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WATER AND THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

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WATER AND THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

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Now that Fresno State is a member of the United Nations Development Compact, we look at issues like water in a global sense. While the goals are intersectional -- overlapping and interdependent -- Goal 6 most applies: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all.

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Simply, what's private is now public, thanks to networked citizens, Here's what we found:

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What do these people have in common? They all are calling on President Joe Biden to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline.

In a letter released Monday, Feb. 8, more than 200 climate activists, Indigenous leaders and celebrities urged the Biden administration to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline during a court-ordered environmental review of its effects on the land near the Standing Rock Reservation.

On Wednesday, Feb. 10, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will appear in court and decide whether the pipeline can continue to operate while the environmental review is in progress.

Last month, Biden revoked the construction permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, a project given the go-ahead by former President Donald Trump. The coalition of people calling for DAPL's shutdown are hoping Biden will act in a similar fashion.

"As your Administration takes action to address the climate crisis and strengthen relationships with Indigenous communities, we respectfully urge you to reverse another harmful Trump Administration decision and immediately shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) during its court-ordered environmental review," the letter states.

DAPL is located on land with cultural significance for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and the risk of an oil spill could compromise the tribal nation's water supply, the tribal nation says.

Some of the celebrities who signed the letter include several cast members of "The Avengers," as well as Leonardo DiCaprio, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Silverman, Josh Gad and Jason Momoa, among others.

The list also includes multiple climate change organizations like the Indigenous Environmental Network, Natural Resources Defense Council and IllumiNative.

The letter was released in advance of a 93-mile run that will occur on the Standing Rock Reservation on Tuesday, Feb. 9, in an effort to bring nationwide attention to the issue and put pressure on the Biden administration.

"With your leadership, we have a momentous opportunity to protect our water and respect our environmental laws and the rights of Indigenous people. This is our moment," the letter states.
Readers can reach Forum reporter Michelle Griffith, a Report for America corps member, at mgriffith@forumcomm.com.

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Celebrities, activists urge Biden to shut down Dakota Access pipeline | INFORUM

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What do these people have in common? They all are calling on President Joe Biden to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline. In a letter released Monday, Feb. 8, more than 200 climate activists, Indigenous leaders and celebrities urged the Biden administration to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline during a court-ordered environmental review of its effects on the land near the Standing Rock Reservation.

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VIDEOS are sophisticated, plentiful, and awash on YouTube and unique podcasts. With Google maps and other tools illuminating hidden camps and cell phone footage, social activists rely more on real-time filming than press events to prove their points. Indigenous Action features podcasts about "anti-colonial agitation and action" with a call to action for mobilization about two land and water defenders who protested a border wall that would desecrate O'odham Lands in Arizona. Emergence Magazine has several videos on the native nations and the importance of water and culture preservation.
Ted talks have thousands of views. A couple are Native Americans : We Shall Remain,  The Standing Rock resistance and our fight for indigenous rights, and Vice’s coverage on the subject matter in 2015, Living Without Water: Contamination Nation.

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For the 2021 One World Symposium and Diversity Awareness Week at California State University, Fresno, the spring MCJ 180 class studied how strategic media helps tribal and indigenous populations challenge and reinforce messages about water. We are especially interested in how tribal messaging differs from mainstream, as well as how broadcast media (such as traditional TV and newspaper channels) are superseded by narrowcast media (including Twitter, Facebook, and other channels building word-of-mouth via circles of people).

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Gone are the days of fundraising lunches for donor dollars; instead, flash mobs and planned protests happen everywhere from a Wal-Mart and mall in Prince Albert to the continuing protests in South Dakota, organizers also post upcoming events in Europe and Africa.

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We found many "press" pieces on social media and also on tribal sites. Anti-fracking brochures can be downloaded through Scribd, event alerts and updates are blasted on Twitter, and regional networks are alerted on Facebook pages. Ethics in activism was an occasional note, such as when the Friends of the Earth was forced to withdraw misleading information in the U.K.

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Environmental charity Friends of the Earth has been forced to withdraw notices about the impact of fracking for shale gas after Britain's advertising regulator found they could not be backed up with evidence.

The Advertising Standards Authority ruling related to a fundraising leaflet that said fracking increased the risk of cancer and asthma for local residents and would cause water contamination, plummeting house prices and higher insurance bills.

Energy companies called the decision a victory against "anti-fracking myths" propagated by opponents of hydraulic fracturing - a process that involves pumping water, sand and chemicals underground to break apart rock and release trapped gas.

"Friends of the Earth's repeated falsehoods have been exposed as nothing more than scaremongering designed to frighten the public into giving it money," said Francis Egan, chief executive of Cuadrilla, which has been at the forefront of efforts to open UK shale gas resources to exploration.

Friends of the Earth accused Cuadrilla of trying to "shut down opposition to fracking" and vowed to continue campaigning against the practice, which has transformed the US energy industry but has largely failed to take off elsewhere.

The ruling was a second setback for Friends of the Earth in a month: in December, it failed to persuade the UK High Court to block planning permission for fracking at a site near Kirby Misperton in North Yorkshire.

Britain's nascent shale gas industry has been showing signs of renewed momentum since the UK government gave the go-ahead last October for fracking near Blackpool in Lancashire - five years after the Cuadrilla project was put on hold due to small earth tremors caused by exploratory drilling.

Anti-fracking activists have been intensifying their campaign in response; protesters camped out over Christmas at the proposed fracking site in Yorkshire.

Wednesday's ruling by the advertising watchdog involved a magazine insert titled "Pat Saved Her Home From Fracking. You Can Save Yours Too".

Cuadrilla challenged claims in the flyer that a "toxic cocktail of chemicals" used in fracking "could end up in your drinking water" and could cause health conditions ranging from cancer and asthma to problems with the eyes, skin and nervous system.

The regulator said it had approached Friends of the Earth with the concerns that had been raised about its advertisement and the group had "agreed not to repeat the claims, or claims that had the same meaning".

Friends of the Earth told the Financial Times that this fell short of a formal ruling and that the ASA had dropped the case. However, the regulator said that, while the ruling was informal, it had the power to take enforcement action if the claims were repeated.

"We have told Friends of the Earth not to make claims about the likely effects of fracking on the health of local populations, drinking water, or property prices in the absence of adequate evidence," the ASA added.

The ruling followed a 14-month investigation into the leaflet, which was illustrated with a picture of Grasmere in the Lake District National Park, where there are no plans for fracking.

"After many attempts by Friends of the Earth to delay this decision, the charity's admission that all of the claims it made . . . were false should hopefully put a stop to it misleading the UK public on fracking," said Mr Egan.

Donna Hume, senior campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said the case was intended by Cuadrilla "to distract from the real issues about fracking, and how burning fossil fuels is dangerous for climate change".

She added: "We continue to campaign against fracking, alongside local people, because the process of exploring for and extracting shale gas is inherently risky for the environment, this is why fracking is banned or put on hold in so many countries."

Letter in response to this article:
Fracking's risks to health are well documented / From Prof Andrew Watterson and others

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Friends of the Earth forced to withdraw anti-fracking leaflets

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Environmental charity Friends of the Earth has been forced to withdraw notices about the impact of fracking for shale gas after Britain's advertising regulator found they could not be backed up with evidence.

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WATER IS LIFE: Running Water and Fishing

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WATER IS LIFE: Running Water and Fishing

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Unlike the Occupy Wall Street movement, which faded away because of dwindling leadership and focus, the Water is Life movement is successfully bringing together many activist networks that can spring into action with coordinated efforts and effective messaging.  For instance, the Indigenous Environmental Network can pivot into other areas because of its collective alliances in environmental justice.

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Indigenous Environmental Network | Respecting and Adhering to Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Law

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Indigenous Environmental Network | Respecting and Adhering to Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Law

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The Indigenous Environmental Network is an alliance of grassroots Indigenous Peoples whose mission is to protect the sacredness of Mother Earth from contamination and exploitation by strengthening, maintaining, and respecting traditional teachings and natural laws.

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Future studies may want to see how women-run organizations unite for global causes and whether they are seen as threats, For instance, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s movement draws attention to the proportionately high ratios of crimes against indigenous women. Additionally, Indigenous women have initiated a Water is Life movement over the years.

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ALABAMA

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

ALASKA
We Are Calling to You: Alaska's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Womxn and Girls.
ARIZONA

Reducing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls: Arizona's Statewide Study in Partnership with the HB2570 Legislative Study Committee .

ARKANSAS

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

CALIFORNIA

To'Kee Skuy'Soo Ney-wo-Chek' - I Will See You Again in a Good Way .

COLORADO

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

CONNECTICUT

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

DELWARE

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

FLORIDA

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

GEORGIA

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

HAWAII

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

IDAHO
Idaho Summit on Missing & Murdered Indigenous People Report.
ILLINOIS

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

INDIANA

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

IOWA

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

KANSAS

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

KENTUCKY

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

LOUISIANA

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

MAINE

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

MARYLAND

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

MASSACHUSETTS

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

MICHIGAN

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

MINNESOTA
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Task Force: A Report to the Minnesota Legislature. Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota
MISSISSIPPI

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

MISSOURI

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

MONTANA

Looping in Native Communities: Report to the State-Tribal Relations Interim Committee.

NEBRASKA

LB154 Report: Prevalence of Missing Native American Women and Children in Nebraska; Barriers to Reporting and Investigating; and Opportunities for Partnerships .

NEVADA

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

NEW JERSEY

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

NEW MEXICO
New Mexico Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives.
NEW YORK

There is a current MMIWGT2S NYC+ Task Force Application . However, there are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

NORTH CAROLINA

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

NORTH DAKOTA

Refer to South Dakota. However, there is no publicly available state-specific report or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

OHIO

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

OKLAHOMA

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

OREGON

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Report. This report is preceded by the Oregon State Police Report on Missing and Murdered Native American Women: Listening and Understanding Tour House Bill 2625.

PENNSYLVANIA

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

RHODE ISLAND

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

SOUTH CAROLINA

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

SOUTH DAKOTA
Zuya Wicayuonihan Honoring Warrior Women: A study on missing & murdered Indigenous women and girls in states impacted by the Keystone XL pipeline
TENNESSEE

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

There will be a Missing and Murdered Unit office located in Nashville at the BIA OJS Office.

TEXAS

There are no publicly available reports or statistics . If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

UTAH
The Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah Position Statement
VERMONT

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

VIRGINIA

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

WASHINGTON
Missing & Murdered Native American Women Report
WEST VIRGINIA

There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

WISCONSIN

MMIW Task Force WI: Strategic Plan and Toolkit. Menīkānaehkem Inc. is a women's leadership cohort that addresses MMIW. They created a strategic plan and toolkit for Wisconsin. However, there are currently no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org.

WYOMING
Missing & Murdered Indigenous People: Statewide Report Wyoming
The state mandated reports illustrate a distressing reality for Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit persons. Underreporting and misclassification are prevalent challenges when diagnosing the problem of MMIWG2. However, Indigenous women and girls are at a higher risk of going missing and being murdered than the general population. Fortunately, there is more mainstream visibility about this issue now than in the past 40 years. While most of the western states in the United States of America have implemented a statewide study or are in the interim, Colorado and Nevada have yet to begin this critical conversation. As demonstrated by the statewide reports, violence does not stop at state borders. Given that Colorado is surrounded by several states with large Native populations and has a 1% Native population density in Denver, there is a practical need for Colorado to investigate the prevalence of MMIWG2 within its borders.

Information provided by: Felicia Bartley, Isleta Pueblo

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ALABAMA There are no publicly available reports or statistics. If this is inaccurate and you know of resources, please contact info@nativewomenswilderness.org. ALASKA We Are Calling to You: Alaska's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Womxn and Girls. ARIZONA Reducing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls: Arizona's Statewide Study in Partnership with the HB2570 Legislative Study Committee .

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RAVEN (respecting aboriginal and environmental needs) has its own campaign dedicated to the movement and takes on fundraising in partnership with Indigenous nations. With the Colorado River Crisis, there is not a central website, so RAVEN can help fill that informational need.  For instance, many mainstream media articles simply describe the Colorado River and legal issues without covering tribal viewpoints.

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We are RAVEN. Join us in our mission to provide access to justice for Indigenous Nations. Supporting the assertion of the inherent and constitutionally-protected rights of Indigenous Peoples is a powerful pathway towards reconciliation and environmental justice. Working together we've raised millions of dollars to back some of the most groundbreaking legal challenges of our...

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This timeline is well organized and I loved reading it. Super cool topic and I am excited to see where this topic leads too.

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This movement ties into other activist movements fighting for one common goal, to save and restore indigenous resources. Different activist groups can also be found at Democracynow.com.

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Democracy Now! coverage of resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. If completed, the $3.8 billion pipeline would carry about 500,000 barrels of crude per day from North Dakota's Bakken oilfield to Illinois. The project has faced months of resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and members of nearly 100 more tribes from across the U.S. and Canada.

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Democracy Now! covers Dakota Access Pipeline

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Democracy Now! coverage of resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline, which would carry about 500,000 barrels of crude per day from North Dakota's Bakken oilfield to Illinois.

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The history of tribal and indigenous activism can be traced back for generations since European contact; for this project, we focused on stories told by tribal and non-tribal media from the 1960’s until March, 2021.

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I thought the timeline was incredibly interesting and put together so well! I really enjoyed getting to learn more about the present activism going on!

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Timeline is absolutely phenomenal. I appreciate how well laid out it was, and careful choice of imagery to bring the timeline to life. Seeing these events laid out makes it clear how many atrocities have occurred regarding Indigenous nations in this country.

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In an effort to reclaim the Klamath River, the Yurok Tribe collaborated with the University of California Davis Superfund Research Program to identify contaminants in the  watershed that affect the local ecosystem and community health. The groundwork for this project included Yurok-led river sampling, Yurok traditional ecological knowledge, University lab analysis, and a collaborative interpretation of results.
Well known media outlets like Vice News, Dams Are Threatening California Salmon and a Native Tribe's Culture, High Country News, How the Yurok Tribe is reclaiming the Klamath River,Outside Magazine, The Klamath River is the Lifeblood of the Yurok Tribe, and KCET of Southern California have content on Youtube regarding the matter- Tending the Wild: Keeping the River.

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Abstract

The Yurok Tribe partnered with the University of California Davis (UC Davis) Superfund Research Program to identify and address contaminants in the Klamath watershed that may be impairing human and ecosystem health. We draw on a community-based participatory research approach that begins with community concerns, includes shared duties across the research process, and collaborative interpretation of results. A primary challenge facing University and Tribal researchers on this project is the complexity of the relationship(s) between the identity and concentrations of contaminants and the diversity of illnesses plaguing community members. The framework of bi-directional learning includes Yurok-led river sampling, Yurok traditional ecological knowledge, University lab analysis, and collaborative interpretation of results. Yurok staff and community members share their unique exposure pathways, their knowledge of the landscape, their past scientific studies, and the history of landscape management, and University researchers use both specific and broad scope chemical screening techniques to attempt to identify contaminants and their sources. Both university and tribal knowledge are crucial to understanding the relationship between human and environmental health. This paper examines University and Tribal researchers' shared learning, progress, and challenges at the end of the second year of a five-year Superfund Research Program (SRP) grant to identify and remediate toxins in the lower Klamath River watershed. Our water quality research is framed within a larger question of how to best build university-Tribal collaboration to address contamination and associated human health impacts.

Keywords: Indigenous, contamination, community, bi-directional, health

1. Introduction

1.1. History and Landscape of Contamination at Yurok Indian Reservation (YIR)

The Yurok Tribe is currently the largest federally recognized Native American Tribe in the state of California, with over 6000 members. Since time immemorial, Yurok People have inhabited lands of the Lower Klamath and Trinity Rivers as well as along the Pacific Coast, extending from the mouth of the Little River near McKinleyville, California (CA), north approximately 70 miles to the mouth of Damnation Creek near Crescent City, CA. Yurok ancestral lands encompass an area of approximately 360,000 acres. The natural resources of the Klamath River, its surrounding lands, and the Pacific Ocean are central to the lives of Yurok People. Yurok People maintain cultural, economic, and spiritual ties to these ancestral lands through subsistence use and stewardship of traditional resources. The mosaic of marine, coastal, riverine, estuarine, lagoon, forestlands (redwood, fir, oak, cedar, spruce, and pine), prairielands, and high mountain environments is the cultural landscape of the Yurok, and Tribal members assert their "...traditional responsibility and aboriginal right to manage and utilize these places and resources, which has never been relinquished" [ 1]. Traditional Yurok law is woven into the Constitution, which mandates the Council to "...provide for the health, education, economy, and social wellbeing of our members and future members; restore, enhance, and manage the Tribal fishery, Tribal water rights, Tribal forests, and all other natural resources..." [ 2]. A portion of Yurok traditional lands are recognized as the Yurok Indian Reservation (YIR). The YIR is located in northwestern Humboldt and southwestern Del Norte Counties. The YIR consists of an approximately 59,000-acre corridor of land including the Klamath River, and extends for one mile from each side of the Klamath River, 46 miles from the mouth of the Klamath River to the Pacific Ocean upriver to approximately three miles above the town of Weitchpec ().

The segment of the Klamath River running through Tribal lands is approximately 16% of the total length of the Klamath River measured from the outlet of Upper Klamath Lake to the Pacific Ocean. The Reservation includes two separate distinct populated areas, generally known as the Lower Reservation (area that surrounds the "lower" part of the Klamath River where it flows into the Pacific Ocean near Requa) and the Upper Reservation (area that surrounds the "up-river" portion of the Klamath River where the Trinity River flows into the Klamath River near Weitchpec).

Approximately 5090 acres are held in trust status within the YIR. The remaining lands in the YIR are fee lands, a majority of which are owned by Green Diamond Resource Company (GD, Seattle, WA, USA), and managed for industrial timber products. A small portion of the YIR consists of public lands managed by Redwood National/State Parks (RNSP), the United States Forest Service (USFS), and a number of other private landholdings. Approximately 960 people live on the YIR with most of the remaining Tribal members living nearby in Humboldt and Del Norte counties. The distinctive location of the Yurok lands that lie in the last 45 miles before the Klamath River enters the Pacific Ocean makes them a final catchment for the many residues used throughout the entire 15,751 square mile Klamath River watershed [ 3]. Increases in the adverse health conditions of Tribal members along with declines in the Klamath River fisheries over the last three decades have intensified interest and concern among Tribal members about the general condition of the Klamath River and their ancestral territories. As one Yurok elder, and member of the Superfund Community Advisory Committee stated, "Why, when we are trying to live a good life, do we end up with leukemia and fish and game contamination?" The Yurok Tribal Council and membership have identified the health of the Klamath River, its fishery, and the continued dependence on key subsistence species (including salmon, sturgeon, and pacific lamprey) as a primary concern for the Tribe and its future [ 4, 5].

1.2. Yurok Tribe Environmental Program (YTEP) Work to Analyze, Remediate, Protect Community

The health of the environment, particularly the reservation environment and those traditional resources used for cultural, ceremonial, economic, and subsistence practices, are of primary importance to Yurok People. In 1998, the Yurok Tribe Environmental Program (YTEP) was formed in response to community-based concerns and continues to be led by community-based participatory research (CBPR) to identify and respond to community perceptions, priorities, and research objectives as approved by the Yurok Tribal Council. The YTEP's mission is to protect the lands, air and water resources of the Yurok Reservation for the benefit of current and future generations of Tribal members. YTEP staff utilize science, traditional knowledge and environmental regulation for the purposes of enhancing Tribal sovereignty and expanding environmental regulatory authority of the Tribe to promote and protect these resources within the Yurok Reservation. The YTEP consists of three divisions: water, pollution prevention, and community and ecosystems.

Over the past 21 years, the YTEP has progressively developed extensive experience in surface and groundwater monitoring activities and expanded its capacity to monitor for environmental and public health concerns with awards from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) under the Clean Water Act Section 106, 104 (b) (3) and 319 grants, General Assistance Program, and their National Center for Environmental Research [ 6, 7]. In addition, the YTEP has received the US EPA's Environmental Achievement Award due its innovation in environmental protection practices and ability to produce measurable results [ 8].

The YTEP has been successfully participating in and conducting environmental assessments, sampling, and research since its inception. The YTEP currently conducts water quality monitoring as a member of the Klamath Basin Monitoring Program, a workgroup with members from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, PacifiCorp, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, US EPA, State Water Resource Control Board, North Coast Water Quality Control Board, U.S. Forest Service, California Department of Water Resources, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Salmon River Restoration Council, Karuk Tribe, Hoopa Tribe, and numerous other partners. Among other agencies, the YTEP also works collaboratively with the California North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board for data collection needed to develop Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) discharge limits as well as the California Department of Public Health for monitoring of shellfish poisons within their Ancestral Territory.

The YTEP employs seven full-time staff with Bachelor's degrees or higher and generally five technicians or interns with some college experience. All have been trained in rigorous quality assurance and control procedures and follow a US EPA-approved Quality Assurance Program Plan and numerous associated Sampling and Analysis Plans. Staff expertise includes the use and maintenance of data sondes, temperature probes, flow meters, data loggers, passive sampling, biota testing, and air quality monitoring devices. In addition, the YTEP performs robust data management and analysis, including entry into the Yurok Environmental Data Storage System (YEDSS) and transmission to the US EPA's database for Air and Water Quality (AQS and WQX), and web published the YTEP Annual Water Year Report for water years 2005 through 2015.

With funding from sources including the Administration for Native Americans (2008-2009), and the Environmental Protection Agency's National Center for Environmental Research: Science and Technology to Achieve Results program (2008-2012), the YTEP has been investigating the presence of selected contaminants and toxins in the local environment that are suspected to be associated with observed adverse health outcomes.

Under the 2008-2009 Administration for Native Americans (ANA) grant, the YTEP compiled data and information on potential and known point source locations of contaminants and toxins, identifying and verifying over 200 potential environmental pollutant sites, including illegal dumpsites, abandoned autos, herbicide spraying, burned homes, faulty septic systems, old mill sites, old mining sites, previously cleaned dumpsites, old home sites, and historic logging activity where machinery fluids were often improperly disposed into soil and waterways [ 9, 10]. This data was stored in the YTEP's secure and searchable Yurok Environmental Data Storage System (YEDSS) database. The YTEP has also completed numerous other recent environmental studies, including an Environmental Community Health Profile 2004-2011 [ 3], tissue sampling of subsistence food species for contaminants 2010-2012 [ 7] and a Source Water Assessment and Protection Program for Tribal Drinking Water Systems 2013-2014 [ 11]. An overview of the documented chemicals can be found in .

Table 1

(N-Methyl) Carbamates

overstimulation of nerves, causing muscle weakness

central nervous system depression and pulmonary edema in serious cases, and headache

salivation, sweating, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain

Dioxins/Furans

skin damage

neurological and immune system impairments in infants

endocrine system disruption and associated insulin resistance, obesity, type II diabetes, and increased cancers of breast, testes, prostate and thyroid

attention deficiencies

lowered intelligence quotient (IQ)

Mercury

damage to the gastrointestinal tract and kidneys

impaired neurological development and reduced peripheral vision, "pins and needles" sensations, and muscle weakness including impairment of speech, hearing and walking

Microcystins

hepatotoxicity with associated vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, malaise, and muscle fasciculations

abdominal breathing

convulsions

Organochlorine Pesticides (1st group)

neurotoxicity and associated hyperexcitable state in the brain

convulsions

possible human carcinogen, with increased liver tumors and breast, testes, prostate and thyroid cancers

immune disruption and associated non-Hodgkin lymphoma

endocrine system disruption

insulin resistance, obesity, and type II diabetes

attention deficiencies

Organophosphate Pesticides (2nd group)

neurotoxicity and associated muscle weakness

paralysis of the extremities

muscle twitching

loss of consciousness, nausea and diarrhea

respiratory depression and failure

hypersecretion, with increased sweating, salivation, lacrimation and rhinorrhea

increased incidence of Parkinson's disease

reduced levels of testosterone

Phenols including pentachlorophenol (PCP) and trichlorophenol (TCP)

thyroid endocrine system disruption, with associated insulin resistance, obesity and type II diabetes

increased cancers, attention deficiencies, and lowered IQ

However, according to the YTEP's 2010 final report on the ANA grant, there remains "insufficient and incomplete data on the extent of environmental contaminants throughout the YIR." This is in conjunction with a jurisdictional framework that does not recognize the Yurok Tribe's regulatory authority over all lands and waters within the boundaries of the Yurok reservation. This condition dates back to a history of appropriation of Yurok ancestral lands by the federal government, private companies, and private citizens [ 12, 13, 14]. The management of private lands in the basin, including privately owned land within the YIR boundaries, has been dominated by intensive timber harvest for the last 100 years. This harvest has included the use of pesticides that are currently banned on lands under Yurok Tribal jurisdiction [ 4, 15]. This has impacted the Tribe's federal trust natural resources [ 9, 10]. Over the last several years, the Tribe has worked diligently, expanding programs and projects to increase information and capacity to identify and respond to threats to environmental and public health within reservation boundaries [ 10].

In addition to addressing intensive timberland management (including chemical spraying) on private lands within reservation boundaries, the Yurok Tribe has determined that there is significant impact to soil and surface water from illegal marijuana cultivation to the land and water on the Yurok Reservation. Possible impacts identified in a 2014 contracted study with Freshwater Environmental Services include: the presence of petroleum compounds used for generators, construction equipment, pumps, and other uses; the use of insecticides for insect control; the use of herbicides for vegetation control; the use of anticoagulant rodenticides for rodent control; and the use of fertilizers and nutrients to enhance growth [ 16].

On 5 September 2013, the Yurok Tribe passed the Yurok Tribe Controlled Substances Ordinance, explicitly prohibiting marijuana cultivation within Yurok Tribal boundaries. The Yurok Tribe selected the ordinance for 'Emergency Adoption,' because, as it states, "the Reservation community is under siege from unlawful cultivation of marijuana and drug manufacture" [ 15]. The legislation highlights the negative effects that marijuana cultivation has had on Tribal lands and waters, as well as on the social fabric of the community. In July 2014, the Yurok Tribe conducted a raid on illegal marijuana grows, dubbed 'Operation Yurok.' Although there were over 150 documented sites of marijuana cultivation prior to the raids, 'Operation Yurok' was only able to hit 69 of the sites [ 17]. The process of collaboration with local, state, and federal government entities included a morning briefing before crews of three would target their assigned locations. Marijuana cultivation brings with it the threat of violence and physical intimidation, which in a sense, holds Yurok People hostage within the boundaries of their own reservation. The National Guard and Humboldt County Sheriff would secure areas and then the Yurok Tribe was allowed to come in and take written and photographic documentation of the environmental damages [ 17]. Environmental damages included severe water diversions and impoundment, unpermitted clear cutting, human waste, and herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, and petroleum products [ 17]. The consequences and negative implications of marijuana cultivation on reservation land are many. Environmental contamination represents far more than simply resource scarcity; it impacts the very environment that makes Yurok People who they are.

1.3. Symptoms of Contamination (Human Health and Fisheries)

From 2008 through 2012, the Yurok Tribe Environmental Program conducted a project under a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Center for Environmental Research Grant, "Understanding the Cumulative Affects of Environmental and Psycho-Social Stressors that Threaten the Pohlik-lah and Ner-er-ner Lifeway: The Yurok Tribe's Approach" [ 6]. The toxins and contaminants of interest and their related adverse health outcomes are can be viewed in .

As part of this project, the Yurok Tribe worked with the California Tribal Epidemiology Center (CTEC) to analyze the health outcomes of Yurok Tribal Members who visited United Indian Health Services at least once during the period between 2004-2009. His project represents 98% of the local bi-county, Yurok population and gives a comprehensive and representational snapshot of the local Yurok Tribal Members' health at the community level [ 3]. The CTEC analysis shows that Yurok Tribal Members may have higher rates of cancer and proteinuria compared to national rates. The rate of cancer among the population studied is 683.5 per 100,000 people, compared to 190.4 per 100,000 American Indian/Alaska Native people nationally, and 484.0 per 100,000 for all races combined. The prevalence of proteinuria among the studied population is 2.6 percent, compared to the national prevalence of 1.1 percent. Proteinuria is a precursor of kidney disease although the rate of kidney disease among the Yurok Tribal Members is lower than the national average.

This study also examined perinatal outcomes, which the Superfund Community Advisory Committee has also cited as a concern. The study found that of the 189 pregnancies from 244 Yurok women seen at United Indian Health Services (UIHS, Arcata, CA), 27 of the pregnancies resulted in spontaneous abortion or fetal loss. This translates to a rate of 78.9 per 1000 pregnancies, or 9.3 percent of pregnancies. Further, 24 of the pregnancies resulted in a fetal malformation or infant anomaly. Because there is no consensus on diagnosis coding for spontaneous abortion, miscarriage, or stillbirth, comparisons with national data are impossible due to data inconsistencies. The CTEC analysis could not make any deterministic links between the known contaminants in the Klamath River environment and these health outcomes, but the documented adverse diagnoses demonstrate the need for further studies of local Yurok Tribal members' health, links to local environmental contaminants, and the potentially disparate burden of disease and ill health within the Yurok Community living in Del Norte and Humboldt Counties.

Also as part of the US EPA project, in 2010-2012, the YTEP conducted, sampled and tested selected aquatic species for a range of contaminants that could impact resource and human health. The YTEP tested subsistence species and Klamath River water for more than 220 toxins and metabolites from 12 broad families/categories, returning positive results for biotoxins, dioxins, organochlorines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), pyrethroids, and trace metals. These add to the cumulative impacts to Tribal Members through the ingestion exposure route. In general, detections were low with exceptions to five contaminant groups that exceed current public health or water quality criteria limits, including microcystins in Fall flows of Klamath River water and freshwater mussels, total PAHs in four species (Fall run Chinook salmon, Coho, lamprey, and razor clams), PCBs in whale blubber (comparing it to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) levels in red meat), pesticide residue in whale blubber (comparing it to FDA levels in red meat), and select trace metals (aluminum in Klamath River Spring flows and manganese in fresh water mussels) [ 7].

The YTEP has found that regional impacts from anthropogenic activities have impaired the Klamath River by way of both temperature and nutrients, resulting in the subsequent production of blue-green algae's toxin microcystin. Routine surface water monitoring data document detections of microcystins on average seven weeks each year, from 2009 through 2013, exceeded levels above which adverse health effects could occur through incidental recreational exposure levels set by California Environmental Protection Agency, California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB), and California's Office of Environmental Health and Hazard Assessment (OEHHA). In addition to the risk of microcystin exposure in the Klamath River surface waters, the YTEP's subsistence species tissue testing found that freshwater mussels had detections of 64.2 ng/g of microcystin-LA [ 7]. This has the potential to add to the cumulative total toxic burden of microcystins that Tribal members may experience.

provides a list of contaminants present in the Yurok environment, including in culturally significant species, and their impacts on human health.

Data gathered in the US EPA project document the complete exposure pathways of multiple environmental toxins and contaminants and indicate that exposure to the contaminants has occurred in the past, is presently occurring, or will likely occur in the future as contributors and sources of risk to the general Yurok Tribal Membership. Although the true or actual risk is unknown and the identification of a completed exposure pathway does not immediately imply health effects will occur, the project provided evidence that environmental contaminants and toxins are likely contributing to documented adverse health effects among Yurok Tribal Membership. While the direct correlation between adverse health effects and contaminants requires more research, the decline in salmon and other subsistence fisheries associated with the Klamath Hydroelectric Project and the contamination of subsistence fish species has decreased the availability of traditional foods, particularly salmon, and contributed to an increase in diabetes and heart disease rates [ 18].

1.4. Unique Exposure Pathways

All people living, working on, visiting, or otherwise present on the Reservation may be acutely exposed to hazardous substances at known or potentially impacted sites within the Reservation [ 19]. At these sites, they may come into contact with contaminated biota, soil, sediments, water, and/or vapors. The potential human exposure scenarios (i.e., exposure assessments) range from direct exposure to contaminants to casual indirect exposure through the uptake and bio-assimilation of contaminants in local waters, food sources, and culturally important plants that are ingested, inhaled, or handled. Examples of such sites include forestry and agriculture plots (including illegal marijuana grows) with pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, and rodenticide residues; timber and plywood mills with associated natural and industrial chemicals; fire suppression zones; active and legacy mines; and high-risk areas from activities such as the burning of wood products waste and plastics, methamphetamine production, and illegal dumping. Furthermore, Highway 101-which runs through the Reservation-gathers into one transportation corridor private and commercial vehicles that produce vapor and particulate emissions from gasoline and diesel fuel and create the potential for accidental spills into ground and surface waters on the Reservation.

Yurok Tribal members may face additional exposures and adverse impacts (beyond those among the general population) through Tribal lifeways that include cultural and ceremonial activities as well as subsistence fishing, hunting, and gathering [ 19]. Tribal members are integrally related to the environment in ways not typically accounted for in most exposure evaluation models, which reflect exposures largely received in urban and suburban settings and do not consider the extent of Tribal environmental contact [ 20, 21, 22]. The Yurok Tribe has resided along the Lower Klamath River, its tributaries, and surrounding lands, including the Pacific Coast, since time immemorial. Consequently, Tribal members have historically faced and continue to face psycho-social impacts from the contamination of sacred sites and natural resources, the loss of purity in traditional medicines and basketry species, the alteration of the cultural landscape, and the decline and loss of traditionally significant species. These injuries, coupled with the Tribe's strong commercial and subsistence fisheries, high utilization due to economic reliance on other coastal and riverine resources, and extensive cultural programs and ceremonial activities, place the Yurok at severe risk of cumulative exposures from multiple contaminants.

Therefore, while Tribal members face the same routine exposures as do members of mainstream American communities to industrial additives and contaminants in commercial products and foods, exposures to such contaminants may be increased through Tribal-specific activities [ 19, 20, 21, 22]. The Yurok population includes the same standard epidemiological sub-populations of physical vulnerability: children, pregnant women, and the elderly. Exposure across these sub-populations, however, is increased through routine subsistence activities and consumption. Differentiated sub-populations of cultural and ceremonial practitioners are at still higher risk due to additional completed exposure pathways such as chronic, frequent, and extended exposures to environmental pollutants via ingestion, inhalation, or dermal absorption. The YTEP has documented the specific exposure risks of Yurok Tribal members in scenario charts in the following four categories: food and drink (consumptive) pathways; subsistence pathways; cultural pathways; and ceremonial pathways. These charts can be found in the Yurok Tribe Interim Cleanup Standards for Contaminated Properties, adopted by Yurok Tribal Council in 2015. Taken together, these charts describe differentially exposed sub-populations; potentially complete pathways of exposure specific to Tribal members' activities; and a range of possible contaminant transport mechanisms from suspect media: air, soil, soil vapor, sediments, biota, and ground and surface waters.

2. Materials and Methods: Working to Respond to Community Concerns

The YTEP employs a CBPR model in all work and research conducted by the department in environmental protection, restoration and management. The research questions and study objectives are developed in partnership with the community through scoping and consultation meetings with Yurok Natural Resources and Culture Committees, Yurok Tribal Council, and Tribal members at Council District Meetings. Further, the YTEP actively incorporates Yurok Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) into all CBPR and planning activities. TEK informs resource protection and management priorities and strategies in all aspects of Yurok natural and cultural resources management. While environmental staff will not specifically collect additional TEK through ethnographic methods for this Project, TEK is relied upon to inform the development of environmental research-in this case, sampling methodology. TEK is the basis for Tribal members to evaluate their observations about what is outside "normal" and is relied upon for identifying priority issues, resources, and locations for monitoring and assessment with the goal of ultimately developing community-based, culturally appropriate strategies for protecting the human, community and ecological health.

University-based Superfund researchers are working to respond to Yurok Tribal members' concerns that exposure to environmental contaminants (both historical and contemporaneous) is contributing significantly to disproportionate negative health outcomes within the community. As community members wrestle with current, unexplained health issues, they often point to the undocumented impacts of widespread aerial application of herbicides within the Klamath River watershed as part of timber management operations. Community members believe that direct exposure to these materials (e.g., through spray drift or broad application practices) or indirect exposure (e.g., via consumption of or contact with contaminated water, fish or plant materials) caused or contributed to the development of cancer and other diseases among residents of the Reservation.

A variety of challenges arise in the effort to provide a satisfactory resolution to these valid community concerns [ 23]. First, and probably most significantly, monitoring data from the period of presumed exposure (generally the 1980s and 1990s) is not sufficient to estimate the overall magnitude or temporal pattern of community exposures to the herbicide active ingredients. Even if data were available to estimate historical exposures accurately, a second level of challenges relate to gaps in scientific knowledge that limit the ability to establish links between exposures and negative health outcomes. Examples of such gaps include the impact of "inactive ingredients" such as solvents and surfactants, the synergistic effects of exposure to multiple chemicals in combination, and the possibility that treatment of herbicide-contaminated raw water supplies might produce disinfection byproducts of concern [ 24].

Another significant challenge inherent in the design of the Superfund Research Program is that it connects cutting edge biomedical and engineering research with translation of research results to community members concerned about past or current exposures to toxic substances. There is a fraught interface between research, which by its nature involves rapidly evolving methods with high dimensionality of information content, with efforts to provide a community with clear, accurate and actionable information. Within the UC Davis Superfund Research Center, there are a number of research project/community engagement interfaces but for this article, we will illustrate these challenges with a specific example: the effort to characterize the contaminants present in the Klamath River and its tributaries, an environment central to Tribal lifeways that is threatened by both industrial scale timber production and illegal marijuana cultivation in the upslope portions of the watershed. The characterization relies on recently developed methods that integrate gas and liquid chromatography using multiple ionization techniques to maximize the coverage of chemical analytes, particularly pesticides and their transformation products. The development, validation and application of these methods are described in detail in Moschet et al. [ 25]. Briefly, the water analyses are conducted by filtering a 1 L water sample through a glass fiber filter and then through a solid phase extraction cartridge to concentrate organic compounds. Compounds are recovered from the cartridge by eluting with organic solvents to prepare two extracts, one amenable to analysis via gas chromatography (ethyl acetate) and the other amenable to analysis via liquid chromatography (methanol). Analysis is conducted using liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (Model 6530 LC-Q/TOF-MS, Agilent Technologies, Inc., Santa Clara, CA, USA) in both electrospray positive and negative ionization modes and gas chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (Model 7200B GC-Q/TOF-MS, Agilent Technologies, Inc., Santa Clara, CA, USA) in both electron ionization and negative chemical ionization modes. The resulting high-resolution mass spectrometric data (four instrument runs for each sample) is then analyzed for target compounds (primarily current use pesticides) and is subjected to suspect screening using high-resolution mass spectrometric databases (Agilent Pesticides, Water Contaminants and Toxicology Personal Compound Database Libraries (PCDLs) for liquid chromatography data, Agilent Retention Time Locked Pesticide PCDL and NIST17 library for gas chromatography data). The data will also be screened for non-target compounds (detected ion groups that are not identified via suspect screening) that are correlated with in vitro bioassay results during subsequent project phases.

3. Results

In the first phase of the UC Davis-YTEP collaboration, a primary goal was to broadly characterize the environmental quality to complement existing knowledge about contaminants surveyed in previous research efforts. In California's Mediterranean climate, the first rains of the fall often carry a significant "first flush" of chemicals like herbicides and insecticides applied during the growing season into surface water bodies. Consequently, the initial water sampling was focused on sampling soon after early season rainfall in 2017, on 9 November (upriver sites) and 12 November (downriver sites). Twelve sites were sampled including an upriver Klamath River main stem site (Weitchpec), a downriver Klamath River main stem site (Wehl-kwew) and ten important tributaries with varied watershed land uses (). Five of the 21 target compounds were detected using GC-Q/TOF-MS () and none of the 27 target compounds were detected by LC-Q/TOF-MS (). These target compounds, especially the pyrethroid insecticides, are widely detected in other California watersheds [ 25]. A depiction of the spatial distribution of the most widely detected target compound, fipronil, is shown in . Fipronil is an insecticide widely used for pet flea control and other household uses; it is not registered for agricultural uses in California. Wastewater treatment plants have been identified as major sources to surface water in the San Francisco Bay area, with discharge concentrations of fipronil ranging from 13 to 88 ng/L and frequent detections of several degradates (fipronil sulfone and fipronil sulfide) at concentrations from 1 to 28 ng/L [ 26]. Fipronil and several degradates were detected in 100% of 53 samples collected across storm events in Cache Slough surface waters at concentrations from 0.1-13.3 ng/L [ 25].

Table 2

17.0

32

Ah Pah

10,307

Ah Pah Creek Mouth

Has multiple private domestic and drinking water intakes from springs in watershed. One of a series of critical fish rearing/refugia for Chinook and endangered Coho salmon. Traditional village site sits above the mouth of Ah Pah Creek; currently used as a 'living-village' for cultural workshops and working toward revitalizing cultural ceremonies/Jump Dance.
Watershed predominantly private property of Green Diamond Resource Company and intensively managed for commercial timber with repeat pesticide applications, including 2016 and 2017.

Table 3

Results of selected suspect compound screening results obtained from the GC-Q/TOF-MS data are summarized in . Numerous phenolic compounds, both halogenated and non-halogenated, were detected and are indicated in red font in . These compounds likely have diverse sources, including industrial activities, wood processing, consumer products and are also naturally occurring organic breakdown products. Other compounds detected include the insect repellent DEET and the widely used plasticizer and flame retardant triphenyl phosphate. Results from the target compound measurements using the LC-Q/TOF-MS are reported in , and indicate that none of the target pesticides or biocides were detected at levels above the analytical limit of quantitation (LOQ). Suspect compound screening of the same data against mass spectral databases identified numerous pharmaceutical compounds (indicated in red font in ) including gemfibrozil, losartan and warfarin (). Some of the detected compounds are natural products (indicated in green font in ) that most likely arise from natural sources, including physcion (lichen pigment) and alantolactone. Other compounds detected (indicated in black font in ) include some perfluorinated heptanoic and nonanoic acids (degradates of compounds used as oil and stain repellents) and microcystin LR, an algal toxin that is known to be contributed to Yurok lands from algal blooms in upstream reservoirs. All of the detected compounds reported in and have not been confirmed by authentic pure compound standards but have sufficient similarity in their fragmentation patterns (electron ionization for GC or MS/MS fragmentation spectrum for LC) to be tentatively identified. Confirmation would require additional experimental effort. Impacts of most of these compounds are difficult to judge without quantification, but even with quantification the risks of many of these compounds would be difficult to determine based on existing knowledge. This situation illustrates the challenging clash between "academic or intellectual understanding and the lived experience of an issue," as described by other researchers attempting to implement a community-based participatory research approach [ 27]. The gap between university researchers' tools and community member experiences presents challenges in communicating results to Tribal members concerned with the quality of their environment and its potential impacts on their health and that of the organisms living in the Klamath River and tributaries.

This initial reconnaissance for contaminants led to discussions between Superfund Community Advisory Committee members and project researchers to plan ways forward based on these data. Plans were made to conduct time-resolved sampling at a subset of the initial sites to develop understanding of seasonal trends; to conduct in vitro bioassays to indicate whether samples contained compounds that activated or interfered with the action of the estrogen, androgen, thyroid or aryl hydrocarbon nuclear receptors; to better target suspected marijuana grow sites and former lumber processing facilities to characterize contaminant sources; and to better characterize sources, composition and fate of toxins that are produced by harmful algal blooms.

One unexpected opportunity that was identified in conversations between Tribal members on the Community Advisory Board and project researchers was the recognition that high-resolution mass spectrometric data collected as part of this project is unique in its ability to be queried in the future for compounds that may be believed to be benign based on present knowledge, but which are later found to be harmful. Advisory Board members saw the maintenance of this sort of data for future Tribal staff and members to retrospectively examine as part of their responsibility to be stewards of the environmental resources of their ancestral lands. Future activities will seek to build a data storage structure that supports and promotes such retrospective analyses of the data being collected now.

4. Discussion

4.1. The Role of Bi-Directional Learning in Evaluating Contamination in Indigenous Communities

A primary goal of the UC Davis Superfund Project is to implement bi-directional learning for university-based scientists and researchers and Tribal scientists and researchers. This approach recognizes the expertise of Tribal members and Tribal staff who have intimate, detailed, and long-term knowledge of the reservation environment, as well as the expertise of university-based researchers focused on particular contaminants and their specific pathways to impacting human health. The bi-directional approach acknowledges that Tribal members and academics have distinct and valuable knowledge bases and attempts to create opportunities to facilitate knowledge exchange. In addition to advancing knowledge on contaminants and their impacts on human health, the Superfund Research Project also focuses on practical outcomes of identifying environmental contaminants and mitigating their impacts on human health through the development of sensors to detect their presence, and remediation strategies to reduce their concentration.

As we enter the third year of our collaboration on the Superfund project "Biomarkers of Exposure to Hazardous Substances," the Community Engagement Core (CEC) and the Superfund Deputy Director met with the Community Advisory Committee to reflect on both the successes and challenges of the UC Davis-Yurok Tribe collaboration thus far. The following section will highlight a series of challenges and our proposed, collaborative responses to them as we continue to work to improve the project and develop best practices for collaborative environmental health research.

4.2. Participation and Knowledge Exchange

The Superfund Research Program is composed of a large and diverse team of researchers with widely varying areas of focus. In Year 1, the Community Engagement Core worked with the Yurok Tribe Environmental Program (YTEP) to offer a series of trainings for university researchers on Yurok Tribal history, sovereignty, and the environmental research conducted by the YTEP. University researcher participation was generally low and, of those who attended the sessions, some applauded the content, but others wondered how it was relevant to their lab-based research. At the end of Year 2, the CEC offered a refresher training on Yurok sovereignty and environmental context in conjunction with a face-to-face dialogue between university researchers and YTEP staff on sampling plans and protocols. The more specific focus on research immediately following an introductory refresher presentation seemed to energize team members by making clearer links between research practices and community context.

4.3. Outreach and Dissemination of Information

The initial round of sampling took place in Year 1, and the CEC worked with Project 1 and the YTEP to develop factsheets summarizing the results to distribute at the annual Yurok Salmon Festival. The Festival is a lively, community-wide event featuring speakers, live music, traditionally cooked salmon, traditional sports, informational booths, and food, craft, and art vendors. Thousands of people attend, including many Tribal members who live both on and off of the Yurok reservation. In the initial project plan, CEC listed the Salmon Festival as the primary project outreach location. While the CEC booth featured a map of sampling locations as well as a chemistry demonstration by two University of California, Davis (UCD) researchers, in addition to summary factsheets documenting project activities and preliminary outcomes, meaningful outreach was hampered by the excitement of the Festival and other attractions. In response to this, UCD CEC and YTEP staff determined that, while CEC would still conduct similar outreach at the Festival next year, we will also plan 1-2 more focused community dialogues with specific groups, including weavers and possibly those suffering from illnesses that they believe to be related to environmental contamination. YTEP staff have also recommended that CEC and university researchers create a short video for the community documenting lab techniques. The latter will provide a visual summary of techniques being used to assess the safety of Klamath River water, thus increasing the range of media used to convey research processes and outcomes.

4.4. Communication of Realistic Project Outcomes

During the June 2018 project-wide site visit to Klamath, Superfund investigators were joined by UC Davis undergraduate students who were participating in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition, in which students spend the summer working towards a proof-of-concept solution for a scientific problem, utilizing the tools of molecular biology. During the site visit, UC Davis iGem team learned about environmental pollution and adverse health outcomes at the Yurok Indian Reservation through presentations and conversations with Tribal Members and YTEP staff. Because the direct links between specific environmental contaminants and adverse health outcomes are still unclear, the team became interested in the possibility of leveraging natural protective stress-response pathways in mammalian cells by engineering them in ways that would turn on an easily measurable signal. The team also met with basketweavers and expressed their interest in applying this concept to the development of a sensor that the weavers could use to know the status of contaminants in the soil where they gather their weaving materials. After the site visit, the team explored the feasibility of building a cell-based tool that could be used to report a stress response in mammalian cells when these cells are exposed to chemicals of concern. Because they were only proving the concept, they did not use soil or water samples from the Yurok Indian Reservation, rather they generally tested the cell's sensitivity to a variety of stressors. Their initial findings were encouraging, and they won multiple awards in the iGEM competition. Later, the YTEP communicated to the CEC that the basketweavers who met the iGEM team were under the impression the team would develop a sensor that they could use in the near future. The CEC met with the iGEM advisor to clarify the misunderstanding and asked the iGEM students to write a letter to the Yurok Tribal Members to explain that the iGEM team only had the time and resources to do a very preliminary part of the research to develop the sensor. The letter was distributed to the Community Advisory Committee.

The dynamics that occurred as a result of the inclusion of the UC Davis iGEM team in the site visit represent the type of miscommunication that can occur between research institutions and communities [ 28]. While bringing researchers and community members together can facilitate a fruitful exchange of information, it remains important that researchers communicate the scope of their work clearly. Specifically, this interaction highlights the importance of communicating realistic research and development timelines as well as the responsibility that researchers have in making efforts to ensure that community-engaged work is continued beyond short-term projects. The Superfund Research Project can learn from this interaction through consistent communication about research and development timelines and facilitating partnerships between the Tribe and other projects and programs at UC Davis that may help them in adjacent areas that may be out of the scope of the Superfund Research Program (SRP).

4.5. Responding to Community Concerns

As discussed in Section 4, one of the most significant challenges in our project thus far has been the disjunct between perceived impacts of environmental contamination and the initial sampling analysis results. While community members describe in impactful detail the range of cancers in particular that impact otherwise healthy community members who practice traditional subsistence lifeways, the data from the initial two rounds of sampling (in years 1 and 2) has not shown significant levels of contaminants. Researchers acknowledge both project-wide limitations of not being able to track the impact of historically applied chemicals, nor the cumulative impact of multiple chemical exposures, as well as the specific limitations of a small number of samples.

In order to begin to address the latter issue, the CEC Core leader organized a site visit between the Superfund Deputy Director (also a Project 1 researcher) and YTEP staff at the end of Year 2, which included driving throughout the Reservation to determine additional sampling locations, and to view specific legacy contaminant sites. The outcome of the meeting and the subsequent Advisory Committee meeting is a sampling plan that includes repeated sampling at specific high-priority locations, and sampling timed to catch specific, expected releases of chemicals into the watershed. The hope is that increased sampling and analysis data will paint a clearer and fuller picture of the contaminants present in the Klamath River watershed throughout the year, particularly during times when Tribal members have the most contact with the River and sediments.

In addition, university and Tribal researchers discussed the importance of comparing datasets of contamination and health issues over time, transferring sampling analysis data to the YTEP, and supporting the YTEP in advocacy for removal of aged lumber processing infrastructure left on the land, and the creation of Tribal lab facilities in which some of the techniques used at UC Davis for analysis and remediation of contaminants could be applied in Yurok facilities, on Yurok lands.

5. Conclusions

Yurok community members on the Community Advisory Committee, YTEP staff, and UC Davis researchers are building a cross-cultural, CBPR collaboration to address the health of Tribal members and their ancestral home in the Klamath River watershed. The work takes place in a painful context in which, as one Advisory Committee member explained, "The land was not only stolen; it was logged and poisoned." Yurok Tribal members live with the effects of colonial policy towards their homeland and communities, including higher rates of cancers, miscarriages, learning disabilities, and other health impacts. In contrast, lab-based researchers are often very specifically focused on particular chemicals, techniques, or biological components. The Superfund project has provided an opportunity for researchers to think broadly about the need for their work to address current, dire situations in communities directly impacted by toxic legacies. Community members and YTEP staff are working to convey to researchers the importance of thinking multi-generationally: recognizing what elders lived through and working to clean the environment and leave a better legacy for generations to come. To improve community-university communication and knowledge exchange, the UC Davis Superfund Project has increasingly emphasized face-to-face dialogue (both on Tribal lands and in University facilities) between University and Tribal staff. This increased interaction has resulted in the direct assessment of challenges encountered in years 1 and 2, and specific plans to increase sampling and analysis and emphasize visual and dialogue-oriented conveyance of project outcomes in years 3 and 4, in order to work toward the successful development and dissemination of assessment and remediation tools by year 5.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, B.R.M., S.T., S.F., K.R. and R.M.II; Formal analysis, T.M.Y., L.W., S.F., C.C. and R.M.II; Funding acquisition, B.R.M. and K.R.; Investigation, T.M.Y., L.W., S.F., C.C. and R.M.II; Methodology, T.M.Y., S.F. and R.M.II; Project administration, B.R.M. and T.M.Y.; Supervision, B.R.M. and T.M.Y.; Writing-original draft, B.R.M., S.T., T.M.Y. and L.W.; Writing-review and editing, K.R.

Funding

This research was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P42ES004699. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Bi-Directional Learning: Identifying Contaminants on the Yurok Indian Reservation

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The Yurok Tribe partnered with the University of California Davis (UC Davis) Superfund Research Program to identify and address contaminants in the Klamath watershed that may be impairing human and ecosystem health. We draw on a community-based participatory research approach that begins with community concerns, includes shared duties across the research process, and collaborative interpretation of results.

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The Winnemem activists use the power of the law to get through to these corporations, such as filing petitions and lawsuits, and seeking out faults in Environmental Impact Reports. Winnemem Wintu focuses more on how indigenous peoples have been silenced by the U.S. government, how their rights have been ignored, and how their safety and the safety of their land and wildlife has been disregarded, rather than the actual sacredness of the water itself. This does not mean that water is not as sacred to them, however they choose to focus on why and how this belief is seen as unimportant. The tribe stands up to big corporations and governments who think they can build whatever they want, wherever they want, without the consultation of those actually inhabiting that land.

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WATER IS LIFE:  SOVEREIGNTY, LEGAL ISSUES

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WATER IS LIFE:  SOVEREIGNTY, LEGAL ISSUES

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Few mainstream outlets address tribal water issues, although the Desert Sun, a local newspaper in California's Coachella Valley, reports about the Agua Caliente Band news.  Other prolific indigenous platforms: High Country News, Indian Country Today, and tribal and legal websites.

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Unlike certain water campaigns, such boxed water, the issue is not  water being viewed as a commodity, but, rather, a basic necessity. There is a shock factor associated with this issue; like Amref Health Africa’s campaign for providing safe water to African countries, Many Americans assume that water is a foreign issue, often only reserved for third world countries, unaware of water rights within U.S. borders.

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On Tuesday, March 22, Amref Health Africa will join the global community in celebrating the World Water Day, notably the first following adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in November 2015. The launch of the SDGs has renewed hope for millions of African women and children who spend 40 billion hours annually walking for water. Water is central to everything including agriculture, food security and nutrition, sanitation, hygiene and overall health, industry, human settlement and development in general means.

This year's theme "Water and Jobs" rhymes well with the cardinal role water plays in providing livelihood to millions of people across Africa. Unfortunately, lack of sustainable access to clean water has an enormous negative impact on development particularly for women and girls who are the main water carriers in more than 70% of households without water. As a result, they miss out on vital activities that can provide a path out of poverty, such as getting an education or earning an income. In rural Africa, women spend 26% of their time collecting water, as they walk at least five miles to the nearest water source. In the dry season when water becomes scarcer, this time doubles. Walking to remote water sources, further exposes women to the risk of injury, sexual harassment and animal attacks. Moreover, women are subject to adverse health effects from constantly carrying water containers weighing up to 20kg on their heads, hips, or backs. Lack of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) is one of the greatest obstacles to poverty alleviation and economic growth. The World Bank Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) estimates that the lack of WASH can cause a 2 to 7% downward pull on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) annually, whereas providing WASH has an equally positive impact.

Water plays a key role in promoting healthcare at health facilities. However, 42% of health facilities in Africa do not have access to safe water while every minute a newborn baby dies from infection caused by a lack of safe water and an unclean environment. Boosting water and sanitation investments in hospitals and clinics in low income countries is essential to reduce maternal and newborn deaths. Many women in developing countries give birth at home, often without access to clean water and toilets, exposing themselves and their babies to infections. Clean water is essential to prevent sepsis or cord infections, and limit transmission of diseases.

Notably, 15% of all maternal deaths are caused by infections in the 6 weeks after childbirth mainly due to unhygienic conditions during home deliveries and in institutions. Another of the 5 major causes of maternal death and disability, sepsis, is caused when clean water and adequate sanitation are not available to a woman during labor and childbirth. Sanitation-related illnesses debilitate and kill an estimated one million Africans every year, as well as inhibit economic growth and limit access to education and life opportunities. People suffering from illnesses related to poor sanitation occupy 50% of the hospital beds in sub-Saharan Africa and account for 12% of the health budget. An estimated 160 million people are infected with schistosomiasis or bilharzias, a parasitic disease from flatworms that causes tens of thousands of deaths annually.

About 500 million people are at risk of trachoma, which threatens 146 million with blindness and six million with visual impairment. Sustained access to adequate WASH is the best conceivable preventive health care, which is 10 times cheaper than curative care. Lack of clean water, sanitation and hygiene costs sub-Saharan African countries more in lost GDP than the entire continent gets in development aid. Depending on the country and region, economic benefits have been estimated to range from US$3 to US$34 for each dollar invested in clean water and sanitation. In sub-Saharan Africa, treating largely preventable diarrhea consumes an estimated 12 per cent of health budgets.

During the last 60 years, Amref Health Africa has been responding to this need by working with local experts and communities to co-create sustainable solutions for increased access to safe water. In over 10 countries, we are increasing community usage of technologically appropriate improved water supply services through provision of appropriate water supply infrastructure in underserved rural, peri-urban and urban communities, targeting mainly schools and health facilities. Water quality is core in our work. We are therefore supporting water source protection at village, school and health facility levels to prevent contamination. Besides, we are building the capacity of local government officials and community health volunteers to monitor water quality at source and point of use using water quality testing methods including field test kits, government water quality testing laboratories and Amref Health Africa laboratories. In order to realize optimal outcomes, Amref Health Africa is intensifying programme integration to ensure WASH is integrated with HIV, malaria, diagnostics, maternal health and child health. Further, we lobby for increased investment in safe water, improved hygiene and sanitation through policy, research and targeted campaigns.

As we mark this important day, Amref Health Africa calls on development partners, governments, civil society, private sector and other players in the WASH space to systematically increase investments geared towards provision of safe water in Africa. This should be focused on women and children living in marginalized rural and urban informal settlements.

This is the surest way of delivering lasting health change in Africa.

Click here to send your donations towards #‎DropsForChange. Clean water transforms communities.

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Amref Health Africa Calls for Increased Focus and Investment on Providing Safe Water

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On Tuesday, March 22, Amref Health Africa will join the global community in celebrating the World Water Day, notably the first following adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in November 2015. The launch of the SDGs has renewed hope for millions of African women and children who spend 40 billion hours annually walking for water.

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"SOMETIME LAST YEAR, THE STANDING ROCK SIOUX RESERVATION IN NORTH DAKOTA BECAME NOT JUST A PHYSICAL LOCATION BUT AN ICONIC CHALLENGE TO THE NATIONAL CONSCIENCE. LIKE THE SELMA CIVIL RIGHTS MARCHES IN 1965 OR THE FRANK’S LANDING TRIBAL FISHING-RIGHTS DEMONSTRATIONS IN 1970, STANDING ROCK’S WATER PROTECTORS, AS THEY CALL THEMSELVES, HAVE TRANSFORMED IDEAS OF ADVOCACY AND RESISTANCE WITH NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION AND PRAYER. THEY HAVE BUILT COALITIONS ACROSS MOVEMENTS FOR TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY, DEFENSE OF NATURAL RESOURCES, RESISTANCE TO EXPANDING ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE, AND CULTURAL SURVIVAL. THEY HAVE SHOWN THE WORLD A CULTURE GROUNDED IN STEWARDSHIP AND CONNECTION TO EARTH."

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Seven Struggles

The resistance that persisted even through the cold and dark of the North Dakota winter, with ongoing injuries and arrests, shows how difficult, dangerous, and uncertain it can be to speak truth to power.

Now the spirit of Standing Rock is on the move.

Its Native-led, youth-driven expertise is extending outward to help other communities protect their land and resources. In Texas, Frankie Orona, from the Borrado, Chumash, and Tongva people, is leading actions against the Trans-Pecos Pipeline, which will carry fracked gas across Texas and into Mexico, if completed. For months, he and others have danced, prayed, and sang in the path of the line. Recently, they were arrested after locking themselves to construction equipment. In December 2016, after consulting with the Indigenous Environmental Network, which was central to organizing the Standing Rock resistance, Orona's group established a camp and built a Native/non-Native support system, similar to Standing Rock's, with backing from local environmentalists and ranchers. One rancher is hosting the camp on her property.

Standing Rock has also been evoked in Florida and New Jersey, where Natives and non-Natives have united to object to the Sabal and Pilgrim pipelines, respectively. In Florida, four camps were recently established to protest the Sabal line, and on January 6, Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network went live on Facebook to urge Standing Rock water protectors to go support these other fights.

Elsewhere, Native people are standing up for mountains. In Hawai'i, conflict rages over placing another telescope on the holy peak Mauna Kea. Prayer gatherings, blockades, arrests, declarations of Native self-determination, and a lawsuit have blocked the project so far. In Arizona, longtime protests have also sought to roll back desecration of Mount Graham, where a telescope mars the sacred summit, and the San Francisco Peaks, contaminated by wastewater that a ski area uses for snow-making.

Certainly the Standing Rock campaign has inspired wider interest in Native struggles, agrees Judith LeBlanc, director of the Native Organizers Alliance and member of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma. "People everywhere are talking about Standing Rock, which has magnified the reality of other situations like it," says LeBlanc. She calls the awareness a "Flint moment" for Indian Country.

And she is optimistic. She notes that tribal struggles are ever more successful: "Stopping drilling in the Arctic and a giant coal export terminal in the Northwest, canceling oil and gas leases in a Blackfeet cultural landscape-these successes have been Native-led," LeBlanc says. As Shoshone-Bannock professor and pundit Mark Trahant has pointed out in YES!, the end of these stories is no longer "inevitable," with Native communities always losing to outside interests.

Tribal advocacy has helped protect more places in recent weeks.

In Colorado, the Piñon Pipeline will not go forward, the company that was planning to build it has announced. In the last weeks of President Obama's term, he protected the ancient spiritual places and magnificent scenery in southern Nevada as the nearly-300,000-acre Gold Butte National Monument. He did the same for 1.35 million acres in southern Utah, now the Bear Ears National Monument. Notably, at Bear Ears indigenous people will contribute to ongoing management decisions. Though state and congressional officials have said they will fight both monument designations, such actions are difficult to unwind.

"The United States needs us Native people," says Wendsler Nosie Sr., a former San Carlos Apache tribal chairman and leader of Apache Stronghold, a group formed to protect a sacred landscape in Arizona. "Without us taking the lead on these issues, there would be chaos. As a country, we have to choose a better way of being."

Native-led campaigns take place in courtrooms, legislatures, and other government chambers. They also occur during face-offs on the prairie, desert, and tundra. "So far, we haven't had to stand in front of bulldozers," says Kimberly Williams, Curyung tribal member and director of an Alaska Native group seeking to protect the massive Bristol Bay salmon fishery from a proposed mine. "But I'm ready to."

"What we learned at Standing Rock is the power of unity," says Orona. "Hundreds of indigenous nations from all over the country and the globe stood together, along with supporters, and that endures."

By the end of November 2016, more than 300 tribes were represented at the Standing Rock camps. Back home, each tribe faces its own struggle against government and industry, with decades of destruction and injustice behind and years of fighting ahead.

From time immemorial Western Shoshones have hunted, gathered, and participated in ceremonies in a rugged landscape in what is now northern Nevada.

"We arose here," says medicine man Reggie Sope, of the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe, as he describes a careful, frugal lifeway that found bounty in these dry, rolling hills. His people hunted deer, rabbits, and other game and gathered wild onions and carrots and additional edibles. When the rabbit brush turned yellow in the fall, they trekked to forested mountains to pick pine nuts, a dietary staple they would roast and store for later use.

Called Tosawihi (dose-uh-wee), the place's name is derived from that of a Western Shoshone band known for carrying razor-sharp blades made from the exceptionally hard flint found here. The stone has properties that assist traditional healers to this day.

This life and its seasonal round continued for millennia-until newcomers arrived looking for another kind of bounty. In the mid-19th century, silver and other valuable minerals were discovered in what, in 1864, would become the state of Nevada. The 1872 General Mining Law made it cheap and easy to stake out claims, driving up the population of settlers. To this day, a few hundred dollars will establish and hold a claim on public land that can be mined, with no royalties due to the federal government, unlike other extractive industries.

Sope's people were pushed onto reservations despite an 1863 friendship treaty with the United States in which the tribes never ceded any land, including most of what is now the state of Nevada. It remains a bone of contention with the federal government.

The valley where the Western Shoshones are camped seems idyllic and untouched, but a foray out of it reveals much damage to the surrounding landscape. A horizontal cut scars the face of a hill used for eons for vision quests. The gouge was bulldozed during construction of a power line to support increased production at the gold mine that has taken a giant bite out of nearby hillsides. The power line also wiped out a centuries-old trail, where an ancestral healer walked, sang, and picked medicinal plants. People who needed care would hear his song and follow him.

Tosawihi sits on federal land administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). As such, national preservation and environmental laws protect Tosawihi. Western Shoshones have invoked these laws, telling courts that Tosawihi is a cultural landscape that is the product of many centuries of subtle interlocking practices-hunting, gathering, healing, and other aspects of traditional life. Portions of it have been determined eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Tribal members claim that damage to Tosawihi could be avoided or minimized if the BLM followed federal law.

Court documents submitted by the BLM say the tribe is asking too much and call the tribal perspective the product of a "different worldview." The agency has commissioned archaeological studies that have identified scattered locations on the landscape that can be considered for preservation under the law, while the rest may be subjected to mining-related destruction.

Tribal attorney Rollie Wilson says this reaction is typical and unfortunate. "Every day, tribes face federal agencies that do not listen to tribal concerns, do not 'hear' or know how to take into account what tribes are saying, do not take tribal consultation seriously, or are pressured to approve projects anyway."

Joseph Holley, former chairman and now councilman of the Battle Mountain Band of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone, learned about protecting tribal resources from watching his elders, and now his young grandsons stick close by, watching and learning.

As Holley walks around Tosawihi with the youngsters, Julius Holley finds an arrowhead made by a tribal forebear. He picks it up. "Just like mine!" he says, referring to a small arrow point his grandfather helped him shape the day before. A past of deep antiquity is vital and tangible in his young life. Intact landscapes, with sacred sites still present, offer these lessons, says Holley: "It is how our children learn who we are."

For Alaska Natives, tours of Nevada's gigantic mines helped them learn how to protect their own critical resource, Bristol Bay. The Alaska tribal people needed to understand what they were facing when a mining consortium proposed placing what would be among the largest copper mines in North America, Pebble Mine, in the bay's watershed. It is home to the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery and one of its most prolific king salmon fisheries, providing thousands of jobs and pumping $1.5 billion into the U.S. economy in a year, according to a 2010 University of Alaska study. The fishery also supports Alaska Native subsistence lifeways and cultures.

Kimberly Williams is the Yup'ik director of Nunamta Aulukestai (or "Caretakers of Our Lands" in Yup'ik), a tribal coalition in southeast Alaska that focuses on land-use issues. Williams says that when opposition to Pebble Mine gathered steam in 2004, tribal members realized they needed to learn how to effectively combat the project.

The environmental nonprofit Earthworks helped Williams and other tribal members reach out to Western Shoshones to learn about modern large-scale mining. Groups ranging in size from about eight to 15 and representing tribal communities around the bay traveled to Nevada starting in 2008; in 2012, a group visited Wendsler Nosie Sr. in Oak Flat, says Bonnie Gestring, an Earthworks staffer who accompanied the Alaskans.

In Nevada, the Alaska Natives toured mines and did flyovers. "Flying above large mines let people see the landscape-level environmental disturbance," Gestring says. "And seeing the operations close-up on the ground familiarized them with the processes and their terminology, so they could understand when companies back home threw around technical language."

The Alaska Natives also talked to the area's indigenous communities, including the Elko Band of the Te-Moak Western Shoshone. "They could ask whether promises-about jobs or effects on the environment and subsistence lifeways, for example-had been kept," says Gestring. The answer was generally no, she reports. The environmental impacts are crushing, the visitors to Nevada learned; moreover, modern-day mining is highly technical, with few jobs for local people seeking to break into the industry.

In early 2014, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a report showing that building and operating Pebble Mine would likely damage the now-pristine Bristol Bay watershed. This would, in turn, reduce salmon habitat and affect additional fish and animal populations. The Native, salmon-based subsistence culture would suffer a blow as well, the EPA found: "The nutritional, social, and spiritual health of Alaska Natives would decline."

In the end, groups and individuals statewide-Native and non-Native-supported a ballot measure empowering the legislature to ban mines it determined harmful to wild salmon. This was despite opposition from industry groups like the Alaska Miners Association, which claimed the measure would politicize the mine-permitting process and stifle Alaska's economy.

"The initiative got 66 percent of the vote and won every precinct in Alaska, transcending party affiliation," says Williams. "Everyone got it. Some families who own commercial boats have been coming here for 100 years; they get the importance of salmon. Sport fishermen who have waited their whole lives to get a 50-pound king salmon understand. We Native people understand, of course. The whole state gets it."

This community support distinguishes the Bristol Bay movement from the one at Standing Rock, where much of the non-Native community does not support the tribe, observes Daniel Cheyette, attorney for Bristol Bay Native Corporation, the economic arm of tribes in the region. "Here in Alaska, the mining company will have a hard time moving forward, though they are persisting."

Northern Dynasty Minerals, the primary corporation behind the mine, has sued the EPA, claiming environmental groups improperly influenced the agency's report. The lawsuit is ongoing.

"Priceless" is how Alannah Hurley, the Yup'ik executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, describes the bay and its watershed. "If our environment is destroyed, so are our cultures. We are fighting for who we are."

"Our challenges," Cheyette says, "are to keep reminding the public that this issue is not dead yet and to make it painfully obvious to the company that it has a long row to hoe on this issue."

As at Tosawihi, Standing Rock, and other sites of Native resistance, the struggle involves young people working alongside their elders. Tribal members as young as 13 testified before the EPA when it was gathering information for its 2014 report, Williams says. "Issues like this keep arising, and our children need to be prepared. They may be fighting Pebble Mine or similar operations when they're adults, and they understand that."

"This involvement is expected of our young people," says Hurley. The tribal consortium she heads advocates for the protection of the Yup'ik, Dena'ina, and Alutiiq way of life in Bristol Bay. "We all see it as part of our responsibility to our people and our lands."

The important role Native youth play is evident all around Indian Country, says Nosie, of Oak Flat. "They have learned our spiritual teachings and carry them forward in a powerful way."

Leading up to Memorial Day 2011, giant dams along the Missouri River were filled to the brim with water produced by torrential rains and higher-than-normal snowmelt. Among the farms, towns, and other entities downriver was the small, impoverished Omaha Tribe, where unemployment has hovered at about the 80 percent mark and a casino has been a major source of both revenue for the tribe and jobs for the few tribal members who have them.

Since the mid-20th century, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has used dams large and small to reengineer the mighty Missouri and its tributaries. At first, the idea was to prevent flooding and facilitate navigation while providing electricity. Recent modifications include artificial sandbars to slow the river and make it more hospitable to recreation and wildlife.

In 2011, it was clear that the now-man-made waterway had become a fearsome Franken-river that its creator and master, the Corps, could no longer control. On May 27, the Corps told the Omaha Tribe it would release the Missouri's swollen waters, and the tribe should expect the river's level to rise quickly by as many as nine feet.

"Elders tell me that the river used to flood seasonally, which was not just controllable but a good thing, as it deposited new fertile soil along the bottomlands," says Maurice Johnson, attorney general for the tribe. "However, 2011 felt more like a dam break."

The damage up and down the river was disastrous. "The [Missouri's] water no longer moves on through," says Debbie Yarnell, spokesperson for law firm Polsinelli, which has sued the United States for the Corps' decision. The suit was filed on behalf of nearly 400 plaintiffs, including the Omaha Tribe and farmers and businesses in five states the Missouri River traverses. "Thanks to the work done to slow the river, the water sits longer and does more damage," says Yarnell.

Tribes are sovereign nations with government-to-government relationships with the United States. By law, federal agencies must consult with them when agency actions and policies would likely impact tribal resources. The agencies must then study the impacts and pursue the possibility of fixes, called "mitigation."

However, agencies are not necessarily cooperative. In May 2011, on the Omaha reservation, the Corps' consultation with the tribe was more along the lines of "ready or not, here it comes," just days before the water hit. Former tribal chairman Vernon Miller reported this tragic lapse to federal officials attending one of the meetings the Obama administration called this past fall to discuss improving the government's consultation with tribes. Questions about whether the Standing Rock Sioux were properly consulted during decision-making for the Dakota Access Pipeline precipitated the gatherings.

The Corps also failed to meaningfully assist the Omaha Tribe once it was clear they were facing a catastrophe. "I asked the Corps to come and help us evaluate what we could do," recalls Omaha Tribe Emergency Management Director Carroll Webster. "They said they could send one guy for a few hours." According to Corps spokesperson Eugene Pawlik, the agency is unable to respond to questions or provide comments because of the ongoing litigation.

Over the next several weeks, the community mobilized, with tribal employees and volunteers digging up land from elsewhere on the reservation and creating a berm to try to stem the flood. Despite their efforts, their homeland was inundated, including the casino and, with it, a financial mainstay. Destruction of farmland leased out for additional income meant more economic devastation.

Tribal members lost homes as well as jobs, but temporary trailer housing couldn't be set up because the land stayed waterlogged for the better part of a year, says Richard Chilton, from the Omaha Tribal Historical Research Project. "People doubled up with other families or moved to Sioux City and other places until there was someplace here for them."

Tradition sustained a blow as well since the flood damaged culturally important places. "We have sacred sites and burials throughout our land," says Dennis Hastings, director of the research project. "This makes the whole landscape important to us. Since the flood, our elders go to pray at holy places, then leave. That's all they can do. It hurts."

When a community is so vulnerable, recovery takes a long time. With tribal and federal money, a new casino has been built on a higher foundation that should keep it above future flooding, according to Johnson. However, some land is lost forever as an income generator. "A flood like that scours away the topsoil," says Webster. Five years later, he says, "parts of our reservation still can't be farmed."

As tough as the economic losses have been, the devastation of cultural places has been far worse, Johnson says. "It is not easy to recover from burials being washed away or sacred sites being damaged."

Miller implored the federal officials at the consultation meetings to learn from these mistakes. Their decisions have huge impacts on tribal communities, he said, and consultations must be person-to-person, as well as government-to-government. A phone call or a letter warning of impending disaster is not enough, said Miller: Respect for tribal sovereignty demands more from the federal consultation process.

The San Juan River is one of the nation's latest Superfund sites. This past fall, it joined the 1,337 locations now on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's list of contaminated places. Nearly one-quarter of them are on Indian reservations, according to Indian Country Today Media Network, meaning that about 1 percent of the U.S. population sustains 25 percent of the environmental and related cultural damage.

The San Juan River, which pours down into the Navajo reservation from the Rocky Mountains, turned a ghastly orange on August 5, 2015. This occurred as a result of EPA activities at the Gold King Mine in Colorado. The mine is one of many abandoned operations sitting by creeks whose waters eventually end up in the San Juan.

While attempting to draw off contaminated water, EPA-hired construction crews with heavy equipment triggered the collapse of a portion of the mine and a three-million-gallon blowout of toxic sludge laced with lead, mercury, and other heavy metals. Even worse, the agency didn't tell the Navajo Nation that the poisons were headed for tribal members' homes and farms until two days later. The EPA has taken responsibility for the disaster and has so far spent $29 million to clean it up.

Tribal member Mark Maryboy lives in Montezuma Creek, Utah, a tiny Navajo-reservation village on the San Juan River. "We still can't drink the water or farm more than a year later. The spill brought Navajo farming and the area economy to a halt," says Maryboy, a board member of Utah Diné Bikéyah, the grassroots group that in 2010 initiated the process of designating the Bear Ears National Monument.

In August 2016, an infuriated Navajo Nation sued the EPA, claiming that the damage to the river had caused anguish "akin to the loss of a loved one." Tribal members worry about health consequences, and ceremonies that use sand and water from the river and pollen from once productive cornfields have been interrupted, says the Navajo brief. Tourists have stayed away, causing more economic pain.

In a statement supporting the tribe's lawsuit, U.S. Representative Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) declared that for Navajos "water is life." She reminded the EPA that the federal government holds Native lands in trust for tribes and their members and, as the trustee, has obligations to protect Native land and natural resources.

The Justice Department, which will defend the EPA, has not yet responded to the complaint, according to attorney Moez Kaba, who is part of the team representing the Navajo Nation.

Resource extraction is rarely advantageous for anyone outside the corporations that own the mines and oil wells, Maryboy says. "Local communities don't benefit when resources are taken out of the ground. We're just left with the mess."

The EPA has announced that the river is greatly improved and "trending" toward its pre-spill condition. "Navajo people don't believe them," says Maryboy. "We have been exposed to dangerous materials before, including uranium from Cold-War era mining in this area, and have cancer and other diseases that result from such exposures." Navajos worked in the mines for four decades without safety gear; then, once the mines were closed, it took nearly three decades more for the EPA to begin removing the toxins. The agency started with a small program in 2008 and recently began a one-billion-dollar cleanup, funded by a settlement with the mine operator.

"In the minds of many Navajos, agencies like the EPA and corporations are essentially the same, and they don't trust them," says Maryboy. "Our goal now is to be sure that nothing like this happens again."

"When the tribes stepped forward to talk about their treaty rights, as well as the human rights issues involved with losing water, it was incredibly powerful," says Julia DeGraw, Northwest senior organizer for Food & Water Watch.

Since 2009, DeGraw and a grassroots group of local landowners, businesspeople, and others have been seeking to stop Nestlé Waters North America from "spring shopping" in rural Oregon. The corporation has been trying to identify a spring where it could draw off and bottle water that would be sold at a premium because of its pristine origins.

The first place Nestlé tried to set up shop was bucolic Oxbow Spring, in the town of Cascade Locks, Oregon. The company claimed it had done hydrological, air quality, and other studies and found the project would be sustainable and have little environmental impact. In return, the town could get around 50 jobs, Nestlé Waters said.

After a severe drought heightened local fears about selling off water, residents of the surrounding county, including the tribal members, mobilized. They held rallies and wrote a ballot measure that would make it illegal to bottle water in the county. They knocked on doors and attended events to gather support for the measure. The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs chimed in, decrying the bottling project, saying it had moved forward without proper tribal consultation and public review. Warm Springs tribal member Annie Leonard fasted.

In May 2016, 69 percent of the county voted to approve the measure and nix the Nestlé project. The ballot measure wasn't binding on the town, though, which appeared to be still interested in moving forward.

In a sternly worded letter, the Yakama Nation warned Cascade Locks that drawing off the water would "undermine our culture and threaten our treaty-reserved rights." The tribe explained its duty to protect "those resources that cannot speak for themselves, including our water." The letter went on to explain the reciprocity between the tribe, as a caretaker, and the water, which nurtures the natural resources the tribe needs for its existence-timber, fish, animals, and more.

Since then, Nestlé Waters has begun talking to the nearby town of Goldendale, Washington as well. "Nestlé has suggested to us that there will be a $50 million bottling plant and jobs, but the public has come out with a lot of positions, [both] pro and con," said City Administrator Larry Bellamy. "So we're going to gather information about what they're going to do, the amount of water they want, what spring they'll use, and more. No one is signing onto anything. We're at less than square one."

The tribes are standing fast. During a November 2016 Goldendale city council meeting, the Goldendale Sentinel reported, Yakama general counsel Ethan Jones called threats to tribal water rights "genocide" and vowed "we will do whatever it takes" to stop them.

"All of this is about protecting the earth and focusing on what we value as tribal societies," says Carina Miller, from the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. Again, youth are important to the effort. "In the past, it was so difficult to think that tribes could have a real voice. Now, our younger generation is empowered because of all the healing work that has been done and all the conversations we have had about the historical trauma that has impacted us generation after generation."

Miller foresaw additional rallies against the Nestlé project, as well as against any additional projects that tribes see as destructive. "We must protect our culture and language any way we can."

And Native people must safeguard the water, Miller adds, echoing the language that came out of Standing Rock and reverberates throughout Indian Country. "Water is the most sacred thing."

Stephanie Woodard has covered Indian ​Country ​for more than 15 years for Native-owned Indian Country Today ​Media Network, as well as ​for In These Times and other national publications​. The Fund for Investigative Journalism and the former George Polk Center for Investigative Reporting have supported her work. The Native American Journalists Association, of which she is an associate member, has recognized her with its top annual prize, ​the Richard LaCourse Award.

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YES! Magazine Special Report: The Spirit of Standing Rock on the Move

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Seven Struggles The resistance that persisted even through the cold and dark of the North Dakota winter, with ongoing injuries and arrests, shows how difficult, dangerous, and uncertain it can be to speak truth to power. Now the spirit of Standing Rock is on the move.