John Stocke

Native American Skies

John Stocke, Astronomy Professor in the Astrophysical & Planetary Sciences Department at the University of Colorado, and board member of the Center of the American West, will present “Native American Skies” at the Fiske Planetarium on the CU campus at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 2. This multimedia show will feature the traditional star knowledge of three Native American tribes who all live within one day’s drive of Boulder. The Lakota, the Pueblo, and the Navajo cultures are each quite distinct from one another and all exist in contrast to the usual scientific framework used in studying the skies. Likewise, the star knowledge of each is rich and distinct. Using the Fiske star projector as a time and space machine, we will follow the Lakota on their yearly pilgrimage through the Black Hills guided by the stars; in Chaco Canyon we will unravel the mysteries of the ancestral Pueblo “Sundagger,” a unique rock art site dedicated to the precise tracking of the sun and moon; and in the lands of Dine’tah we will hear the Navajo creation story with the wise trickster coyote guiding the placing of the stars.