From a young age, Ermia Butler knew she would pursue a career that would support her tribe, but she didn’t quite know what it would be. “I’m a first-generation student, but in high school I was supported really well,” Butler said. An enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Butler grew […]
Influenced by real events of fall 1998 to spring 1999, when the Makah harvested their first whale in seven decades and made headlines worldwide, Mahlon Kriebel (’58 zoology) blends fact with fiction and explores the history of the whale hunt as well as complex cultural issues and tensions past and present. He provides historical context […]
People in what is now Washington state were smoking Rhus glabra, a plant commonly known as smooth sumac, more than 1,400 years ago. The discovery, made by a team of WSU researchers, marks the first-time scientists have identified residue from a non-tobacco plant in an archeological pipe. “The research casts doubt on the commonly held […]
Giddy at the end of another school year, middle schoolers in Nespelem, Washington, will charge into summer with a new way of viewing even their oldest and most familiar things, thanks to a WSU mathematics professor and her students. Clinical Associate Professor Kimberly Vincent and a small group of aspiring math teachers visited the sixth […]
Recent discoveries by a WSU history professor and his students may hold the key to an ongoing American West conflict. After nearly 10 years of research, Professor Orlan Svingen, along with students and colleagues in the WSU public history field schools, unearthed an official U.S. government document from 1870 and several supporting records that shed […]
A team of scientists including researchers from Washington State University has shown for the first time that nicotine residue can be extracted from plaque, also known as “dental calculus”, on the teeth of ancient tobacco users. Their research provides a new method for determining who was consuming tobacco in the ancient world and could help […]
Washington State University researchers have received a $555,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support development and evaluation of a unique online platform for gathering, curating and sharing Native American library and archive collections nationwide. This three-year grant follows a $69,500 grant by the Foundation to WSU in 2015 for the project-planning phase. […]
In the mid-to-late 1200s, some 30,000 ancestral pueblo farmers left their homes in southwestern Colorado’s Mesa Verde region and never returned. Where these people went and why they left are two of American archeology’s longest-standing mysteries.
The Society of American Archivists conferred its Council Exemplary Service Award to the Sustainable Heritage Network, a WSU-led project for digital preservation of cultural heritage managed by the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation. Read more at WSU News >>
WSU’s Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation recently received a $147,179 Digital Extension Grant from the American Council of Learned Societies to expand the Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal, a national archive of Native American cultural materials. Read more at WSU News >>