Today Team Zaaga’igan participated in a discussion about what science is and what science isn’t. It was a great discussion to help us interns dispel some preconceptions about science that we had coming into this internship. For example, science is: limited to the natural world, biased and tentative. Science is not: based on proof or authority, fair or rigid. These were some of the discussions today that the interns discussed and debated while our on-site mentor, Christa Drake, informed us about these common misconceptions.

(Photo Caption: Team Zaaga’igan learning about science misconceptions from mentor, Christa Drake)

In the afternoon, we had our weekly conference call with the other teams in the SLAWR REU. It’s always interesting to hear the different research approaches to studying land and water resources. We will be meeting up with some of them in Minneapolis in the next week on our trip to the big city to work in their lab.

Later in the day we were able to spend some time working on our background sections of our papers. This is where we get to write about the historical aspects of our sites, along with the cultural and environmental aspects. For me, this excites me because I love to learn about the history of places (especially tribal histories) and look at all of the variables of a particular issue. For my team, studying Chi Bingwi, we are looking at mining, sulfates and wild rice decline on tribal ceded territory. Considering we spent most of our week in the lab, this was a nice break from absorbing so much technical information.

(Photo Caption: Interns Ida Clarke and Emilia Caylor help each other on background information)