"Riding the Waves of Change: Indigenous Knowledge and Identity of Local Surfers on Nicaragua's Pacific Coast," a presentation by Lindsay Usher, will be held from noon to 1 p.m. Feb. 20, in Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library. The event is free and open to the public, and can also be viewed live online at http://live.libraries.psu.edu by searching for the presentation date in the menu to bring up the direct link. (No log-in is required.)

Many people are unaware that indigenous groups continue to thrive in communities located along the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua. Las Salinas, where indigeneity is defined by castes, birth and land rights, is an indigenous community partially sustaining itself through surf tourism. Based on an ethnographic study conducted in Las Salinas, this lecture will explore the relationship between indigenous identity and surfer identity, and it will examine how indigenous surfers use local knowledge to negotiate the surf space as they find themselves having to share it with more tourists each year.

"Waste or Resource? Indigenous Uses of Cow Dung and Urine in Rural India" will be presented by Nripendra Singh at noon Tuesday (Dec. 4), in Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library. Singh is a Fulbright-Nehru Environmental Leadership Program Fellow at Penn State and is currently working on waste management in the School of Hospitality Management. His one-hour seminar will describe the many indigenous uses of cow dung and urine as a resource in rural India.

As Singh notes, the respect and regard paid to cows in India is well known, but the importance to rural Indians of the dung and urine of this sacred animal is often ignored. "Cow dung is used as a cooking fuel, sanitizing cleanser, construction material, for insulating and waterproofing walls and floors in rural houses, as a cultural symbol in religious worship and the raw material for producing organic compost and generating electricity.

Mariano Sanchez, visiting scholar in the Penn State Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology and Education, will present "How to Live to be 100: Indigenous Knowledge About Aging Well from Centenarians in Spain" at noon Oct. 24, in Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library. Sanchez, who is professor of sociology at the University of Granada, in Spain, will conduct this presentation as part of an ongoing series of seminars organized by the Interinstitutional Consortium for Indigenous Knowledge.

Penn State Libraries will host an "Indigenous Knowledge Showcase" from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 5, in Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library at the University Park campus of Penn State. Eva Pell, undersecretary for science at the Smithsonian Institution and former Penn State senior vice president for research and dean of the Graduate School, will deliver the keynote address from 10 to 11 a.m. on "The Importance of Indigenous Knowledge to the Academy."

The ICIK Seminar Series continues with "Exploring Indigenous Ways of Knowing among the Anishinaabeg," from noon to 1:30 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 13, in Foster Auditorium on the first floor of Paterno Library on Penn State's University Park campus. In the presentation, Bruce D. Martin and Penn State students will share there experiences during three weeks at the largest Ojibwe reservations in North America.