Dr. Nicole Redvers, ND, MPH presented the first talk in the microbes and equity series this spring paving the way for a summer symposium. Several friends recommended this talk, and I wanted to watch it this week. Redvers began by talking about their roots and indigenous community. Respect, relevance, and relatability were mentioned by Redvers as well as how terminology helps describe the relationships to our environment. Redvers talked about the Mayan cosmocentric worldview and displayed an image from Lucero and Cruz 2020 showing the earth at the center and Eco “we”. Equity and self-determination were discussed using a now common image of a brown family trying to watch a baseball game over a fence. A question I had never considered was asked by Redvers: who says the family wants to watch that game? Microbes and reciprocity were discussed in the context of the interactions and interconnections. “Stewardship of the human microbiome” has important health implications, and Redvers suggested a change in our vocabulary. Redvers proposed a decolonizing at the micro level and cited a recent publication I now want to look into: Redvers et al. 2020. Emphasizing a “rebalancing of narratives” Redvers explained that all lifeforms are interconnected and the impact is bidirectional. The current pandemic and how Indigenous communities had predicted the sickness of our planet were eloquently explained. Redvers reminded us that it is easy to get lost in the deficits when talking about equity, and that we must remember the strengths in our communities.
You cannot have the knowledge without the people, and you cannot have the people without the land… our knowledge is derived from the land.
Dr. Nicole Redvers, 2021
At the end, Redvers talked about teaching Indigenous graduate students and how enriching this experience has been. During the question session, an attendee asked about self-determination and the pushback against Indigenous communities. Redvers discussed how some Indigenous students’ voices were still silenced by Western ways of thinking about the world and how they had to fight to be heard. While demoralizing to face constant challenges like these, Redvers emphasized how increasingly their voices and ideas are becoming critical. Several questions about communicating with Indigenous communities were nicely answered by Redvers highlighting how for collaborations we must do our homework to interact with reciprocity. A question about microbiome and cleaning during the pandemic came up, and Redvers answered in a way that I was really excited about. Redvers stressed the importance of hand washing and the evidence behind the hygiene hypothesis. As a microbiologist who has been trying to keep his family safe and purchased hand sanitizers and air purifiers (yes… I know…) and also lives with an immunologist who is immunocompromised, this discussion has come up several times this past year. I am ok with our kids eating dirt while gardening with their grandparents and breathing in the pollen. We just wash our hands in the house as we continue talking about the awesome microbes that we share our Earth with…
