The Indigenous Food Knowledges Network: Building Indigenous Led Collaborations across Biomes

In recent decades, Indigenous community leaders and scholars have started a movement toward rectifying injustices and developing collaborations between Indigenous communities and mainstream researchers to address complex environmental challenges and policies of concern to Indigenous Peoples. This movement emphasizes community-driven research led by Indigenous Peoples' interests, Indigenous Knowledge systems and perspectives, in order to co-create knowledge collaborations while asserting Indigenous sovereignty. These collaborations employ Indigenous methodologies versus standard science practices. One example in the movement is the Indigenous Foods Knowledges Network (IFKN), a research coordination network funded by the National Science Foundation and designed to connect Indigenous communities and scholars across the Arctic and the US Southwest, two areas facing extreme environmental challenges. IFKN's goal is to develop a network of Indigenous leaders, citizens, Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars who are focused on research and community building capacity related to food sovereignty, its stories and culture which includes the health of the regional ecosystems and environmental policies. Relational accountability, data ownership and centering of story form the foundation for the methodological approaches and work of IFKN. It has created space for land-based knowledge exchanges between Indigenous peoples from the Arctic and US Southwest, a departure from most other research coordination networks funded by NSF. Our presentation will highlight IFKN's work and challenges in creating these relational partnerships among Indigenous peoples in the US Southwest and Arctic and how they can be applied to working with non-Indigenous researchers to co-create productive environmental research, policies and data.