The NASA and the Navajo Nation Partnership is an ongoing collaboration that has facilitated the co-creation of numerous educational materials, workshops, and camps for Navajo youth. Their work flows from the understanding that Indigenous knowledge systems and Western science reflect, resonate with, and reinforce one another, and affirm each other as valid, valuable, and vital. NASA’s Culturally-Based, Dual-Learning methodology prioritizes Indigenous knowledge – which is taught first in the programs, always and only by Indigenous educators and Elders, using Indigenous languages and pedagogies, in Indigenous places. Afterward, corresponding Western STEM concepts are conveyed by experts in those fields. This method reinforces for Native youth that their cultural knowledge systems, practices, and technologies, are important, sophisticated, alive and well, and hold information that is just being explored by the Western STEM fields today. This provides a critical lens and asset-based perspective from which to be grounded as they approach the learning of Western STEM.

Presenter Daniella Scalice is the Education and Communications Lead for NASA’s Astrobiology Program. Her background is in molecular biology and filmmaking. Her work is devoted to ensuring youth of all colors, cultures, genders, abilities, walks of life, and ways of loving and praying have equal access to opportunities in STEM, and are supported to excel in everything they do, especially toward healthy social, cultural, and economic lifeways. Daniella lives and works on the lands of the Piscataway People in the occupied territories known today as Annapolis, Maryland.

This program is being presented in cooperation with NASA’s Solar System Ambassador program. For more information on the program, visit https://solarsystem1.jpl.nasa.gov/ssa/home.cfm

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