Pueblo pottery is a tangible element of ancestral ties to place and cultural continuity that is used to protect cultural landscapes. These landscapes face ongoing threats due to environmental contamination, energy development, and water management initiatives. Carine’s research aims to understand the reciprocal relationship between ceramics and the environment through understanding the process-of-making pottery as a place-making practice. Carine’s methods are grounded in Indigenous self-representation and include learning Indigenous Knowledge (IK) based ethnographic practices from Heritage Lands Collective, a non-profit organization dedicated to integrating IK into the management of ancestral lands, at sites across the Colorado Plateau. Carine is then drawing from these methods to conduct interviews with Pueblo ceramicists. By understanding ancestral connections to place and traditional pottery processes, her research aims to translate how Indigenous connections with the landscape are manifested in material culture. Through this process, pottery becomes a storytelling vessel that explores people’s past and present perceptions of the environment.
STUDENT RESEARCHER
Carine Rofshus – Western Resource Fellow | Carine is a Master’s in Environmental Science Candidate at the Yale School of Environment. Her research focuses on the integration of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and cultural resources stewardship through working with Indigenous communities in the U.S. Southwest. She is particularly interested in the relationship between traditional ceramics processes and the environment as place-making practices. Carine currently serves as a NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act) Assistant for the Yale Peabody Museum. Prior to Yale, Carine worked as an archaeologist for a native-women-owned small business dedicated to hazardous waste clean-up on Tribal, Federal, and Department of Defense lands. She has extensive experience on the Navajo Nation in addition to Arizona, Colorado, Guam, New Mexico, and Utah. Carine is a former National Park Service Cultural Interpretation volunteer for the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. She holds a BA in Art History from St. Olaf College and attended the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center Field School as a National Science Foundation Fellow. In her free time, she enjoys backpacking, figure skating, and watercolor painting. See what Carine has been up to.