Environmental Collaborations Between Indigenous Communities and Western Science: Case Studies and Reflections
Abstract
The study of coupled natural and human systems in a changing world can benefit greatly from indigenous perspectives, which have the potential to bring deep, placed-based understanding to complex environmental issues while promoting sustainable solutions to pressing socio-environmental problems. In recent years, scientists have begun to embrace indigenous knowledge and perspectives, but indigenous voices in the sciences remain relatively few. At the same time, indigenous communities face wide ranging and unique vulnerabilities to global environmental change on a variety of fronts, particularly where water resources are concerned. Given this situation, indigenous scientists often find themselves bridging both western scientific and indigenous communities, sometimes embodying the nexus in a literal sense. Here I reflect on this nexus from the perspective of an indigenous hydrologist collaborating with American Indian communities in North Carolina, which has the largest American Indian population of any state in the eastern US. Intertwining case studies of coupled natural and human systems illustrate some of the the challenges, complexities, and successes of ongoing collaborations with tribal communities and Native-serving organizations on water resource issues, environmental impacts of food and energy production, and broadening participation of American Indians in the sciences.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMPA43A2180E
- Keywords:
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- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 4327 Resilience;
- NATURAL HAZARDSDE: 4329 Sustainable development;
- NATURAL HAZARDSDE: 6334 Regional planning;
- POLICY SCIENCES