and colleague that definitely makes a living from it, but it's a lot of work. And it and it it's a backbreaking work to you know bring those buckets of um really heavy mud and water from the bottom of the lake.
00:40:55
Speaker
Yeah, I encourage you know any listener to go check out a picture of this because it's the kind of thing that maybe if you're you haven't seen it before, you look at it and you think to yourself like, hey, who would come up with this? How hard was it to do that because these are huge floating, I guess not floating gardens, raised garden beds, right? So yeah, it's it's it's incredible how um how intricate the the system is and how well functioning it was and how it fed so many people. right I don't know the numbers, but I think that in that history I told you about that there were more people in central Mexico than there were in any city in Spain at the time. So they were feeding way more people than any spaniard Spanish community could. And so that's that's you know fascinating.
00:41:45
Speaker
On the chinampa system, I don't know if you mentioned this in your book. The Spaniards, they sort of, I don't know how to word this, they would take credit for, you know, and now a science. Can you tell us a little bit about about that?
00:42:02
Speaker
so um Marcy Norton, she's a historian I mentioned earlier, Marcy Norton has called this the oh dependency and disavowal paradigm. Basically meaning that Spaniards relied heavily upon Nahuatl science and technology, because they were in Nahuatl territory, right? two To not just survive, but thrive. So they relied heavily upon it. But they also for the imperial process to work and to have the dominant culture and the not dominant culture, they had to denigrate. I mean, they really were like these people, they are not smart, they can't come up with anything. And so they would disavow very people from whom they had taken an idea or a practice. And, you know, medicine is a key area where um there are all of these
00:43:03
Speaker
these great reports coming out of Mexico about how smart they are and discovering all of these herbs and medicines. And then it becomes very clear if you read deeply enough that, for example, ferns Francisco Hernandez, that he was the first Spanish, head of the first Spanish scientific expedition to Mexico. And his task was to document flora fauna, medicine, anything that Spaniards could use,
00:43:33
Speaker
to their benefit economically, mostly, you know what could be ah sent back to Europe. It becomes very clear that Francisco Hernandez basically just watched indigenous doctors for a really long time. i but he even i mean He mentions occasionally, he's like, yes, I watched these doctors, but he really denigrates them.
00:43:56
Speaker
He was like, oh, they don't know what they're talking about. And we see that over and over and over and over again, this dependency yet disavowal. And I think it has to do with the tension of a colonial project. How do you go somewhere where you're not from and how do you dominate? So it's it's almost like a psychological requirement that you demean them, right? Yeah. I mean, that's my current guess.
00:44:26
Speaker
but i mean This brings us back to also you know the conception of Western science being the only real science. That was also a method by which you know colonists could say, well you know we're you know they're not really practicing science. They're practicing some mystical stuff. and we're bringing you know that There's a benefit to being colonized by us. We are bringing science to them. so That sort of you know it kind of resonates with that that same idea. um Let's talk about the Florentine Codex because it's an incredible ah ah project.
00:45:02
Speaker
so um Can you tell us about the Florentine Codex? Who made it? Why? What was the primary you know ah aim of developing that? Sure. The Florentine Codex is a 12 book sort of encyclopedia before, I don't think that it would follow all the definitions of an encyclopedia, but it was aimed at knowing everything and anything possible about Nahuatl people. It was created between around the 1540s and the late 1570s.
00:45:33
Speaker
The project was led by Franciscan friar, and he worked with a lot of different named and unnamed Noah scholars, Noah elders.
00:45:49
Speaker
I believe that they also work with Nawa cooks and Nawa animal breeders and lots of other people that aren't mentioned there. But um they they really went and tried to systematically write down anything they could about Nawa culture. And so for Saguen, there were three main uh reasons why he embarked on this project the first one had to do with evangelization that's to evangelize to evangelize these people we need to know everything we can about them so that we can identify idolatry so for example if if you don't know that they think that the muskrat is sacred how are you going to extricate that that idea so it was for evangelization the second piece was to put together as much uh
00:46:39
Speaker
ah So if it was a no, it was not what language Spanish quasi interpretations and pictographic material. So it's this three sort of category ah encyclopedia,
00:46:56
Speaker
but the goal with writing down everything in Noah and doing some translations is so that he would then be able to not only have described all of these different practices and ideas, but to have sort of a glossary for the next priests that would come in. So it's like, this means that. um And the third reason was that Saguen actually admired a lot of things about Nahuatl culture. And he really felt like all of those things were slipping away due to contact with Europeans.
00:47:27
Speaker
And so he was doing what I um have called sort of a salvage ethnography. He was like trying to document as much as he could because it was all going away. He was very explicit about these and this rationale in the prologues that he wrote for the Florentine Codex. Nahuas did not have the opportunity to write an explicit prologue about why they were participating. and um ah you know I have a couple of different ideas. One, um they were i mean some of these Nahuas were actually Christians. They grew up in indigenous boarding schools, Catholic boarding schools.
00:48:04
Speaker
Some of them might have shared this idea of evangelization. Some of them might have been thrilled to play with their own language. Some of them might be really excited to, for example, write down, record everything they could for future generations. So we don't really know exactly why NAWAs were participating, but we can sort of guess based on what Seguin was saying, what possibilities might be for NAWA participation.
00:48:35
Speaker
um The Florentine Codex today for a lot of Noah communities that those that actually know that it exists is a really important source for thinking about their own communities and thinking about how um thinking what change in continuity. And I actually really try to avoid that in in the book.
00:48:59
Speaker
um I do jump between contemporary and colonial periods and i'm I'm pretty intentional in saying I'm not trying to compare, not trying to say we have change or continuity that's not my place. It's for more people to think about that I think.
00:49:14
Speaker
Okay, so as we move here to wrap up, we do want to reflect a little bit on your book and and maybe you know some key takeaways that you would like to have for any readers of your book. let's Let me start with this. you You mentioned critical Native American indigenous studies and and you know so some paradigms in that field. ah So I think our audience you know obviously will appreciate the importance of of you know getting access to understanding, conveying ah native cultural perspectives. But how would you explain the the importance of this project perhaps to you know a broader audience? right so why why does Why should this matter to the general public? you know When I first started writing this book, I was thinking about people need to know how indigenous science can help all of us solve common problems.
00:50:12
Speaker
And by the end of writing, I really decided that I didn't want to be just another person extracting from indigenous communities, whether it's knowledge, whether it's a natural resource, um souls, you know, for evangelizing. I think that this project is meant to, it's it's being translated into Nahuatl and Spanish right now. um It'll be the first academic monograph translated into an indigenous language in Mexico. wow And that's been a goal of mine that it's it's a priority for Nahuatl high school students to be able to learn about their own science and their own technology, because they get to the university and they're told all that stuff that you learned back in your community, that's wrong and backwards.
00:51:02
Speaker
So i have I have that audience really in mind, but the broader audience, I want us to think about how we can be a little more precise about um when we talk about all, if we want to say all cultures have science and technology, what does that really mean in specific cultures? I i guess my point is it doesn't have to have application and utility. I think really what I'm trying to do is to talk about the human experience and talk about how different it can be and how non-threatening that is. um And I hope that it pushes people to reflect about their own their own family practices and their own community and their own culture and their own
00:51:55
Speaker
ways of thinking about science and technology and maybe expanding that to make room for other ways of knowing, make room for other ways of being. And I think in the end, that in and of itself will help us deal with more creative problem solvers. Right. and That's beautiful. I think that's ah that's a wonderful place to kind of wrap up um unless is there anything that you'd like to highlight about your book that we haven't yet touched on?
00:52:23
Speaker
I don't you know, yes, yes, I would like to say now was valued tradition and innovation, indigenous people value tradition and innovation. And I think that's, that's something that I hammer on. But I want to emphasize that indigenous people think about the past, but we're also forward thinking.
00:52:48
Speaker
We've been chatting with Dr. Kelly McDonough, associate professor at the University of Texas, Austin, and we discussed her book, Indigenous Science and Technology, Now It Was and the World Around Them. Dr. Kelly McDonough, thanks for joining us. Thanks so much for having me.