MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles tasked the world’s leading STEM university to decolonize systemically racist science, incorporating indigenous ways of knowing. MIT’s WORLDING program heeds her call:
“WORLDING illustrates the emergence of an entirely new field that fuses urban planning, climate science, real-time 3D engines, nonfiction storytelling, and speculative fiction. The WORLDING teams met with MIT scholars to discuss diverse domains, from the decolonization of board games, to urban planning as acts of democracy, to behind the scenes of a flagship MIT Climate Challenge project.”
A prime example is the “Waves of Buffalo” project led by a scholar who did her PhD thesis on the kinship that indigenous people had with the buffalo. Many of her Cree and Nakoda ancestors “spoke of the buffalo as our grandfathers and grandmothers.” As we remake STEM through interdisciplinary programs that inject such wise ways of knowing into the scientific method, we all must think about how we can “contribute to overall buffalo consciousness.”
And if you think the Beaver is buffaloing you again about the Waves of Wokeness washing over MIT, check out the WORLDING program for yourself.
You are right to speculate that readers may think you are “buffaloing” them. It is hard to believe that the situation has deteriorated so quickly. Perhaps wokeness really is a “mind virus”.