Today was the second day of the CAIRNS director’s five-day Visiting Professorship Residency at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Yesterday his residency kicked-off with a lunch and conversation with faculty and graduate students, primarily from the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative (NAIS) and the Science, Technology and Society (STS) Program. NAIS and STS sponsored the director’s residency. The afternoon talk introduced the Ocheti Shakowian Confederacy, its Titonwanian orate, and a basic overview of how winter counts were organized and what they were drawn on. The core of the talk, based on the Swift Dog winter count, explored its references to stars, meteors and comets, plus traditional Lakotan narratives linked to stars. The photo above was taken by Lukas Rieppel.