Indigenous Peoples Issues & Resources

[Sikozu Johnson]

I think there is a tendency to view social and physical adaptations and
innovations of indigenous peoples as *non-technological*. In fact, they are
all technologies. We humans make things, shape things, build things. Even in
religious stories, our interactions with the spirits or gods shape things.

Survival is a matter of technology: food, social, religious, etc. Just
because first nations people make it doesn't mean it isn't technology. Our
traditional social structures: technology for dealing with time, place and
environments. Our languages are technologies. All these things are ways of
managing and shaping our world.

When the first White settlers hit the American shores, they mostly died,
some of them disappearing without a trace. Only those groups who managed to
beg, borrow or steal local techniques survived. The Pilgrims had *
Tisquantum,* a Patuxet (Wampanoag Confederacy) who had been captured and
enslaved *twice*, both times taken to Europe. Without his knowledge, the
colony would have been a failure just like every other before.

- áine ní dhonnchadha
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