Presenting my Project: PowerPoint Presentation and Abstract

The final steps of this project include writing a short abstract summarizing what my project was about, its purpose and its findings for a school program and presenting a PowerPoint presentation to the BASIS community. My presentation was yesterday and I feel that I performed to the best of my abilities and all went well. For those who could not be present, here are the conclusions I drew from my experience over these past months.

I set out to answer a few questions. Namely, what meaning feathers had to Native Americans today, if Native Americans and Native wildlife needs were met by current laws and finally, my main question was whether or not repositories could improve.

I found that as spiritual revivals of old customs and ceremonies grew in popularity, the demand for feathers dramatically rose. High demands resulted in longer waiting list times for repositories, leaving Native Americans without necessary feathers for months or even years. My research into ceremonies that use feathers has shown that home blessing ceremonies, coming of age celebrations, marriage ceremonies and graduation ceremonies all require feathers at a fixed point in time. Couple this with successful pesticide bans like DDT, many bird populations are currently flourishing. This results in anger directed at repositories.

Solutions to this problem are simple. Open more repositories in different geographical areas to lessen waiting lists and develop more lenient laws regarding found feathers. Also, start a very limited hunting permit program for Native American tribesmen. Finally, be patient. As bird populations increase, more feathers will come available.

CG