TEDxConstitutionDrive 2012 - Laura Peticolas & Chuck Striplen - "Tribal & Scientist Identities"
Channel: TEDx Talks
Date: 20/03/2012

Our 2012 theme was "Identity"

This year we explored Identity in a way that went beyond the standard gender/race/age lines. We see Identity as the non-genetic DNA of us, one that is co-created by our environments and ourselves, and which drives in a powerful way our choices, our relationships and our lives. Speakers as diverse as Eric Drooker, New Yorker artist, to Beau Lewis, producer of the American Hipster series, to John Murray, scientist at the SRI International labs, came to share their perspectives on Identity.


Laura Peticolas / Chuck Striplen, researchers in indigenous knowledge and Western science
 
Dr. Laura Peticolas is the Director of the Center for Science Education, housed at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been studying the aurora (on Earth, Mars, and Io) and teaching physics to undergraduates, K-12 teachers, and the public for over 10 years. She is involved with many NASA large-scale and small-scale education and public outreach programs. She also works with the Indigenous Education Institute (IEI) on an NSF informal science education professional development project bringing together multiple world-views to create awareness of science and other cultural ways of understanding environmental change, Earth and the Universe. Laura received a B.A. degree from the University of Oregon in physics and mathematics. In August 2000, she received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, after studying how auroral electrons caused the light of a specific type of aurora known as flickering aurora.
 
Mr. Striplen received a double B.A. in Biology and Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz in 1992, his MS from UC Berkeley in 2011, and is currently a PhD candidate in the Environmental Science, Policy and Management at Cal. An avid student of landscape history and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), Mr. Striplen adds another layer of complexity to the Historical Ecology Program's analysis of the physical and ecological characteristics of the region's wetlands, creeks, and terrestrial habitats prior to major Euro-American colonization. Through the use of early historical documents, oral histories, and other ethno-ecological sources, Mr. Striplen contributes analyses of Native Californian resource management that shaped the landscape first encountered by European explorers. Mr. Striplen joined SFEI's Historical Ecology Team in March of 2002.