Story-films helping to conserve Native Californian languages produced each semester by students in my Nature and World Cultures class are making international waves. A Feburary 2016 Al Jazeera story by reporter Rob Reynolds on the Hupa (Hoopa) tribe’s efforts to keep their language alive – “Hupa: A language that refuses to die“– contained a shout-out […]

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“An environment of hate – whether it is subliminal or overt, directed towards nature or cultures – perpetuates a polluted atmosphere. This pollution comes at a tremendous cost: a social cost, a medical cost, an ecological cost, an economic cost. And the pollution, in the form of racism, atmospheric particulate matter, and greenhouse gases, circulates […]

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Last year a committee of San José State University students hosted a mix of impressive people on our TEDxSJSU 2015 stage where they shared a diverse set of viewpoints. We’re excited to announce all eight talks can be freely accessed through the DrPfeiffer YouTube channel, on the TEDxSJSU 2015 playlist. Christina Ngo, a fluid engineer […]

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The construction of a Highway 101 bypass in Northern California is destroying cultural landscapes. Village sites, ancestral gathering, hunting, and fishing grounds, and culturally significant species  (salmon, elk, oaks, tule) for Pomo tribes in and around the town of Willits (Mendocino County) have been irreparably damaged. At present, mitigation plans for lost wetlands do not […]

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Students from my Fall 2015 San José State University class produced two micro-documentaries on different aspects of Bay Area Ohlone culture. The first film featured Kanyon Sayers-Roods, a Mutson (Coastanoan) Ohlone artist, activist, poet, crafter and Native representative. She speaks of her language, her life’s work, and a recently published book on Ohlone culture she produced […]

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