World Cultures

Douglas W. Hume is the Director of Assessment, Accreditation, Curriculum and General Education, a Professor of Anthropology, and the Director of the Center for Applied Anthropology at Northern Kentucky University. He earned his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Connecticut and is the author of “Legacy of the Ethnographic Field School in Belize” (2025), “Transmission of Swidden Farming Ritual Knowledge among Households in Eastern Madagascar” (2020), “Darkness in Academia: Cultural Models of How Anthropologists and Journalists Write about Controversy” (2016), “Malagasy Swidden Agriculture: The Influence of Conservation Organizations on Indigenous Knowledge” (2012), “Belief Systems and Stakeholders in Madagascar’s Swidden Farming” (2009a), “Vary Gasy: Meanings of Rice and Implications for Agricultural Development in Eastern Madagascar” (2009b), “Swidden Agriculture and Conservation in Eastern Madagascar: Stakeholder Perspectives and Cultural Belief Systems” (2006), as well as numerous other publications. He co-edited the third edition of Native Nations: The Survival of Fourth World Peoples (2020) with Sharlotte Neely. He led an ethnographic field school in northern Belize for over a decade and has published several articles and reports from research with his students (e.g., Murrell and Hume 2018; Hume et al. 2024).

Sharlotte Neely is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Northern Kentucky University. After earning her B.A. in anthropology from Georgia State University, she earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was the sole editor of the first (2014) and second (2017) editions, and co-editor with Douglas Hume of the third edition of Native Nations: The Survival of Fourth World Peoples (2020). She is the author of the book, Snowbird Cherokees: People of Persistence (2021), as well as dozens of other publications. Snowbird Cherokees (1993) has been the inspiration for the award-winning film of the same name. Recently the 30th anniversary edition of Snowbird Cherokees (2021) was published with a new foreword written by Indigenous People from both the Cherokee Nation (Oklahoma Cherokees) and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (North Carolina Cherokees). One of the themes of her research is that it is not contradictory for Indigenous Peoples to be both traditional and adaptive.

Sources Cited

Hume, Douglas W. 2006. “Swidden Agriculture and Conservation in Eastern Madagascar: Stakeholder Perspectives and Cultural Belief Systems.” Conservation and Society 4 (2): 287–303. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26396662.

—. 2009a. “Belief Systems and Stakeholders in Madagascar’s Swidden Farming.” Current Conservation 2 (4): 14.

—. 2009b. “Vary Gasy: Meanings of Rice and Implications for Agricultural Development in Eastern Madagascar.” Etudes Océan Indien, Plantes et Sociétés dans L’Océan Indien Occidental, 42/43: 243–56. https://doi.org/10.4000/oceanindien.812.

—. 2012. “Malagasy Swidden Agriculture: The Influence of Conservation Organizations on Indigenous Knowledge.” Kentucky Journal of Anthropology and Sociology 2 (1): 37–54.

—. 2016. “Darkness in Academia: Cultural Models of How Anthropologists and Journalists Write About Controversy.” World Cultures EJournal 21 (1). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/75j9q56x.

—. 2020. “Transmission of Swidden Farming Ritual Knowledge among Households in Eastern Madagascar.” Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science 4 (1): 45–57. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41809-019-00041-5.

—. 2025. “Legacy of the Ethnographic Field School in Belize.” Annals of Anthropological Practice 49 (1): e12233. https://doi.org/10.1111/napa.12233.

Hume, Douglas W., Lea B. Baker, Corinne R. Campbell, Claire H. Croxton, Tristan T. Cruz, Rebbecca M. Eder, Eric Mendez, Manuel Perez, Maria Stone, Ripley E. Winters, and Jessica Lott. 2025. “Report of the Ethnographic Field School in Belize (Summer 2024).” Highland Heights: Center for Applied Anthropology, NKU. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.16135.30881/1.

Murrell, Laura Bronte, and Douglas W. Hume. 2018. “A Comparison of Farmers’ Perceived Impacts on the Environment in Belize and Kentucky.” Contemporary Journal of Anthropology and Sociology 8 (1): 19–33.

Neely, Sharlotte. 1993. Snowbird Cherokees. First Edition. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.

—, ed. 2014. Native Nations: The Survival of Fourth World Peoples, First Edition. Vernon, BC: JCharlton Publishing.

—, ed. 2017. Native Nations: The Survival of Fourth World Peoples, Second Edition. Vernon, BC: JCharlton Publishing.

—. 2021. Snowbird Cherokees: People of Persistence. Anniversary Edition. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.