The Peach Stone Bowl Game is a game played during the Midwinter Ceremonies of the Rotinonhsonni (Iroquois) people of Ontario, Quebec, and New York State. The design of the Peach Stone Bowl Game is some interest to mathematicians, in particular the design issues related to the fairness of the game and the expected stopping time of the game. In this talk, Dr Edward Doolittle will present the game and analysis of a simplified version of the game using Markov theory and computer simulations to support the assertion that the game was carefully designed through experimental means in order to meet the ceremonial and social requirements of the game. The work is joint with his graduate student, Mr Layne Burns from James Smith Cree Nation in Saskatchewan.

Speaker Biography: Associate Professor Edward Doolittle is Kanyen’kehake (Mohawk) from Six Nations in southern Ontario. He earned a PhD in pure mathematics (partial differential equations) from the University of Toronto in 1997. From then until 2001 he worked for Queen’s University’s Aboriginal Teacher Education Program, helping to administer the program and teaching Indigenous Mathematics Education, and from 2000 to 2001 he studied the Mohawk language in immersion with Onkwewenna Kentsyohkwa (Our Language Group) on Six Nations. From 2001 he has been on the faculty of First Nations University and the University of Regina, currently as Associate Professor of Mathematics and Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS), a recipient of the Adrien Pouliot Award from the CMS, and a recipient of a Governor General’s Gold Medal from the Governor General of Canada.