Indigenous Heritage Tourism Development in a (Post-)COVID World: Towards Social Justice at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, USA

While a growing body of literature explores tourism impacts in search of sustainable outcomes, research on justice in diverse tourism settings is nascent. Theoretically informed studies drawing from interdisciplinary perspectives are just beginning to emerge to help examine contestations and injustices such as addressed in the case study presented here. The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (or “Custer’s Last Stand” as some know it; LBH) is a protected heritage tourism site that commemorates a battle between Native American tribes and the U.S. military in 1876. Indigenous stakeholders have struggled for decades with the National Park Service to overturn a long legacy of misrepresentation and exclusion from the commemoration and development of the site for heritage tourism. Site closures and other effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic present additional challenges for Native American stakeholders like the Crow Tribe. Guided by Nancy Fraser’s principles of trivalent justice (redistribution, recognition, and representation), this qualitative study traces the conflict over heritage commemoration, and explores the potential for praxis through ethical tourism development and marketing. Fraser’s trivalent approach to justice demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary research to examine historically entrenched discrimination, redress injustices, and facilitate healing and well-being of diverse groups at sites like LBH.

Metagenomic Profiling of Microbial Pathogens in the Little Bighorn River, Montana

The Little Bighorn River is the primary source of water for water treatment plants serving the local Crow Agency population, and has special significance in the spiritual and ceremonial life of the Crow tribe. Unfortunately, the watershed suffers from impaired water quality, with high counts of fecal coliform bacteria routinely measured during run-off events. A metagenomic analysis was carried out to identify potential pathogens in the river water. The Oxford Nanopore MinION platform was used to sequence DNA in near real time to identify both uncultured and a coliform-enriched culture of microbes collected from a popular summer swimming area of the Little Bighorn River. Sequences were analyzed using CosmosID bioinformatics and, in agreement with previous studies, enterohemorrhagic and enteropathogenic Escherichia coli and other E. coli pathotypes were identified. Noteworthy was detection and identification of enteroaggregative E. coli O104:H4 and Vibrio cholerae serotype O1 El Tor, however, cholera toxin genes were not identified. Other pathogenic microbes, as well as virulence genes and antimicrobial resistance markers, were also identified and characterized by metagenomic analyses. It is concluded that metagenomics provides a useful and potentially routine tool for identifying in an in-depth manner microbial contamination of waterways and, thereby, protecting public health.

Cattle egrets and Bustards in Greek Art

There is a bird perched on the neck of a bull on a Late Bronze Age krater from Enkomi in the British Museum (plate I 1). It has long legs and a long neck, and it is much larger than any of the crow tribe, so often seen on cattle. Its long pointed bill is fixed on a point in the bull's neck probably removing a tick or something of the sort. The operation is painful and the bull tosses his head. On the other side of the vase the bird has lost his footing but still keeps the grip of his bill on the neck of the bull (plate I 2). That daggerlike bill is longer than the one on the other side of the vase. We must therefore suppose that the bill in the earlier scene has been inserted into the bull's neck to a considerable depth. No wonder the bull is plunging about to dislodge the operator.A bird with long neck, long legs, and long beak can only be a marsh bird, and as it is hunting for insects on the neck of a bull, it can only be a Cattle Egret (plate I 4.), though its body bears some resemblance to the bodies of birds which are probably meant for geese or swans; its beak is more formidable. Presumably this insect-hunting bird is not a deity revealing him or herself; but perhaps Cypriots are more secular than Mycenaeans.