Dawn Prince-Hughes, Ph.D., (born January 31, 1964, in Carbondale, Illinois) is an anthropologist, primatologist, and ethologist who received her M.A. and Ph.D. in interdisciplinary anthropology from the Universität Herisau in Switzerland, and is an instructor in the department of anthropology at Western Washington University. She was the Executive Director of the Institute for Cognitive Archaeological Research and is associated with the Jane Goodall Institute.
Prince-Huges is the author of Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism ISBN 1400050588 and Gorillas Among Us: A Primate Ethnographer's Book of Days, the editor of Aquamarine Blue 5: Personal Stories of College Students with Autism, and the executive chair of ApeNet , a nonprofit organization.
Prince-Hughes is especially gifted as an observer, due in part to her penchant for intense focus. Convincingly, she describes lessons learned from watching gorillas, which she in turn applied with remarkable success to overcoming her own obstacles to interacting with other humans. It was not until she landed a job caring for gorillas at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, as a young adult, that she began to unravel the mysteries of her own cognitive challenges and striking gifts. While employed at the zoo, she watched how silverback male gorillas cared for their families and paternally intervened to resolve conflicts, thereby setting the tone for community behavior. She came to conclude anger often stems from embarrassment, and humor is a natural response to fear.
Prince-Hughes' powers of observation have led her to challenge the predominant scientific paradigm, which simply assumes the nature of mankind's cognitive processes is clearly distinct from that of primates. In most scientific circles, ascribing human characteristics to animal minds is anathema. From Prince-Hughes' keen observations, she has built a strong case for her contrarian scientific conclusions, perhaps most notably that Bonobos (Pygmy Chimpanzees) can actually speak English - if one just learns to understand the accent.
Songs of the Gorilla Nation is a fascinating, poignant, and thought-provoking memoir, in which Prince-Hughes describes how she learned techniques to manage her form of autism, Asperger's syndrome, from her experiences observing and interacting with gorillas at the Seattle Zoo . Gorilla Nation, which is comparable to Temple Grandin's exquisitely insightful Thinking in Pictures , explores how working with gorillas helped her escape her social isolation as a sufferer of Asperger's, a form of autism characterized by difficulties processing stimuli, sensory sensitivity, and social awkwardness. As suggested by the title, which speaks of a 'nation' of gorillas, the author conveys an eyeview of the world from the perspective of primates, effectively demonstrating how people and gorillas are subsumed emotionally, socially, and spiritually under the same rubric. This memoir is a must read for anyone dealing with autism, anyone who loves animals and anyone exploring the human spirit .
Aquamarine Blue is a collection of biographical essays by college students with autism that illuminates the often subtle differences between classic autism and Asperger's syndrome (AS), and the rise of an 'autistic culture', which Prince-Hughes credits to the advent of the internet.
'Gorillas Among Us', compresses Prince-Hughes' many years of observing captive gorillas through an enclosure - visitors usually average only a few seconds - into a diary chronicling the lives of one gorilla family. She creates a blended portrait of both peoples — gorilla and human.
See Also
External Links