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No Longer the Miner's Canary | Indigenous Nations' Responses to Climate Change

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No Longer the Miner's Canary | Indigenous Nations' Responses to Climate Change

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On the other hand, Indigenous peoples have certain advantages in responding to the challenge of climate change, compared to non-Native neighbors or local governments. They want their continuing lifeways (not their death) to provide some direction to the rest of humanity. Perhaps the “miner’s canary” formulation could be revised, so the canary escapes the cage, flaps its wings, and shows the hapless miner a safe way out of the toxic mine. Indigenous knowledge and experience has the potential to help the rest of humanity get more out of harm’s way.

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Indigenous Nations' Responses to Climate Change

Climate change is usually portrayed as a process of "global warming" that is so large that it can be addressed only by national governments or international agencies. We are told that we can only respond to climate change in a personal way-by changing our light bulbs or automobiles-and that we cannot change the industrial policies that generate most greenhouse gases (also called carbon emissions). We are made to feel powerless and fatalistic in the face of the biggest threat to the Earth's well-being in its history.

Yet increasingly, the most effective solutions to global warming are not being seen at the national or international scale, but at the local scale. European cities have taken steps to curb their greenhouse gases, and U.S. cities are beginning to follow their example, rather than follow the inaction of their federal government. Municipal, state, and provincial governments are also beginning to respond, particularly on the west coast.

On one hand, Indigenous peoples are on the front line of climate change-the first to feel its effects, with subsistence economies and cultures that are the most vulnerable to climate catastrophes. Paraphrasing Felix Cohen, Paul Havemann and Helena Whall observe, "Indigenous Peoples are like the miner's canary. When their cultures and languages disappear this reflects the profound sickness in the ecology." In this view, the fate of Native peoples provides an early warning to the fate of all humanity.

On the other hand, Indigenous peoples have certain advantages in responding to the challenge of climate change, compared to non-Native neighbors or local governments. They want their continuing lifeways (not their death) to provide some direction to the rest of humanity. Perhaps the "miner's canary" formulation could be revised, so the canary escapes the cage, flaps its wings, and shows the hapless miner a safe way out of the toxic mine. Indigenous knowledge and experience has the potential to help the rest of humanity get more out of harm's way.

Native peoples have faced massive ecological and economic changes in the past-from colonialism, genocide, epidemics, industrialization, and urbanization-yet many Native cultures have survived against overwhelming odds. The climate crisis is the latest, and perhaps the ultimate challenge, but this history may make Native peoples better equipped than the non-Native society that is reliant on chain grocery stores and shopping malls. It is critical that tribal climate change discourse not only warn Native communities of the dangers in climate instability, but empower them around inherent tribal strengths:

Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Indigenous cultures have centuries of experience with local natural resources, so they can recognize environmental changes before Western scientists detect them and can develop ways to respond to these changes.

Political Sovereignty: Because tribes have a unique status as nations, they can develop their own models of dealing with climate change and managing nature in a sustainable way.

A Sense of Community: In contrast to much of the non-Native population, Indigenous peoples still have community. Native peoples still have extended families that care for each other, assume responsibility for each other, and extend hospitality in times of need.

The Treaty of Indigenous Nations builds that sense of community, by including other tribal nations in the community, even those who live on the other side of imposed colonial borders or on the other side of the ocean. Indigenous peoples have survived the effects of colonialism and environmental destruction only by cooperating with each other. It is no longer just a good idea to build these relationships; climate change makes them much more urgent. This article explores some of the relationships that are already being built or have the potential to be built among Indigenous nations, then with local governments, national governments, and international agencies.

Cooperation among Indigenous Governments

In the coming years of climate change, intertribal cooperation will become more important, in order for Indigenous cultures and communities to survive. Many recent reports and articles have examined in depth the threat of climate change to Indigenous peoples and cultures, but precious little has been written about possible responses.

The Northwest Indian Applied Research Institute (NIARI) has described the effects of climate change on the Pacific Rim region in its 2006 report Climate Change and Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations. NIARI later published a companion Community Organizing Booklet, with the technical language translated into understandable English for tribal members. NIARI's Climate Change and Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations Project has developed and presented recommendations to tribal governments.

On August 1, 2007, indigenous nations from within the United States, Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa (New Zealand) signed a treaty to found the United League of Indigenous Nations. The Treaty of Indigenous Nations offers a historic opportunity for sovereign Indigenous governments to build intertribal cooperation, outside the framework of the colonial settler states. Just as the Pacific Rim states have cooperated to limit Native sovereign rights and build polluting industries, Indigenous nations can cooperate to decolonize ancestral territories and protect their common natural resources for future generations.

The treaty process has involved indigenous political alliances such as the National Congress of American Indians, the Assembly of First Nations in Canada, and Ngati Awa Maori Confederation. The treaty identifies four main areas of cooperation: increasing trade among Indigenous nations, protecting cultural properties, easing border crossings, and responding to the urgent threat of climate change.

Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Rim already share much in a common natural region, have similar fishing cultures, and have been in contact with each other for many centuries. In the treaty, the second Mutual Covenant commits the signatory nations to "collaborating on research on environmental issues that impact indigenous homelands, including baseline studies and socio-economic assessments that consider the cultural, social, and sustainable uses of indigenous peoples' territories and resources." The United League of Indigenous Nations (ULIN) can help facilitate this collaboration by helping to build an Indigenous nations' climate change network. This network could include different working committees, which would include representatives from:

Tribal or First Nation sovereign governments

Indigenous community members, traditional harvesters, and spiritual leaders

Researchers, educators, and students

Exchanges within this network (working with existing Indigenous organizations) could help implement practical projects to adapt to (or mitigate) survivable climate changes and develop joint responses to more destructive climate changes. These exchanges could include sharing information, connecting tribal youth, training harvesters of shifting plant and animal species, and ensuring access to food, water, and power.

Sharing Information

In order to survive climate change, Indigenous communities will have to share information with each other about the effects of global warming, as well as share different responses. But the first priority is to share information within each community. With Indigenous governments' success in establishing their own environmental departments, many tribal members assume that staff members will take care of all natural resource issues. Some tribal natural resources staff are already working on climate change-related issues. But the challenge of climate change will not be met by tribal government officials alone; it is simply too huge of a problem and needs to involve the entire community.

The tribal government can get tribal members gathered together to share information, and tribal members can request their elected officials to respond to their concerns about the effects of climate change. The first step is to bring together tribal members to discuss how climate change might be affecting tribal life and culture and what can be done about it within the tribe, or in cooperation with other governments. In 1998, NASA funded a Native Peoples/Native Homelands national conference, which included workshops of tribal members documenting the effects of climate change on their regional cultures.

In November 2009, the second conference drew tribal college and university students and White House Council on Environmental Quality staff to Shakopee (Minnesota) to discuss "Indigenous Responses to the Challenge" of climate change.

A series of regional and national conferences have been held on tribal climate change issues. The Tribal Lands Climate Conference held at the Cocopah Nation in Arizona in 2006 was an example of intertribal cooperation to document global warming. A water rights group held a climate change conference hosted by Washington's Squaxin Island Tribe in 2007. Around the same time, the University of Colorado Natural Resources Law Center published a report on the effects of the climate crisis on tribes in different U.S. regions:Native Communities and Climate Change: Protecting Tribal Resources as Part of National Climate Policy.

In 2008, the emphasis began to switch from documenting the effects of climate change to discussing tribal responses. A conference was held in Boulder on "Planning for Seven Generations: Indigenous and Scientific Approaches to Climate Change," by the American Indian and Alaska Native Climate Change Working Group. Tribal Climate Change Forums in Oregon drew tribal agency representatives from around the Northwest starting in 2009. Northern Arizona University started a Tribes and Climate Change website to gather information of effects and responses.

Because their environment is being so drastically altered by climate change, Indigenous peoples in the Arctic and Subarctic are leading the way in sharing information about its effects. For example, one Inuit community in Nunavut held large community discussions and produced a video. An educational book was cooperatively produced from interviews with hunters and fishers from 26 Inuit and Cree communities around Hudson Bay. In Alaska, according to Aleut leader Larry Merculieff, Aleut villages have held community meetings of harvesters to discuss changes in the resources. Merculieff stresses the importance of including both elders and youth in these discussions and of collecting field samples and observations together. He says, "As species go down, the levels of connection between older and younger go down along with that."

Connecting Youth

It will be especially important to share information with youth in Indigenous communities, to make them more aware of climate change and get them energized and involved in the issue. Through practicing their culture with their elders, they can learn traditional ecological knowledge and be more able to understand changes in weather patterns or in plant and animal species. Through working with each other, young people can also learn about climate change and educate their entire communities about the issues. The urgency of responding to climate change is being incorporated into tribal youth conferences and can become a key part of exchanges among Indigenous nations.

Tribal leadership can encourage middle school, high school, and college-age youth to form their own groups to get active. First Nations youth were among the activists outside the UN conference on climate change held in Montreal in 2005, as part of the Energy Action's youth climate movement It's Getting Hot in Here. Native youth organized by the Indigenous Environmental Network have represented the Campus Climate Challenge and attended Powershift student climate conferences and rallies, such as the 2009 Green Jobs rally in front of the U.S. Capitol. Alaska Youth for Environmental Action sent delegates to Japan and Iceland to attend the International Youth Eco-Forum on Climate Change and Renewable Energy and collected thousands of signatures on a climate change petition, which they presented to their congressional delegation at the U.S. Capitol.

But youth also can become involved in their local communities. A model already exists among B.C. First Nations, who have trained Aboriginal young people to map their territories, in order to protect natural resources and strengthen land claims. The youth in the strategic watershed analysis teams interview elders and other harvesters, gather field data with GPS units, and produce maps. Starting in the Tribal Canoe Journey of 2008, First Nations and tribal youth have been involved in water sampling to investigate effects of climate change in the Salish Sea, as part of an initiative sponsored by the Coast Salish Gathering. Similar youth teams could also participate in tribal hazard identification and vulnerability assessments to examine how to "harden" their communities against destructive climate change, or help tribal planning departments develop long-term plans for survival. Since they will be around to see the full effects of global warming, tribal youth deserve a role in planning for the future.

Training for New Species

As the weather becomes warmer farther north, we will be seeing more species shift out of their usual habitats and into other regions. In the Pacific Northwest, this will both mean that some plant and animal species will move from south to north and also that they will shift up mountain slopes. The most endangered species are those that cannot shift quickly-such as trees-and shifting land-based species that are blocked by a body of water (such as the Salish Sea), high elevation (the tree line), or high latitude (the tundra) and cannot migrate any further. Droughts could also severely hurt species just when they are vulnerable, unless urgent measures are taken to protect their habitats.

Plant, animal, and marine species will shift into new areas, where tribal harvesters may not be familiar with them, and they may not fit into local Indigenous cultural and spiritual systems. Indigenous communities are already thinking about the implications of traditional resources moving out of their historic territories. Some fish runs, for example, may disappear, and other fisheries may be replaced partially or entirely by new species coming from the south. Whether or not Indigenous harvesters can adapt to these new species may determine whether tribal economies survive. New pests and diseases (such as the spruce bark beetle infestation) already threaten tribal health and economies. In either case, Indigenous nations that choose to adapt to the new species can draw on the expertise of neighbors further south.

Species have migrated before in the past (even if not as suddenly), so tribal ancestors must have helped each other adapt. Indigenous governments can help facilitate a series of exchanges between tribal communities, so they can teach each other about unfamiliar species and train each other how to harvest (or avoid) them. At the Tribal Lands Climate Conference, a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) woman reported that she had visited relations to her south to learn what was coming into her territories, then visited communities to her north to let them know what may be coming their way.

In the Pacific Northwest, we can learn from people in California about their species, and people in British Columbia and Alaska may have to learn about our species. Basketweavers from coastal tribes have "stated that they often purchase bark from gatherings or trade with other tribes" further north. The existing relationships and family bonds among different nations will be immensely helpful in preparing for the arrival of new species and in learning techniques to harvest them.

Cooperation in Food Security

Another important area in which tribes can cooperate is in securing access to food in times of shortage. We have all grown used to going down to the supermarket to get our basic essentials. But all it takes is one storm power outage, or one flood or landslide, to remind a community of "the old days" when food did not come only out of a grocery bag. Indigenous peoples know (better than most non-Native neighbors) how fishing, hunting, gardening, and so on can supply needed food in hard times.

A growing movement for Native agriculture and food systems is emphasizing locally grown, traditional foods that revitalize tribal cultures and a sense of community and local control. Traditional foods are also healthier for tribal members than the colonial white flour and sugar diet that has created an epidemic of diabetes. Because traditional crops and animals are historically more locally adapted, they also can be more resilient to climate changes. Some tribes are researching and adopting more deep-rooted or drought-resistant "ancient seeds for modern needs" into their food systems (through such organizations as Native SEEDS/Search). Other tribes are reintroducing bison and other locally adapted livestock.

But what if climate change also affects traditional foods, creating a shortage of fish and wild game, or drying up farm crops or gardens? Tribes need to think ahead to these situations when basic needs cannot be met with local foods. Some tribes have food storage facilities, but storage for both perishable and non-perishable crops are needed for food security. Intertribal cooperation will become essential, since some tribes lack suitable conditions or enough land for sustainable agriculture, while other tribes have adequate land, food crops, and livestock herds. Intertribal agreements could set up a trade network that takes food security into account, particularly within a single region (since fuel shortages may disrupt long-distance transport). A precedent can be seen in the growing network of remote agricultural tribes supplying Native foods (such as bison and salmon) to tribal casinos in more urbanized areas.

Whether they decide to cooperate about food security, harvesting new species, or sharing information, it is to the advantage of Indigenous governments to make agreements with each other now, when they have funds and resources available, rather than in response to a local climate change crisis, in which resources may be scarce and funding prioritized for other communities. The same situation holds for cooperation between tribes and their neighboring non-Native towns, especially since the relationships between tribal and local governments are often tenuous or even tense. Building a positive relationship before an emergency hits will enhance mutual understanding and cooperative bonds that can help each other survive.

Tribal and Local Governments

In some areas, Indigenous and local governments have begun to overcome their differences over jurisdiction and work together for the common good. This cooperation between Native and non-Native neighbors is going to become more crucial as climate changes intensify. The most important ways to survive climate change-adequate food, water, shelter, power, and so forth-are most efficiently and cheaply found in our own local areas. Cut off from help by floodwaters or mudslides or lacking aid from unreliable national agencies (remembering the Federal Emergency Management Agency during Hurricane Katrina), we will all have to rely on our neighbors. When push comes to shove, all that we will have is each other.

Climate change adaptation is usually presented as a sad or scary topic, but it can also be viewed as an unprecedented opportunity. Climate change adaptation can be effectively used as a reason to quickly make fundamental changes in our environmental, economic, and cultural practices that otherwise may take years to implement. Adaptation is a good excuse to make necessary changes that we should be making anyway for a healthier future, and making the changes more quickly than we otherwise would have. For example, regulating stormwater runoff has become more urgent to offset increasing acidification (linked to climate change) of the Salish Sea. A sense of community and respect for the land are no longer just good ideas, but they are absolutely necessary to survive the troubles ahead.

Climate disasters are often used to centralize political control and privatize economies, as described in Naomi Klein's 2007 classic The Shock Doctrine. As a flip side of the shock doctrine, communities can use climate change adaptation to increase awareness of ecological ways to prevent future disasters, the need to share resources among neighbors, and deepen cooperation between communities-beyond the immediate sandbagging of a river. Some of the most important "green jobs" for youth may be in rural and urban planning, disaster prevention, and emergency response, not only to heal our communities but to make them more humane and sustainable than they were before the disasters.

Renewable Energy Partnerships

Tribal and local governments can cooperate to build renewable energy projects that can reduce their dependence on dirty fossil fuels. Tribes can have access to federal funds and "green tag" renewable energy credits to start up their own energy projects. Perhaps the most promising direction for Indigenous nations in combating climate change is in adopting renewable energy technologies that reduce Native dependency on the colonial economy and the centralized electrical grid, at the same time as providing a model for non-Indigenous communities of reducing fossil fuel use. As a Little Traverse Bay Bands (Michigan) tribal resolution from 2005 states:

Tribal lands represent a vast amount of renewable energy potential, including wind and solar power that can meet the energy needs of both local tribes and surrounding communities; wind power blowing through Indian reservations in just four northern Great Plains states could support almost 200,000 MW of power, enough to reduce output from coal plants by 30 percent and reduce our electricity base global warming pollution by 25 percent, and Great Lakes Indian nations could similarly produce alternative non-polluting renewable energy for our tribal communities and for export.

Renewable energy projects on Native American reservations enable tribes to tap into federal funds and use their sovereignty to shift their energy economies away from the centralized, fossil fuel-dependent model. On the Hopi Reservation, for example, NativeSUN has been installing photovoltaic panels on tribal homes to harvest the Southwest's abundant solar power. Other U.S. tribes are involved in energy projects that tap into geothermal, tidal, or wind energy sources. They have asked Congress for renewable energy production tax breaks, because the export of renewable power can build a sustainable reservation economy that brings revenue and jobs to rural communities.

The Intertribal Council On Utility Policy (COUP) provides a tribal forum for policy issues dealing with energy operations and services. It asserts that U.S. tribes have "tremendous untapped energy potential in reservation wind resources" such that the Northern Great Plains could become the "Saudi Arabia" of renewable wind energy. In partnership with Native Energy, Intertribal COUP is developing an 80 MW distributed wind project, hosted in 10 MW clusters at eight different reservations. With access to a predictable revenue stream from renewable energy, the tribes can sell power at a profit through the federal energy grid and at the same time reduce dependency on incoming power through the same grid. A successful tribal effort to convert to renewable energy can become the prototype for non-Native communities that also wish to develop decentralized energy economies and reduce fossil fuel use. Northwest Tribes have Energy Planning: A Guide for Northwest Indian Tribes to identify the technologies most appropriate to their locations.

The concept of Native American renewable energies is slowly being combined with the commitments of U.S. cities to shrink their carbon footprint. Mayors from 180 U.S. cities symbolically signed the Kyoto Protocol, committing their governments to reducing carbon emissions even though the federal government had not ratified the protocol. In November 2005, a Native renewable energy summit was held in Denver to discuss ways that U.S. cities and tribes can partner to achieve their economic and environmental goals. The summit was one step toward tribes and cities working together to reduce fossil fuel consumption while generating sustainable energy employment. At least 29 Local Governments for Sustainability have expressed interest in such partnerships, including Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, New Haven, and Brooklyn. As Indian Country Today noted in 2005, "The many cities that have pledged to reduce their dependence on carbon-producing power share a common ground with the tribes. Tribes could lead the way by showing their commitment to clean air and water and creating the potential to expand the distribution of power."

In Washington state, for example, the Tulalip Tribes are working with local dairy farmers on the Qualco Energy methane project, which creates biogas power from cattle waste. The waste is thus also kept out of the Snohomish River, aiding in tribal salmon recovery efforts. The Makah Tribe was part of a consortium operating the Makah Bay Offshore Wave Energy Pilot Project, studying how to use special buoys to turn the motion of ocean waves into electricity for the county utility, at least until the project's major investor withdrew in 2008. In British Columbia, the Gitga'at and other First Nations are exploring options for small-scale hydroelectric dams that would not endanger salmon runs.

Joint Land-use Planning

Joint land-use planning by tribal and local governments can prevent some of the most disastrous effects of climate change and build more self-sufficiency. Together, governments also have to anticipate the effects of climate changes, such as preventing hillside erosion, maintaining alternate road access, growing local food crops, and preventing new pests and diseases from getting a local foothold.

One of the most important areas for cooperation is to ensure a supply of fresh water, which may be in demand as glaciers melt and streams and rivers dry up in the summer months. Tribal and local governments can work together to protect and treat their water supplies, conserve water use, and store the glacial runoff in reservoirs or underground aquifer. Tribes can use their federally recognized senior water rights (under the Winters Doctrine) to secure access to fresh water, as it becomes a commodity as valuable as oil or gold.

One of the main threats of global warming is rising sea levels, from both melting polar ice and the warmer, expanding oceans. Coastal communities that already face dangers from storms, floods, and tsunamis now also have to contend with the new threat of rising ocean levels, which make the more familiar threats much more dangerous. The Pacific Northwest coast is particularly vulnerable to these risks. Tribal and local governments need to build and retain wave barriers, prevent shoreline erosion, and build new homes above the floodplains. As one innovative example of planning ahead, the Nisqually Tribe signed an agreement with the City of Olympia in 2008 to switch its drinking water source from McAllister Spring to a wellfield on higher ground. The proactive move avoids possible saltwater intrusion from sea-level rise and restores water flow to Medicine Creek, ironically the site of the signing of the 1854 Treaty.

Joint Emergency Planning

If catastrophe occurs, collaboration by tribal and local governments can also prevent loss of life and community wealth. Many tribes now work with local governments on emergency services, such as acquiring fire trucks or sharing EMT services. Deeper relationships will be needed in case of climate change disasters (such as windstorms, floods, droughts, and landslides) to keep them from wiping out communities and their livelihood.

Tribes can lead the way by being models to neighboring local governments. For example, during a June 2005 tsunami warning, Washington coastal tribes quickly evacuated their reservations, while non-Native citizens were angered that their own local governments did not respond as quickly. In the December 2006 windstorm blackouts, some Washington tribes opened their emergency shelters and health clinics to adjacent towns. After the December 2007 megastorm devastated Lewis County with mudslides and flooding (making Interstate 5 inaccessible for one week), the Chehalis Tribe offered preference for flood victims in job openings for its new resort. The December 2008 blizzard (and resultant January 2009 floods) and January 2012 ice storm also brought together tribal and local governments in their responses. Whether these particular storms were caused by climate change is a matter of scientific debate, but because many residents have experienced isolation during the more intense winter megastorms, they are thinking more about cooperation with their neighbors.

The Swinomish Tribe has taken the lead among Native American nations by starting the Swinomish Climate Change Initiative. The tribe is working closely with local non-Native governments in the Skagit Delta, and has a community engagement group for tribal members to get involved in the adaptation planning process. Chairman Brian Cladoosby hopes the initiative serves as a model for other Northwest tribes to account for climate change in their joint planning with their neighbors.

Tribal and local governments can develop hazard identification and vulnerability assessments not only to deal with short-term emergencies or to develop evacuation procedures. They will also need to look toward pooling their resources for longer-term periods without electricity, gas, or access to supermarkets. People tend to come together in disasters, and sharing will become more essential in the future to meet daily needs of food, water, heat, and power.

However, tribal-local cooperation only works if local governments respect the inherent sovereignty of Indigenous nations and understand how tribal sovereignty can actually benefit them-by pressuring state and federal governments into action. By slowly turning local governments from adversaries into allies, tribal governments can strengthen their own sovereignty.

Native Nations and Federal Governments

Indigenous nations in different countries have many varied relationships to their national governments-from treaty relationships to autonomous territories and (in the United States) federal trust responsibility. In the United States, the Bush administration was reluctant to meet with tribes or to meet international standards. President Obama has been more open to a stronger trust relationship with sovereign tribes, giving an opportunity to tribes to shift gears and go from the defensive to the offensive when it comes to protecting natural resources and economies from climate change. A major obstacle to climate action at the federal level is the climate-skeptic sentiment that has grown during the Obama Administration, shaping its reluctance to take a stand for change at UN climate summits.

One cartoon of the 2009 Copenhagen summit sums up the problem. The conference screen displays the desperately needed measures to lessen greenhouse gas emissions: "Preserve rainforests, Sustainability, Green jobs, Livable cities, Renewables, Clean water, air, Healthy children." A perturbed white man turns to a woman of color and asks, "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?" (She merely looks back at him, annoyed.)

In September 2009, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar ordered his staff to pay attention to tribal concerns about climate change:

Climate change may disproportionately affect tribes and their lands because they are heavily dependent on their natural resources for economic and cultural identity. As the Department has the primary trust responsibility for the Federal government for American Indians, Alaskan Natives, and tribal lands and resources, the Department will ensure consistent and in-depth government-to-government consultation with tribes and Alaskan Natives on the Department's climate change initiatives. Tribal values are critical to determining what is to be protected, why, and how to protect the interests of their communities. The Department will support the use of the best available science, including traditional ecological knowledge, in formulating policy pertaining to climate change.

Reforming Federal Laws

An important tribal tool in the United States has been the Treatment-As-State (TAS) status recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The U.S. Congress amended the Clean Air Act in 1977, adding Prevention of Significant Deterioration provisions allowing a governmental entity to "redesignate" its air quality to a higher standard. The Northern Cheyenne tribe in Montana was the first tribe to use the amendment to secure "Class I" air quality over its reservation. In 1990, Congress again amended the Clean Air Act to authorize the EPA to treat tribes as "states" whenever tribes are capable of carrying out state-like regulatory and enforcement authority.

TAS status and sovereign environmental standards have been an even stronger tribal environmental tool when they were used to protect a more localized and trackable natural resource: water. In 1987, congressional amendments to the Clean Water Act allowed the EPA to treat "qualified" tribes as states for regulatory and enforcement purposes. The act allowed tribes designated by the EPA to have the same powers as states in setting EPA-approved water quality standards that would govern upstream polluters inside and outside reservation boundaries. Isleta Pueblo in New Mexico, for example, successfully secured TAS status in order to force Albuquerque to stop dumping municipal wastes into the Rio Grande upstream from the reservation.

The power to enhance tribes' own air and water quality standards represented a new and potentially powerful tool to protect traditional resources and reservation environments, but it has stimulated strong resistance from state and local governments. As of now, TAS standards can counter threats to air and water that (in the words of one tribal environmental coordinator) are "very close, very big, very nasty." But in the emerging political landscape, tribal governments and their allies could begin to lobby for a change in the law to cover impacts on tribal air and water from more distant sources, such as coal plants, to address even more severe threats, including acid rain and climate change.

Using Treaties to Protect Habitat

Climate change is an environmental violation of treaty rights. Emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere alters the climate and so alters or eliminates habitat for species that tribes were guaranteed access to in the treaties. Since it may destroy habitat for tribal resources, climate change can be seen as a violation of treaty rights. Pacific Northwest tribes have used treaty rights to get a seat at the table to decide resource policy covering treaty resources such as salmon, shellfish, wild game, and medicinal plants. The Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, and tribal resource departments use the treaty powers to protect habitat and in doing so are already dealing with issues affected by climate change. When melting glaciers and a reduced mountain snowpack reduce stream flow, salmon and other aquatic life may die. But the treaties only recognize tribal rights within ceded lands and waters, so what happens when the species shift outside the treaty boundaries?

In the Pacific Northwest, the Boldt II process opened up the possibility of tribes using treaty rights in federal court to force states and private interests to protect or restore fish habitat, and to force effective management of natural resources. The prospect would seem to hand tribes an unprecedented legal trump card to protect the environment. After the 1980 Orrick Decision, Northwest tribes used treaty rights as a political and legal wedge to defeat proposals that threatened fish habitats. Yet tribes have been reluctant to pull out their "treaty card" in federal environmental cases. Using the treaties can open tribal sovereignty to unfavorable rulings by federal courts, which have at times interpreted a tribal share in the resources to include a share in the diminishment of the resources.

Despite this tribal reluctance, resource companies were terrified by the implications of the Boldt II process and anticipated that the tribes would continue their string of federal court victories from harvest allocation issues to habitat issues. The industries' fears in fact provided one more reason for the tribes to not pursue Boldt II in the courts; in short, the tribes did not have to. Industries and state agencies were willing to come to the negotiating table with the tribes, simply out of fear of the drawn-out, expensive, and economically paralyzing lawsuits that would result if they did not. The outcome in Washington state was the present system of tribal-state co-management. The main point is that tribes did not necessarily need a court victory to bring industry and governments to the table.

Yet the tribes are now beginning to win federal court victories to protect salmon habitat. In 2007, the U.S. District Court of Western Washington found in favor of treaty tribes who had sought restrictions on culverts that blocked salmon, and directed the state to repair or replace existing culverts and impose "fish-friendly" conditions on new culverts. The federal court declared "that the right of taking fish, secured to the Tribes in the Stevens Treaties, imposes a duty upon the State to refrain from building or operating culverts under State-maintained roads that hinder fish passage and thereby diminish the number of fish that would otherwise be available for Tribal harvest." The Culvert Case may provide a precedent for other cases that affect treaty harvesting of natural resources, perhaps one day even resources diminished by climate change.

Protecting Coastal Communities

As mentioned in the previous section, rising sea levels are emerging as one of the main threats from climate change. An ocean level rise of one to four feet may seem gradual, but it can make a huge difference in coastal erosion and storm damage, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific projections go higher-up to 20 feet by 2100-as Greenland's ice cap melting increases. Tribal and local governments can shore up beaches against higher waves and protect their fresh water supplies from saltwater intrusion, but they can only do so much. Federal involvement is needed when entire villages are endangered. On the Washington coast, federal-tribal cooperation has been enhanced by the establishment of the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, which is managed jointly by coastal tribes, the state, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Several Washington tribes have gained federal support to relocate their coastal housing out of floodplains to higher ground. The Quileute Reservation is moving tribal structures in La Push to higher ground, out of the path of tsunamis (like the ones that struck the West Coast in 1964 and 2011). The tribe closed a trail into a National Park Service beach to put pressure on the federal agencies. Congress finally passed a land transfer bill in February 2012. The Hoh tribe has also acquired higher land from neighboring governments to move housing and government offices, through a 2010 congressional bill. The Skokomish tribe plans to move housing out of a low, marshy area (created by the Cushman hydroelectric project), partly to help clean up the Hood Canal. The Makah, Quinault, and Lower Elwha Klallam tribes are similarly planning to shift new housing plans to higher ground. Though all these moves have not been taken specifically because of climate change, rising sea levels make the tribal goals far more urgent.

Affirming Trust Responsibility

As an ultimate goal, tribes could begin to pressure the federal government to curb carbon emissions as part of fulfilling the federal trust responsibility to protect reservation air and water. In 2006, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a federal permit for a geothermal plant on land sacred to California's Pit River Tribe, saying that federal "agencies violated their duties . . . and their fiduciary duties to the Pit River Tribe by failing to complete an environmental impact statement."

Many other similar cases in the United States have addressed federal trust responsibility to ensure the health and well-being of tribes, but generally on a local scale. A compelling exception is the Ninth Circuit ruling in 2006 (Pakootas v. Teck Cominco) that held the Teck Cominco mine in British Columbia responsible for violating U.S. laws by discharging mine wastes downstream in the Columbia River that eventually contaminated the Colville Reservation. The Colville Confederated Tribes had the backing of the EPA and the state of Washington against the Canadian mining company, and a 2004 district court ruling held that U.S. environmental laws apply to pollution regardless of where it originates. The case was put on the U.S. Supreme Court's docket, and a ruling against cross-border, point-source pollution may provide a loose precedent for climate change litigation.

In February 2008, the Alaskan Iñupiat community of Kivalina sued Exxon Mobil Corporation, eight other oil companies, 14 power utilities, and one coal company in a federal lawsuit, claiming that the greenhouse gases they emit threaten the community's existence. The lawsuit estimates the cost of the community's relocation at $400 million. It sought to recover "monetary damages for defendants' past and ongoing contributions to global warming" and "damages caused by certain defendants' acts in furthering a conspiracy to suppress the awareness of the link between these emissions and global warming." The lawsuit was dismissed by the Northern California district court in September 2009, and an appeal was filed (Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp. et al., 2009).

The Winters Doctrine (from the U.S. v. Winters case) recognizes tribal rights to sufficient water for a reservation; but it is not clear if these laws can be used to seek relief when climate change dries up the rivers and streams. The jury is still out on the question of whether Native treaty rights can be used to protect natural resource habitat from a threat as global and pervasive as climate change. Sovereign tribal governments could make appeals to the federal government to cooperate with international agencies in curbing greenhouse gases, but the effectiveness of this appeal is also unclear.

Coordinated International Strategies

At the very least, U.S. tribal governments, First Nations in Canada, Maori tribal nations, and other Indigenous nations could consider a joint, coordinated strategy, to have a voice and presence at the international level. A united Indigenous nations delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is one appropriate vehicle for such advocacy, but certainly not the only one.

Indigenous governments could also consider putting pressure on Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum states to reduce carbon emissions. APEC has brought together states around the Pacific Rim to improve economic and political ties. APEC members include some of the national governments that have been most resistant both to Indigenous sovereignty and to carbon emission reductions. We can often see how federal Indian policies in the United States and Canada are first "tested" in Australia or New Zealand, and vice versa. These former British colonies are coordinating their efforts against both Native rights and greenhouse gas reductions; the responses of Indigenous nations should also become more coordinated.

Because climate change is perhaps the most urgent challenge facing Native peoples today, it is critical that Indigenous nations' leaders do not wait for a certain critical mass of nations to sign the United League of Indigenous Nations treaty. The most effective climate change cooperation among the nations will not come bureaucratically from above but organically from below, in the direct cross-border relationships among tribal nations themselves. This kind of bilateral and multilateral cooperation has begun to develop across the colonial boundaries in the Salish Sea and the Great Lakes, and it can develop climate change responses to serve as models for other nations.

Conclusions

The most promising avenues for Indigenous climate change advocacy appear to bypass the established global system of sovereign states, by asserting Native sovereignty in other areas. By not including the settler states, the Treaty of Indigenous Nations recognizes that the sovereignty of First Nations does not stem from their relationship with a federal government but is rather inherent, and stems from their existence before the arrival of the colonial powers.

The treaty also recognizes that the powers of Indigenous nations are not simply legally confined within the Western system of laws, but are also social, economic, cultural, and spiritual. Even if the United States, Canada, and other countries are not responsive to Indigenous concerns, tribal leadership has a responsibility to safeguard the health and well-being of the tribal community by working with other Indigenous peoples, allies, and neighbors.

Indigenous nations can begin to exercise the sovereign right to survive climate change by getting engaged with all levels of government-sharing information within their own communities (especially youth and elders), training and assisting each other to meet the challenges of shifting species, working with neighboring governments to coordinate local responses and planning, challenging industries and governments that contribute to global warming, getting involved directly in the international regulatory process, and much more. U.S. tribes, in particular, have an important role in the middle of the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Only if U.S. policy shifts dramatically will the possibility exist of coordinated international action.

The development of renewable energy systems in Indigenous communities can not only protect the environment from fossil fuel burning but also develop tribal economies and build a new web of economic relationships with non-Native local governments and communities. These innovative and creative approaches may be initially reliant on national funding but can help build a de facto sovereign reality on the ground for Indigenous nations. At the same time, they can provide a model to non-Native communities that they do not have to be reliant on centralized, corporate control of the energy economy-the status quo that generated the climate change crisis.

The most important Indigenous responses to climate change will not be in tribal government offices or negotiations over political rights with other governments, but in the ability of tribal members to pass on cultures that respect the land. Tribes have survived conquest, wars, epidemics, poverty, and resource shortages before but have persevered through keeping the cultures strong. The late Ojibwe environmental leader Walter Bresette proposed a Seventh Generation Principle as language for state, tribal, and national constitutions: "The right of the people to use and enjoy air, water, sunlight, and other natural resources determined to be common property, shall not be impaired, nor shall such use impair their availability for future generations."

The United League of Indigenous Nations is one vehicle for tribal nations to help each other survive the changes ahead and exercise their sovereignty to meet the challenge of global warming, instead of simply asking the colonial system to take action. As Haudenosaunee leader Oren Lyons told the historic 2007 treaty gathering at the Lummi Nation: " Sovereignty is the Act Thereof. "
Native Seeds/SEARCH. 2009. About Us. Native Wind
Zoltán Grossman is a member of the faculty in geography and Native American and World Indigenous peoples studies at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He has been a senior research associate at the Northwest Indian Applied Research Institute and its Climate Change and Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations Project. He was co-chair of the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers in 2008-2010 and an International Geographical Union observer at the 2008 climate change session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. He was a co-founder of the Midwest Treaty Network during the Wisconsin Ojibwe spearfishing conflict and later helped bring together Native nations with their former adversaries in sport fishing groups to protect the fish from metallic mining projects.

Header photo by Simmons B. Buntin.

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No Longer the Miner's Canary | Terrain.org

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Indigenous Nations' Responses to Climate Change limate change is usually portrayed as a process of "global warming" that is so large that it can be addressed only by national governments or international agencies.

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In Felix Cohen's Handbook on Federal Indian Law, he remarks that Indian policy is a marker for the health of American democracy--nicknaming them the metaphorical miner's canary. If minorities or ethnic groups are suffering from discrimination and their civil rights are openly violated, then this signals the lack of freedom and rights for the whole democracy.

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Are indigenous relations a sign of the health of the U.S. or nation state political well-being? Does the miner's canary work the same for Indigenous Peoples? Felix Cohen many years ago in his classic Handbook on Federal Indian Law made the remark that Indian policy was a marker for the general health of democracy in the United States. He used the miner's canary analogy. Miners bring canaries in cages with them into a mine as a measure of breathable air. Canaries are small and have high metabolism rates. If the air in the mine turns bad due to poison or scarcity of good air, then the canary will die before a human.

The miner's canary argument is generalized to political health. If minorities or ethnic groups are suffering from extreme forms of discrimination and their civil rights are openly violated, then the increasing lack of freedom and rights are a threat for the whole political community. The lack of free exercise of rights for a minority group is a marker that the democracy, civil rights, and human rights may be in jeopardy for all citizens of a nation. For example, when the citizen and human rights of Jewish communities in Europe during the 1930s were threatened, the rights of other groups were soon in jeopardy as well. Jews were the miner's canary of Europe and their civil and human rights were a measure of the nation state's protection of human rights for all citizens. The Nazi regime of the 1930s and 1940s in Europe not only took the human rights of Jews, but eventually took the human and civil rights of the German people, as well as many other nations.

Are Indigenous Peoples an indication of the well being of the human rights and civil rights of citizens within nation states? Since human rights and indigenous rights are not the same, the treatment of Indigenous Peoples may only be a partial measure for a nation state's political health.

Some years ago I was asked by the Carter Center to monitor an election in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. The Carter Center often monitored elections around the world, to observe and support honest election procedures. There was an issue within the Cherokee Nation about whether Freedmen, non-intermarried, descendants of former black slaves, were going to be allowed to vote. The Carter Center saw election as a civil rights action; an exercise of freedom and the right to vote. This was well and good, and supportive of American values for electoral democracy. U.S. agencies insisted that Freedmen participate in the vote, otherwise the U.S. government would withdraw significant federal funding. The Carter Center worked to ensure that the vote was open to all Cherokee citizens and that Freedmen were not denied the right to vote.

There was a great amount of national press attention about the right to vote, but very little attention about the Cherokee Nation, as an indigenous nation, exercising its right to self-government. The election was a testament to exercise indigenous rights, which were not well understood, and never addressed in newspapers, while civil rights were emphasized. When there was a conflict between civil rights, or human rights in opposition to indigenous rights, indigenous rights took second place.

There are many examples beyond the Cherokee elections, and when conflicts arise, American law and interests tend to predominate over indigenous rights and cultures. Consequently, Indigenous Peoples function as a miner's canary if the issues in question are the rights and freedoms of nation states, but not necessarily if they are about indigenous self-government, territory, or culture. Indigenous Peoples may serve as a minor's canary for protection of national rights, but the miner's canary will not serve Indigenous Peoples in protecting their own rights.

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Are indigenous relations a sign of the health of the U.S. or nation state political well-being? Does the miner's canary work the same for Indigenous Peoples? Felix Cohen many years ago in his classic Handbook on Federal Indian Law made the remark that Indian policy was a marker for the general health of democracy in the United States.

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Excerpt from Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples: The Search for Legal Remedies:

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Excerpt from Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples: The Search for Legal Remedies:

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It has often been said that treatment of indigenous peoples, both within the context of the American legal system and now globally, represents the metaphorical 'miner's canary'--a bird released into mines for which its demise or distress provides an early warning of potentially grave danger to those that follow.

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Edited by Randall S. Abate, Professor of Law and Director, Center for International Law and Justice, Florida A&M University College of Law, US and Elizabeth Ann Kronk Warner, Professor of Law and Director, Tribal Law and Government Center, University of Kansas School of Law, US

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Edited by Randall S. Abate, Professor of Law and Director, Center for International Law and Justice, Florida A&M University College of Law, US and Elizabeth Ann Kronk Warner, Professor of Law and Director, Tribal Law and Government Center, University of Kansas School of Law, US

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The article mentions the Ojibwe creation story in which humanity is the last creation. In Western culture, humans are at the top of the pyramid as very separate and dominant leader. A common thread of Indigenous knowledge is the understanding that humanity is dependent on all other life processes.

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For most all of us, the idea of being in active relationship with our food is an alien concept. We enjoy food: the tasting and eating of it. Many of us take great pleasure in its preparation, the act of cooking and eating a delicious meal with loved ones is at the heart of human connection the world over. Almost all festive holidays revolve around food as the central point of gathering with family and friends, with meals and menus planned meticulously in advance and anticipated with hungry delight.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have fast food - now ubiquitous across the world - not only with corporate chains, but also in the way we eat and the speed with which we expect our food to appear. On-the-go eating, working lunches and TV dinners "cooked" in the microwave are lifestyle stalwarts in the West and now increasingly in urban areas the world over. Here, food is merely fuel: grabbing an anonymous looking sandwich from the gas station while our cars are simultaneously being filled up. The inconvenience of being a perpetually busy human who needs to eat is mercifully medicated by the convenience of always-available fast food.

In both of these - the celebratory enjoyment of food, and the fast food approach - what we eat is, to varying degrees, simply something to be consumed. The practice of being in living relationship with our food is perfunctorily dismissed by mainstream Western culture as hippyish and weird - the outlandish terrain of the mystically-minded.

Yet, for those of us interested in the urgent work of exploring and preserving the ways of First Peoples across the globe, this practiced awareness is a crucial cultural foundation of indigeneity, the loss of which has been a disastrous legacy of colonialism. Diasporic though so many of us may be, we are all ultimately Indigenous to somewhere. Melissa Nelson, of Turtle Mountain Chippewa lineage, and president/CEO of the Cultural Conservancy, potently sums up this legacy of loss as colonialism's quest for the "aphrodisiac of power."

Nelson, who is also a professor of Indigenous Sustainability at Arizona State University, has worked in the Native American food movement for over two decades. Futhermore, her heavy involvement in international Indigenous food sovereignty ideally places her to shed some light on the often slippery concept of indigeneity. As she explains, a key tenet of indigeneity is diversity: "There's no one definition for everyone. When we talk about diversity as Indigenous peoples, we really mean it; biodiversity, cultural diversity, linguistic diversity, cognitive diversity - different ways of knowing and being and learning."

Notably, this is where we have a crucial point of departure between the Indigenous mindset as rooted in diversity, and the colonizer world-view of homogeneity, of the monoculture of scientific materialism as being the predominantly accepted way to cognitively operate in society. An invasive offshoot of this is the aggressive hegemony of cash-crop monoculture and the genetic modification and commodification of our food.

This segues into the question of universal Indigenous values. Nelson mentions the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a document developed for more than 30 years by dozens of Indigenous leaders, where these universal values are encoded. Essentially, says Nelson, these values, which hinge on Indigenous culture and identity, are about responsibilities and obligations as caretakers of the Earth.

That's a universal value [of indigeneity], of understanding that we are nothing without the Earth and all of her creatures - the plants, the rocks, the animals.

"In fact, in our Ojibwe creation story, humans are the very last thing that's created because we are completely dependent on everything else," Nelson says. "If we disappear, the redwood trees and the hummingbirds, they're going to continue. But if they disappear, we lose our breath, literally, our air, our water, our food, our medicine. So we are completely dependent on everything else."

Western colonialism has as its modus operandi the upright pyramid, with the human at the very top, separate, dominant and not held to account. In the Indigenous mindset, Nelson continues, this pyramid is turned upside down, with humans at the very bottom, reliant on all of life, "So indigeneity is practicing that humility and knowing that we are dependent on all of these other life processes."

This outlook is common to Indigenous peoples the world over. It is not simply a mystical-philosophical abstraction, but a pragmatic technology of engaging with, and being in reciprocal relationship with the world, most significantly with the cultivation, preparation and eating of food.

The approach of humility and reciprocity stands in stark contrast to the colonial "there for the taking" mentality, where these life processes become commodified into property, which is something that "can be enclosed, controlled, extracted, sold, transferred, destroyed," as Nelson succinctly puts it.

Much of the Cultural Conservancy's work with their Native Foodways program is focused on creating pragmatic experiences around this concept of relating to our food, and particularly to seeds, as living relatives. A compelling aspect of their work in this area is about the revivification of inter-tribal Native American food as a living connection to Indigenous ancestry, not only in terms of human ancestors, but in terms of heirloom seeds as non-human ancestors. As the founder of The Cultural Conservancy, Claire Cummings, says in a recent "Tending Nature" episode about the Native Foodways program, the commodification of food, particularly of seeds, is an "industrialization of relatives," and that the genetic engineering and modification of seeds, indeed of any food, is "cutting off its story": arguably, a potently resonant overview of colonization.

As the Native Foodways program is inter-tribal, on a practical level, before they begin native food cultivation and farming on any given piece of land, they seek out permission from the First People of that region. Whoever the technical legal "owners" of the land may be, the Cultural Conservancy recognizes that the true stewards and guardians of the land are its Indigenous people. This again is a universal tenet of indigeneity: the humility of asking for permission from the First People of the land, who in turn ask permission from the in-dwelling spirits of the land.

Indeed, this where observation - one of the foundational aspects of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and permaculture - arises from; observation not simply in a passively scientific way but also as a dynamic act of relating and communicating. An Indigenous world-view regards the life-giving qualities of the Earth as maternal in a deeply practical sense, with all life on her as sentient, as sentient as any human being. Not asking for permission and waiting to receive an answer is felt intensely as a violation - both by the land, and by the Indigenous human stewards of the land.

When permission is granted, the Cultural Conservancy then works with these native people of the region to decide what seeds they'd like to see planted there, what plants and crops they'd like to cultivate. The emphasis is on partnership and collaboration to achieve, as M. Kat Anderson coined, a tending of the wild. These "farms," for lack of a better word, do not resemble the traditional monoculture spaces that we're used to. Rather, they're biodiverse, polyculture smallholdings, with native food, medicinals and trees such as willow, which can also be used for basket weaving. Indigenous agricultural practices feed back nutrients and nourishment to the soil. And the earth is enriched and sustained so that what grows from it is part of the mobius strip of the story of interconnectedness, right down to the human being who will eat and absorb the energy of the food.

The Cultural Conservancy has created a thriving seed library. We're more used to hearing about seed banks, but this transmits the sense of monetary value and of hoarding that is anathema to Indigenous values of trade and collaboration. Nelson describes the seed library not as a static entity but more as a process, where "you give, you exchange, you receive, you share the collective commons, the collective seed heritage. So we've gathered seeds, and exchanged seeds with Native American farmers and growers from all over Turtle Island, as well as California native tenders and gatherers."

The Native Foodways program grows much of the more classic "three sisters" of Native American agriculture - corns, beans and squash - and the many varieties therein. They're nutritionally symbiotic when eaten, ecologically symbiotic when grown and were common throughout the Americas, including Mesoamerica and South America. For a lot of tribes, they are also spiritually symbiotic, and there are ancient stories from different tribal nations about the "three sisters": one very tall, one shorter, one that crawls around on the ground.

If we don't grow our own food, then cultivating a vivid curiosity about its origins - about where, how and by whom it's grown or whose farm it comes from, how the plants and animals are tended to - is a way of paying attention to and restoring its story, of not participating in the monoculture of toxic industrialization and commodification.

If the colonization of our food, of the living plants and animals we consume, is a cutting off of their stories, this example of the 'three sisters' is but one of countless instances of what it means to re-indigenize our relationship to food, and how to do it.

If we think back to the beginnings of money and commerce, seeds were a unit of exchange. The idea of food sovereignty then, is intrinsically linked to a "redefining of wealth," as Nelson puts it, "because he who controls the food supply controls everything, and if you want to control the food supply, you control the seeds." And that's why a mere handful of corporations own the vast majority of seeds, which are then genetically modified - or enslaved, in the Indigenous mindset, a deep violation of sacred natural laws; in Nelson's words, "the very foundation of this loss of relationship."

Indigenous Melanesian and Polynesian people have the word mana to describe the unseen but vivifying life force within all things. This is the invisible connective tissue extant in all phenomena, including the human being and the food she eats. When we eat, we absorb not only the quantifiably measurable nutrients within it, but also its mana, its story - and it is this that governs and dictates the quality of those nutrients. Re-indigenizing our relationship to food begins with just that - cultivating a relationship to it, to move from the mindset of commodification and consumption to reciprocity and respect. This is a small yet seismic shift in outlook - an urgently subversive one - that has the power to transform the quality of our life, our health and that of our planet's, to whom we belong.

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Decolonizing the Way We Eat: How Did We Get Here and How Do We Re-Indigenize Our Relationship to Food?

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For most all of us, the idea of being in active relationship with our food is an alien concept. We enjoy food: the tasting and eating of it. Many of us take great pleasure in its preparation, the act of cooking and eating a delicious meal with loved ones is at the heart of human connection the world over.

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Representation of Indigenous Peoples in Climate Change Reporting

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Representation of Indigenous Peoples in Climate Change Reporting

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"As a 'public arena,' the media has the potential to shape public understanding of Indigenous issues in a changing climate."

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Why Native Women Should Be Leading the Climate Crisis Fight | NowThis

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Why Native Women Should Be Leading the Climate Crisis Fight | NowThis

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Why Native Women Should Be Leading the Climate Crisis Fight | Opinions | NowThis

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TUCSON - "Getting lost is the best part of trail running," Marlinda Bedonie said with a chuckle as we shielded our eyes from the morning sun, searching for our cars.

We spoke on a recent morning while trekking through Tucson Mountain Park on a mostly flat, single-track loop trail. Dipping in and out of washes and brushing against the creosote along the trail, the Tohono O'odham and Navajo mother and I chatted - out of breath - as we shared our running journeys and spoke about our families.

When we came to what we thought was the end of our loop, we realized that although we'd learned a lot about what we share in common, neither of us had any idea where our cars were.

Sometimes, getting lost can be part of finding yourself. In the past four years, Bedonie, 41, has found a passion for running and representing her culture in the sport. She often is featured on the Native Women Running Instagram page highlighting her half-marathons, 10Ks and other races.

Even when she's jogging Arizona trails solo, she's far from alone.

In 2018, Verna Volker, who's Navajo, launched Native Women Running on Instagram. Just more than three years later, her account has more than 19,000 followers and she's an ambassador for the running shoe company Hoka One.

Volker had started running in 2009 and soon realized something was missing in the community - representation by non-white runners.

"As I got more into running, I realized how little diversity there was," she said. "I remember going through Instagram and I saw the same type of runner: the cute, white, blonde, fit (woman) who just ran Boston, and I just felt like I couldn't relate."

The Boston Marathon may be considered " the holy grail for distance runners " but for Volker, running isn't about being invited to legacy races, it's about creating a space for people like her.

Native Women Running restores an Indigenous perspective to running and gives Indigenous women a platform to showcase their cultures and their passion for this ancient celebration of life.

"Native people once had messengers who would run to the next tribe over to carry a message, so it's kind of ingrained in Native people to run," she said. "There's a physical part of (running), but I think that, a lot of times, running was used for prayer runs and still today, it's a spiritual exercise for Native people."

Running also represents a spiritual connection to the land for Volker.

"I always encourage my women to run the land wherever they are," she said. "Some of us are not on the reservation, we're in the middle of Chicago or Minneapolis, and I just encourage them to run where you are, because running it acknowledges who you are as a people."

My run with Bedonie reflected that spiritual aspect. During our 4.5-mile trek through Tucson Mountain Park, she stopped occasionally to tell me about her daughters, her experiences running and her connection to the land we were on.

When she was a girl, her aunt used to bring her out early in the mornings to this area to harvest the fruit of the saguaro (or bahidaj, as it's known by the Tohono O'odham) that stood tall and proud all around us.

On the day we got lost, she looked at ease, comfortable, and said later that she knew her late aunt was there watching over her.

"Running for us is celebrating life," she said. "We're not just running for us, we're running for our people, we're running for those who can't, we're running for prayer."

Dirk Whitebreast, founder of Native-owned Red Earth Running Co., which organizes runs, sells clothing for Indigenous runners and uses proceeds to benefit Indigenous causes, said he sees hope for Native people in such events as the upcoming virtual Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women National Day of Awareness Run, hosted by Native Women Running.

Whitebreast said he and his company, which coordinated the virtual run with Native Women Running, want to let groups like Native Women Running take a more active role in these pushes for awareness and action.

"We decided to take a step back on this issue and let others lead," he said. "Native Women Running is a really sound platform. Verna does a really good job of bringing attention to the issue."

And the issue is huge. The Urban Indian Health Institute found that in 2016, the most recent year data are available, 5,712 Indigenous women were reported as missing or murdered in 71 U.S. cities.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, two weeks after being sworn in, created a Missing and Murdered Unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs dedicated to finding justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women, highlighting the urgency of this pandemic of violence against Native women, girls and Two Spirit individuals.

Native women are up to 10 times more likely to be murdered than the national average, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, and murder is the third leading cause of death for Native American people ages 10 to 24.

"I really have a heart for that," Volker said, "because through this work that I'm doing and these virtual runs, I have had women who messaged me their stories and real incidents where they've lost their mother or they have a niece who was never found. What we're supporting and bringing allies to help us raise awareness around this is really important to me."

For Bedonie, running in prayer for the protection of her people and family is important as well.

"I have family who I keep in prayer" while running, she said. "And everybody is going through a lot right now during this pandemic. We're losing our family and we're losing our friends. We have to say those prayers, we need them to be protected."

And as she and I ran through washes and jumped over rocks, a silence fell over us, leaving the crunch of our shoes on gravel as the only sound. When the silence ended and she talked about her college-aged daughter's first half-marathon, it became clear that she was thinking about her family even as we were just a bit lost in the Tucson Mountains. Her children were at the front of her mind, her prayer in motion.

Volker's experience running is similar.

"I am so thankful that running has found me," she said. "There are times when I run and I'm just bawling. When I started doing ultra races, I would write family members' names on my shoe to give me that motivation of running in honor of my brother or my sister or running in honor of my dad."

She said that her running helps her deal with loss, and it has become a healing ritual for her and countless others.

"In Native Women Running, I have women who run for their husbands or their sons and it's in that way that we relate so much," she said. "And I think that's why people gravitate toward Native Women Running."

But this commonality alone isn't what makes Native Women Running so special - it's also the safe space and community that she has built.

When Benodie was featured in an Instagram ad for Dick's Sporting Goods, she told Volker that she likely wouldn't have gotten that chance without Native Women Running.

Volker was humbled and joyful.

"She messaged me and she said, 'Verna, if it wasn't for you, I would have never gotten that opportunity,' and that almost makes me cry because that's what I do," Volker said. "It brings me much joy to do that, and I'm thankful for how much these women inspire me, too."

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Indigenous women have built a global running community

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TUCSON - "Getting lost is the best part of trail running," Marlinda Bedonie said with a chuckle as we shielded our eyes from the morning sun, searching for our cars. We spoke on a recent morning while trekking through Tucson Mountain Park on a mostly flat, single-track loop trail.

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The Indigenous: The Frontline--Change for Climate Talks

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The Indigenous: The Frontline--Change for Climate Talks

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Eriel Tchekwie Deranger is the co-founderand the Executive Director of Indigenous Climate Action. In her talk, Eriel discusses how Indigenous People are critical to combating climate change and protecting lands.

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The Indigenous: The Frontline - Change for Climate Talks

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Climate Change Through an Intersectional Lens: Gendered Vulnerability and Resilience in Indigenous Communities in the United States

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Climate Change Through an Intersectional Lens: Gendered Vulnerability and Resilience in Indigenous Communities in the United States

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American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians experience colonization based on intersecting layers of oppression in which race and gender are major determinants. The coupling of climate change with settler colonialism is the source of unique vulnerabilities. At the same time, gendered knowledge and gender-based activism and initiatives may foster climate change resilience

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How Native Tribes Are Taking the Lead on Planning for Climate Change

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How Native Tribes Are Taking the Lead on Planning for Climate Change

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“I have seen an elder standing on their cemetery in [the Pacific island nation of] Tuvalu and it was covered with water — they can’t bury their people there anymore.”

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Photo courtesy of Swinomish Indian Tribal Community

With their deep ties to the land and reliance on fishing, hunting, and gathering, indigenous tribes are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Now, native communities across North America are stepping up to adopt climate action plans to protect their way of life.

On a hot summer's day, marine ecologist Courtney Greiner walks the shore of a rocky Washington beach at low tide with a handful of staff and interns. They stake out the ground and hunch down, digging up the top two inches of mud, silt, and gravel looking for baby clams.

For thousands of years, the indigenous peoples of the West Coast would build rock walls at the low tide line, allowing sand to pile up behind them, making the slope of the beach gentler, and expanding the area of the intertidal zone that clams like to call home. These simple clam gardens are effective at boosting shellfish numbers, and have long been used to improve food security for traditional peoples.

Now the Swinomish are reviving the old idea to build the first modern clam garden in the United States. Greiner, who works for the Swinomish tribe, is collecting the data that will help the tribe determine the garden's best location. The project aims to boost clam numbers, providing both a sense of purpose for the community and additional food as other resources, like salmon, decline.

This is just part of the Swinomish's plan to ensure the ongoing prosperity of their people in the face of a changing climate. "They were the first native community - and really one of the first communities, period - to make climate adaptation a priority," says Meade Krosby, a conservation biologist with the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group. The tribe's climate proclamation came out in 2007, and their action plan, published in 2010, was one of the first such documents in the United States. "They're early adopters and really innovative," she says.

The Swinomish have already launched projects aimed at helping the community adapt to a shifting climate in the Pacific Northwest. To protect salmon runs, the tribe is working on the Skagit River to create better spawning beds and is planting trees to provide shade and reduce river temperatures. In addition, the tribe is fighting to block mining operations in the headwaters of the Skagit in British Columbia, which could impact waters downstream.

"Tribes have always been adapting to climate change - now we have to adapt even faster," says one Navajo leader.

Another project aims to restore a healthy population of native Olympia oysters, long threatened by pollution and crowding out by competitive Pacific oysters and now impacted by ocean acidification. Workers have brought in truckloads of oyster shells and dumped them on beaches to provide new homes for imported natives; the imports grow well, says Greiner, but so far have yet to produce a next generation of shellfish. "It's a learning process," she says. A site for the first clam garden should be chosen by next year. And a wetlands project is documenting the local plants that have ecological and cultural importance to the Swinomish, as part of efforts to better manage the changing coast for salmon and farmers alike.

Across North America, other indigenous communities are stepping up to formulate and enact climate action plans to protect their way of life. In 2019, the Karuk tribe of northern California released its climate adaptation plan with a recommendation to return to prescribed burning, an old idea that might help to ease California's wildfire problems. The Tulalip tribes of Washington state are relocating nuisance beavers from urban areas back to traditional watersheds to help lower river temperatures and aid salmon populations; they are also redirecting agricultural runoff for electricity generation. The Jamestown S'Klallam tribe in Washington is removing invasive butterfly bushes from the banks of the Dungeness River to help protect its salmon. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Montana are gathering and planting seedlings of the whitebark pine that are more resistant to warming-related diseases such as blister rust. Alaskan tribes are using microscopy to identify harmful algae blooms spurred by warming waters. The list goes on.

"Indigenous peoples have always been on the front lines," says Nikki Cooley, who grew up without electricity or running water on the Navajo Nation reservation and now co-manages the Tribes and Climate Change Program for the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals (ITEP) in Flagstaff, Arizona. "Tribes have always been adapting to climate change. Now we have to adapt even faster."

As Krosby puts it, indigenous peoples "have unique connections to the land and are feeling impacts the earliest and most severely." One study found that coastal indigenous communities eat 15 times as much seafood as non-indigenous people in the same country - food that is being heavily impacted by everything from pollution to warming waters and ocean acidification. In the far north, buildings are collapsing and indigenous communities relocating as permafrost thaws, and traditional practices like reindeer herding are being threatened as winter snow changes to freezing rain, which locks up winter forage like lichens under ice.

"It's happening all over the world," says Brian Cladoosby, chairman of the Swinomish tribal community. "I have seen an elder standing on their cemetery in [the Pacific island nation of] Tuvalu and it was covered with water - they can't bury their people there anymore."

These are communities that have relied on the land for generations, building an intimate knowledge of the natural cycles of plants, animals, and weather. Unlike the traditional Western worldview that humanity can and should seek dominion over the environment, indigenous populations tend to view humanity as part of an interconnected whole. "We knew if we impacted one part of the web, the whole thing could fall apart," says Cladoosby.

Adds Cooley, "We put our non-human relatives first, meaning the trees, the sky, the water. We don't treat them as objects to be studied in a lab. We revere them."

Indigenous communities tend to think many generations ahead when planning how to utilize resources.

Native Knowledge: What ecologists are learning from indigenous people. Read more.

Indigenous communities also tend to think many generations ahead when planning how to utilize resources - a lot further than a U.S. presidential cycle allows. "America can't even think past 4 years," says Don Sampson, Umatilla Tribe member and head of the climate change project for the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI), a 57-tribe consortium. "It's a short-sighted country."

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recent reports have acknowledged with "high confidence" that adaptation efforts benefit from the inclusion of local and indigenous knowledge. "One of the things that comes across really clearly is the fact that indigenous peoples are by far the most effective stewards of biodiversity," says Krosby. "They do the best job." One study showed, for example, that deforestation rates across the Amazon were two to three times lower in indigenous-held lands. According to the UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, indigenous peoples hold or manage a disproportionate amount of formally protected areas and areas with low human impact: these groups occupy 28 percent of the planet's land, but more than 40 percent of protected areas. In Canada, the government funded an Indigenous Guardians program in 2017, recognizing that First Nations communities are well placed to serve as stewards of the land.

Cooley estimates that ITEP has worked with representatives of some 300 of the 574 tribes in the United States and that there are now more than 50 tribal climate action plans in effect. "In the past five years, tribal climate action plans have exploded," she says. Sampson's goal is to ramp that up to 100 percent within five years: "We have to accelerate the ability and capacity of the tribes; we want all tribes to identify the impacts and have a plan for that."

Sampson also notes that many tribes are making huge strides on energy independence, weaning themselves off fossil fuels to protect both the environment and their economic future: the Navajo nation, for example, long reliant on coal, has made big investments in solar power.

The Swinomish tribe makes its home in western Washington, on an island carved out by the narrow Swinomish Channel. The land is low and at risk from sea level rise: A five-foot increase this century - at the high-end of sea level rise estimates - could swamp more than 1,100 acres of the 10,000 acre reservation, including all its agricultural lands. Part of the Swinomish territory is particularly sacred as a fishing and shellfish gathering spot, says Cladoosby. "One year, just a normal tide, not a storm surge, covered up that area," he recalls. "That had never happened before. It was eye opening for us."

About half of the reservation's acreage is forested, and so is at risk from wildfire, especially in a hotter, drier climate. The tribe has just over 1,000 members, many of them relying on "first foods" - from shellfish to deer - for their welfare. The surrounding Salish Sea has seen salmon populations crash mysteriously over the past 30 years; the impacts of climate change - including reduced stream flows and warmer stream temperatures - have been cited as one culprit. Dungeness crab and shellfish larvae are in some places literally dissolving from ocean acidification.

For many indigenous groups, environmental health and human health are deeply intertwined.

In the Skagit River Basin, a shift from snowfall to rain in the surrounding mountains is projected to boost winter river flow but reduce summer flow, drying up tributaries and making waters warmer just as salmon spawn in late summer and fall. "When there's no water for the salmon to return to, that's a serious problem," says Cladoosby.

"There've been times I've been really negative looking forward," says Joseph Williams, a Swinomish tribal senator with five children. "Things are looking pretty bleak, especially for our salmon." But these projects, he says, are proving inspirational to the next generation, helping to bring people together. "As long as we keep our kids excited about taking care of our environment, things remain optimistic," he says.

For the Swinomish, as for many indigenous groups, it makes little sense to talk about environmental health and human health separately; they are deeply intertwined, with community cohesion and traditional food security being equally vital. Resilience to sea level rise doesn't just mean managing wetlands, but also combating feelings of despair. Work led by the Swinomish tribe's environmental health analyst Jamie Donatuto and tribal historic preservation officer Larry Campbell has created a set of health indicators based on these cultural values. They hope this approach will help researchers across the world think beyond simple morbidity and mortality as the only important measures of welfare.

Such work is often done in collaboration with non-indigenous scientists and governments. The University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group last year released a Tribal Climate Tool, developed in close partnership with relevant tribes, that highlights specific climate impacts expected in local regions - from the number of hot summer days to inches of rainfall expected in coming decades - so tribes can see what they are facing and make decisions about how to adapt.

A number of such organizations are pushing this work forward in collaboration with local tribes, including the U.S. Geological Survey's regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers; Krosby is deputy director for the northwest division. And there's the Pacific Northwest Tribal Climate Change Network, based at the University of Oregon, which partners with Sampson's division at the ATNI. In October, ATNI's climate summit in Seattle is expected to attract tribal leaders from across North America, as they work on a national tribal climate crisis agenda for 2020 and beyond. "It's a revolution that's happening," says Sampson. "Watch the tribes: they are going to lead us."

For Cladoosby, part of that revolution involves re-awakening traditional connections to the land, which have eroded in recent centuries. "Part of the assimilation policy was taking stewardship of the environment out of our hands," he says, leaving many communities locked in a cycle of trauma and cultural loss, along with drug and alcohol abuse. "Part of breaking that cycle is getting back that respect for the environment."

Food Insecurity: Arctic heat is threatening indigenous life. Read more.

"Right now, we are taking baby steps," says Cladoosby. The Swinomish are still collecting data, securing treaty rights, educating their own people and others, he says. Alongside efforts to adapt and ensure resilience in the face of local change, political activism is also a big part of the picture as it can prevent some development and ensure that tribes maintain control over their lands. He acknowledges it will take time to establish long-term sustainable solutions. "We live in a pollution-based economy; it is based on making money and polluting the landscape," Cladoosby says. "Trying to change that mindset is like trying to turn a tanker. It doesn't happen over night."
Correction, February 13, 2020: A caption in an earlier version of this article incorrectly identified a photo as showing Swinomish tribal members preparing a new clam garden in Washington state. They were participating in a clam garden restoration in British Columbia.

Nicola Jones is a freelance journalist based in Pemberton, British Columbia, just outside of Vancouver. With a background in chemistry and oceanography, she writes about the physical sciences, most often for the journal Nature. She has also contributed to Scientific American, Globe and Mail, and New Scientist and serves as the science journalist in residence at the University of British Columbia. More →

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How Native Tribes Are Taking the Lead on Planning for Climate Change

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With their deep ties to the land and reliance on fishing, hunting, and gathering, indigenous tribes are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Now, native communities across North America are stepping up to adopt climate action plans to protect their way of life.

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Researchers Combine Indigenous Knowledge and Western Forestry Science Against Invasive Species

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Researchers Combine Indigenous Knowledge and Western Forestry Science Against Invasive Species

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It’s a tradition, however, that will soon be forever changed — and quite possibly erased altogether — as the invasive ash borer arrives in Maine, continuing its destructive spread across thirty states in the Midwest and Northeast, as well as adjoining parts of southern Canada.

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Suzanne Greenlaw doesn't like chainsaws. She moves quickly through the chest-high ostrich ferns, frilly leaves heavy with rain, as the orange saw sputters and then chokes. "She gets all freaked out," says Gabriel Frey, laughing as he yanks the starting cord again with one heavily muscled arm, the saw whirring to life. Putting the bar to a trunk of shaggy, gray-tinged bark, he begins to cut, the grinding sound of the saw echoing through the damp, green-lit stand.

The felled tree is one of three that Frey and Greenlaw carefully picked out of the woods on the cool, damp July day in far northern Maine. Plenty of logs are hauled out of the forest there, in Aroostook County, which is home to a chunk of the North Maine Woods, a 3.5 million-acre expanse of commercial timberland. But Frey and Greenlaw, and the stand of gray-barked trees, are part of a tradition that's far older than any timber camp or lumber mill. The trees are Fraxinus nigra, commonly known as black ash or brown ash, which have forever been at the hearts of the lives of Maine's indigenous tribes.

Greenlaw, a Maliseet forestry scientist working on her PhD at the University of Maine, is at the forefront of the effort to protect the state's brown ash. The trees are at risk of being wiped out by the emerald ash borer, an invasive species that has been killing ash trees in North America for the better part of 20 years. With the help of Frey, a renowned Passamaquoddy basket maker, as well as the broader Wabanaki basket-making community, the married couple is fighting to preserve the rich tradition the tree supports.

a borer infestation can effectively wipe out an otherwise healthy stand of ash in as little as six years

First pounded with the back of an axe into splints, then carefully shaved and cut into strips, brown ash provides the primary material used to weave baskets among the Wabanaki tribes that live across land that is today Maine and Canada's Maritime provinces. From the utilitarian backpack-like basket made of plain-woven ash to more complexly woven and decorated "fancy" baskets, there's an extensive tradition of basketry shared by the five Wabanaki tribes (four of which are federally recognized in Maine: Micmac, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot). The importance of these baskets throughout the tribes' histories makes the tree what Darren Ranco calls a cultural keystone species. "It's very central to the culture," says Ranco, a professor of anthropology at the University of Maine and a member of the Penobscot Indian Nation.

Wabanaki origin stories tell of the mythic hero Glooscap shooting an arrow into a brown ash tree, and the Wabanaki people pouring out into the world from the hole in the trunk. More recently, after Wabanaki tribes were forced off their land under European colonization, basketmaking was a means of both economic independence and resistance to assimilation. Until around the 1960s, the potato farming and fishing industries had an extensive need for baskets used in both harvesting and processing, and "fancy" baskets were sold to wealthy summer tourists in places like Bar Harbor and Kennebunk. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a full-time basket maker in nearly every Penobscot and Passamaquoddy household, and the craft was passed down through families, helping to maintain both native languages and familial structures. As Ranco says, "there aren't that many species that have all of these impacts on the culture."

It's a tradition, however, that will soon be forever changed - and quite possibly erased altogether - as the invasive ash borer arrives in Maine, continuing its destructive spread across thirty states in the Midwest and Northeast, as well as adjoining parts of southern Canada.

Native to northern Asia and eastern Russia, the diminutive, jewel-like borer was first documented in Michigan in 2002, and likely arrived some years earlier after hitching a ride on wooden shipping material. The beetles lay their eggs on the bark of ash trees where, after hatching, larvae will bore their way into the trunk, chewing looping tunnels through the wood before digging out chambers where they will mature into their adult form. Then, adult borers will chew their way back out of the trunk, leaving the host tree threaded with damaging channels. Forest Service research conducted in the Midwest has found that a borer infestation can effectively wipe out an otherwise healthy stand of ash in as little as six years. The borer has already killed tens of millions of ash trees across a swath of the United States and southern Canada, and threatens to destroy as many as 9 billion as it continues to spread - far more than the 4 billion American chestnut trees that were decimated by blight in the early 20th century, significantly remaking the ecology of Eastern forests.

Earlier this year, ash borers were found near Madawaska, Maine, less than 100 miles away from the stand where Frey harvested trees.

Despite its outsized cultural significance for Wabanaki tribes, brown ash is not a common tree in Maine, and does not have the same economic value in the timber industry as white ash, which is used in manufacturing baseball bats, axe hafts and other tool handles, flooring and cabinetry, and as firewood. Ash species comprise about 5 percent of Maine's hardwood forest overall, and 2 percent or less are brown ash; only about a fifth of those trees are fit for making baskets. With the forest cover in Maine now returned to pre-settlement levels (at 90 percent woods, it is the most forested state in the country) the prospect of finding brown ash among all of the oaks, maples, birches, spruces, cedars, pines, and other trees can be a challenge. But if there is going to be any kind of concerted effort to protect culturally and economically important stands of brown ash, the locations of those trees need to be known in the first place. Greenlaw is developing a tool that will help forestry managers do just that.

As she walks through the ferns alongside the river, dressed in a light, navy blue rain jacket and heavy rubber boots, Greenlaw explains how this stand of brown ash and others like it inform the geographic information systems (GIS) map she is developing. "I did a study looking at four locations and did a bunch of measurements: vegetation, canopy, soil, and whatever," she says, in order to try to define - in Western-science terms - the habitat that results in basket-quality ash. She found that only one factor, soil type, was statistically significant. Brown ash often grows in swamps, but those trees tend to yield wood that is unsuitable for weaving. The well-drained soils of a floodplain are more likely to result in trees that are good for basketry: straight, supple, and relatively free of knots. A fact that, while confirmed by Greenlaw's research, was already well-understood by ash harvesters and weavers. That's why she incorporates a lot more data than just soil type into the tool she's building. "I don't use only what is statistically significant in my model. I don't think that's appropriate," Greenlaw says.

"There's not a whole lot of research for native cultural materials. We have to begin from the beginning."

"It really involves combining Western forestry science with indigenous forestry science. It's not just looking for the tallest tree or finding the most trees in a particular location," says Ranco, who sits on Greenlaw's dissertation committee and is part of the Ash Task Force, a group comprised of natural resource managers, basket makers, and forestry scientists working to combat the borer. "When we say 'basket-quality ash' that means a very particular thing for the basketmaking community," Ranco says. In addition to the tree itself being relatively straight, the fibers in each growth ring generally need to be smooth and straight in order to yield strips suitable for weaving.

Greenlaw takes a lot of different factors into account as she works to develop a Western-science understanding of where such ash trees grow. It's well understood among ash harvesters that a tree will be brittle if it grows too close to cedar, for example, so she has a layer on her GIS map for hardwood companion species, allowing her to avoid that association on a landscape scale. Layered over Landsat satellite images of hardwood and mixed hardwood forests across Maine, Greenlaw can locate places where these various determining factors - soil type, distance to a river, stand age, and flow accumulation (the way water runs downhill) - all overlap, pointing to possible locations of basket-quality trees. The tool, which is still being refined, is becoming increasingly effective, but it only helps point the user toward ideal ash habitat, not actual ash. Once, Greenlaw trudged into the woods in search of a new ash stand, and found nothing but red maple.

It's a trial-and-error process in part because that's the nature of research, but also because there isn't much in the scientific literature to build upon. "There's not a whole lot of research for native cultural materials. We have to begin from the beginning," Greenlaw says. "It's not like they can go to the Forest Service and say, 'Can you give me a tool for this sort of cultural knowledge?'"

There aren't any known areas of brown ash on Penobscot land like the stand Greenlaw and Frey visited, at least not according to Russ Roy, the forest manager for the Penobscot Nation. "If you're standing there and can see ten good stems, that's a pretty nice spot," he says. Currently, the tribe's foresters come across brown ash mostly by chance. "We find them when we're flagging out a stop line for a harvest" of other timber, he says, "and we'll make a note of them." But with 100,000 acres in the tribe's trust land, he'd like to be more targeted when looking for ash. "What soils are we looking at, topography, riparian zones," Roy asks, "where should we be looking besides where we are already seeing it?"

"It's thousands of years of native technology gone - gone."

Knowing where existing stands are located is still guarded within the basketmaking community. Harvesters are protective of ash stands, and there are concerns within the basketmaking community that Greenlaw's mapping efforts will make public the closely held locations of trees upon which they rely. Because of those sensitivities, she requests that The Verge not name the river, give specific details about the location of the ash stand, or show the detailed maps that she's working on.

Greenlaw hopes that her tool will narrow the search for brown ash stands for people within the community. The hope is that the tool will help the Penobscot and other tribal forestry departments continue ongoing efforts to bank seeds from basket-quality trees, as well as build an inventory of ash stands so that more direct interventions can be implemented if and when the borers arrive. With more than 300,000 acres of tribal land within Maine, there could very well be brown ash stands out there that are unknown both to harvesters and natural-resource managers. Greenlaw wants the tribes - as well as private forestry companies, land trusts, and managers of federal lands like the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument - to know where they have brown ash so they can make informed decisions when the time comes.

Going back to 2002, the primary means of attempting to control the borer's spread has been selective harvesting: dense stands of ash are thinned out with the hopes that the borer will not spread between the more isolated trees. That has not proven to be the case. Individual ash can also be girdled to make a so-called trap tree: the bark is removed all the way around the trunk, drawing borers in the vicinity with the promise of exposed sapwood. The tree is then cut and burned while the borers are overwintering inside.

Other control options include introducing a species of parasitic wasps that is native to the ash borer's historic range, which could have unintended consequences. Another option is the targeted use of insecticide in high-value trees or stands.

"If you found an area that had good quality brown ash, would it make sense to inject it [with insecticide] to keep those trees going? I don't think anyone has come to a definitive answer to that," Roy says. "It's a potential option. I don't know if we've gotten to the point where we can say it's the option."

When the emerald ash borer was found in far northern Maine, it came as a surprise. The bug needs a clear line of ash trees to move from point A to point B, and it was expected that the borer would first move into southern Maine (where it has now also been documented), which borders already infested portions of New Hampshire. Despite laws against bringing firewood from out of state, and various public education campaigns focused on not moving firewood great distances within Maine's borders, it's suspected that a cord of ash driven up to camp from some infested area in the south brought the bug to Aroostook County. Quarantines are now in place in both northern and southern Maine to try to slow the ash borer's spread, but the insect was recently documented in Portland as well. It's only a matter of time before it spreads throughout the state. With the inevitability of emerald ash borers, some in the basketmaking community are more focused on how to prepare for a future without brown ash.

"I harvest twice what I am going to use," says Jeremy Frey, Gabriel's brother, who was the first basket maker to ever win best in show at the renowned Santa Fe Indian Market. "I do that because I know that we can't stop them." Jeremy believes that brown ash will be gone in 15 years, and he hopes that he'll have stockpiled as much as a decade's worth of material by then.

"It's thousands of years of native technology gone - gone," Jeremy says of the threat. The prospect of losing everything that brown ash represents makes him upset and depressed, even if he knows that as an individual artist, he will continue to make his work with one material or another.

A recent exhibition at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine, which specializes in Wabanaki art, highlighted both ash conservation efforts and alternative materials basket makers are exploring. The show, which Ranco helped curate, featured baskets made with felted wool, silk, newspaper, and plastic.

Jeremy showed work at a Santa Fe gallery during the Indian Market this summer, where he sold a piece made half with ash and half with birch bark - a style, he says, that's designed to introduce his collectors to a new material that will invariably feature more heavily in his work. "By the time the ash is gone," he says, "I'll have two lines: one with ash, and one without."

The woods alongside the river in Aroostook County are punctuated with the slowly decomposing tops of felled trees that were previously harvested for basketmaking. Above roughly the eight-foot mark, where the trunk of an immature brown ash opens into the crown, the wood is too knotty to use for basketmaking. It's the kind of ingrained practice that looks odd, if not wasteful, to outsiders, but is part of the indigenous knowledge base that has helped maintain the stand for generations.

"You'll see them all through here. You'll see like mature ash, younger ash," Gabriel says, pointing out trees of varied thickness. "I'm checking this one," he says, notching a promising-looking trunk with two sharp hits of a hatchet, the small wedge of wood revealing the growth rings inside. The bone-white strips that Gabriel uses to make his refined, leather-accented pack baskets each represent a year's worth of growth. "My history with this stand is that it has really thick rings, generally," he says, pointing out the width with the hatchet's edge.

Gabriel's baskets - which his grandfather, a carpenter, taught him to make - have begun to earn a similar degree of recognition to Jeremy's. This year, he was picked as a United States Artist fellow in traditional arts, which comes with a $50,000 award, and he also earned a second-place ribbon in the basketry category at Santa Fe. Although he still has a day job working as a massage therapist, his career as an artist is ascending, even as the ash borer looms.

"He sees himself as a carrier of culture, making his grandfather's baskets," Jeremy says of his brother's work. "He does add a contemporary feel to it, but the base skeleton to it is our family tradition that goes back thousands of years."

Watching him inspect, notch, and fell the trees, which he then carries out of the woods and up a steep, muddy embankment on his shoulder, it's easy to understand why, for Gabriel, basketmaking and brown ash are inseparable. The baskets aren't just a reflection of the brown ash and its unique properties, but of the places where it grows, and the culture that has both developed from brown ash and is determined to protect it. Frey feels he cannot weave without them.

Greenlaw recently won a $10,000 grant from the Forest Service (with cost-sharing through the Bureau of Indian Affairs) to run her model on tribal land across Maine. In doing so, she will be working with natural resource managers from the tribes, the basketmaking and harvester communities (not all basket makers cut and process their own ash like the Frey brothers do), as well as Wabanaki high school students.

First, Greenlaw will run her model, and check what it finds against the expertise of those in the community who know where ash is harvested. After cross-referencing the scientific data with the indigenous knowledge and getting the best sense of where basket-quality trees may be found, it will be time to go into the woods to inventory trees with the help of the native students.

Then, when the time comes, it will be up to the tribes to decide how to protect the trees. They will be able to make informed decisions when supplied with a better understanding of how much basket-quality ash they have, as well as resources like a field manual for ash inventory and protection developed by Tyler Everett, a master's degree candidate at University of Maine.

"If foresters say, 'We don't have a whole lot of brown ash,' I don't put a lot of stock in that because they aren't in areas where brown ash grows," Greenlaw says. High-value timber species are generally found in upland habitats, away from the floodplains and moving water where basket trees thrive. Basket makers, Greenlaw says, "don't use a whole lot of materials to get what we need. It's not like we clear out a whole stand. Once you know where a good stand is, you can cut it one year and then come back in a few years and cut again." It's not one and done.

Every ash tree in Maine cannot be saved from the borer. Instead, Greenlaw is trying to give basket trees a fighting chance to survive - so that basket makers can continue to come back to places like the banks of the river we visited and cut again.

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How an invasive pest threatens a Native American tradition

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Baskets crafted out of brown ash trees are a vital cultural and economic driver for members of the five Wabanaki tribes in North America. But stands of basket-quality brown ash aren't common in Maine.

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The global climate is changing and will continue to change. 1,2 Research is only beginning to examine the potential health implications and indicates significant vulnerabilities. 3 Key risks include increasing exposure to infectious diseases, exacerbated water and food insecurity, natural disasters, and population displacement, detailed descriptions of which are provided elsewhere. 3,4 Populations will be differentially vulnerable to these potential impacts at global to local levels. Those at highest risk include populations with an existing high burden of ill health, who are sensitive to climate-related health risks, and live in nations with limited technological capacity, weak institutions, high levels of poverty, and political inequality. 5

Indigenous populations have been identified as a highly vulnerable group within global discourse on climate change because of habitation in regions undergoing rapid change, and the disproportionate burden of morbidity and mortality faced by many groups. Yet our understanding of the human dimensions of climate change for indigenous populations at a global level is limited. Ford et al., 6 for instance, noted how indigenous-focused content has been largely overlooked in assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), other major assessments, 3,7,8 and in policy discussions surrounding the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Where indigenous issues are captured, indigenous ways of understanding and information about climate-society interactions embedded in myths, stories, tradition, and observations have typically been marginalized. This forms part of what Hulme 9,10 and Jasanoff 11 described as the civic epistemology of global climate change discourse that prioritizes positivist disciplines at the expense of the interpretative, creating knowledge detached from its local context. As a consequence, indigenous peoples are often viewed as powerless victims of climate change, overlooking how social, cultural, and economic conditions determine how climate change is experienced, understood, and responded to, and downplaying the accumulated knowledge and wisdom embodied in traditional knowledge systems that can provide valuable lessons for adaptation. In this way, climate change is constructed as a problem for society as opposed to a problem of society, directing attention away from the underlying root causes of vulnerability.

In contrast to the global framing of climate change discourse for indigenous populations, there is an increasingly rich and diverse body of scholarship examining vulnerability and adaptation to climate change at a local to regional level, with a number of studies focusing on health. Such case study research typically focuses on particular places, peoples, and cultures, but this work can also be used to identify broader trends in understanding. 12-14 I systematically reviewed the scientific and gray literature published over the past 2 decades (1990-2010) on indigenous health and climate change to identify and characterize the systemic or systemwide determinants of vulnerability, examine the sufficiency of our knowledge base, and identify priorities for future research and current action. I identified publications through the use of multiple search engines, with inclusion and exclusion criteria designed to capture studies focusing on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability but excluding mitigation. Full review methodology is profiled in supplementary data (available as a supplement to the online version of this article at http://www.ajph.org). I then used a vulnerability framework to structure the analysis of included publications, where vulnerability was conceptualized as a function of exposure to climate-related health risks, sensitivity to these risks, and adaptive capacity to address, plan for, or manage them 15-17 (see supplementary data for the framework and additional analyses of key trends in publications reviewed, available as a supplement to the online version of this article at http://www.ajph.org).

THE STATUS AND LIMITS OF CURRENT UNDERSTANDING

Many indigenous populations face unique exposures and sensitivities to climate change, a function of close relationships with and dependence on land, sea, and natural resources; livelihoods; culture; and habitation in regions that are undergoing rapid climatic and socioeconomic change. These factors create risk profiles that differ significantly from nonindigenous populations, and also among and between indigenous groups ().

Unique Sensitivity of Indigenous Populations to Climate Change

Understanding of the specific characteristics of climate change-related exposures and sensitivity is greatest for the Arctic and Australia (see data available as a supplement to the online version of this article at http://www.ajph.org). In the Arctic, many climate-related health outcomes are propagated through traditional food cultures, which have significant importance for many indigenous populations globally. There is strong empirical understanding of these links for Inuit and Alaska Natives, with sea ice change already constraining food access with implications for nutrition and cultural well-being. 19-24 Warming temperatures have the potential to affect infectious diseases associated with the storing and preparation of traditional foods (e.g., gastroenteritis, food-borne botulism), zoonotic diseases (e.g., giardiasis), 25 and traditional plants or remedies. 26 Documented health risks facing Australia's Aboriginal population with climate change are quite different, associated with occupation in high-risk areas where we have a baseline understanding of how the climate is changing. 27,28 Studies have typically examined health concerns surrounding extreme events; in particular, cyclones, flooding, and high temperature are prominent concerns. 28-31 Other studies have identified sea-level rise and settlement viability, and infectious diseases (e.g., dengue, Murray Valley encephalitis, malaria) as the main risks affecting health. 32 Two Australian studies examined the mental health dimensions of climate change, 30,33 a topic not examined in other regions yet of key importance given links between access to traditional lands and mental well-being. 34,35

Sensitivity to climate-related health outcomes is also determined by the organization and structure of health systems, current burden of ill health, and material conditions and behavioral factors; that is, the social determinants of health. Herein, a number of generalizations across regions and populations can be derived from existing scholarship.

First, traditional approaches to and conceptualizations of health remain central for many indigenous populations, based on an ideological substratum of concepts, notions, and ideas based around interpersonal and environmental relationships, stewardship, life experience and balance, spiritual considerations, family, and oral history. 36 The scope for climate change to affect health, therefore, is broader than altering the incidence and prevalence of disease, with potential for a range of indirect impacts, many of which will be associated with sociocultural well-being. "Western" or "allopathic" approaches are also important in contemporary indigenous health systems, and have been credited with increasing life expectancy in many regions through, for example, vaccinations and improved hygiene. 37-39 Depending on location and historical relationships with the state, these components of the health system may exhibit a complementary or competitive relationship. Constraints to accessing allopathic health, however, are widely noted across regions, a function of financial, geographic, and cultural barriers including a history (and current experience) of oppression through the medical system for some groups. 37,40 These challenges have implications for informing populations about risk avoidance and prevention activities in light of a changing climate.

Second, social and economic disadvantage are evident in continuing and persistent high rates of poverty and burden of ill health for many indigenous populations, and access to education, housing, and employment are typically well below that of nonindigenous populations. 38 These conditions increase sensitivity to climate-related health outcomes through a number of pathways, including forcing people to live in suboptimal conditions, engage in dangerous activities, live in areas of high risk, and engage in unhealthy behaviors. For Aboriginal people in Canada and Australia, house overcrowding has been identified as increasing the risk of communicable diseases and favoring transmission of respiratory and gastrointestinal illness-health outcomes that could be affected by projected warming temperatures. 27,41-43 Inadequate water infrastructure, common in many remote communities, increases the likelihood of outbreaks of temperature-related waterborne diseases including diarrheal disease and parasitic infections, particularly in low-income nations. 22,27,44,45 Among Inuit populations, a high prevalence of food insecurity associated with poverty and high cost of living is expected to increase sensitivity to nutritional deficiency caused by climate change-related stresses on traditional food systems, with women and children identified to be at high risk 22,46; similar challenges have been identified for Alaska Native villages, 47,48 and among Amazonian communities. 49

In poorer regions of the world, although population-specific data are lacking, it is possible to infer significant sensitivity to climate change because of pronounced health inequality among indigenous populations, which experience some of the highest rates of infant mortality, nutritional deficiency, and rates of infectious and parasitic disease globally. 38,50 Particularly in frontier zones being affected by rapid resource development, health systems are under significant stress associated with land expropriation, introduction of new diseases, erosion of traditional institutions, marginalization, and exposure to social and political violence. 4 In the Amazon, for example, a resurgence of hydrocarbon-related resource development and deforestation is challenging access to and ownership of traditional lands, introducing new diseases, and creating conditions for the spread and reemergence of existing diseases, a number of which have a strong link to temperature and precipitation (e.g., dengue, malaria, leishmaniasis, cholera), with climate projections indicating more favorable future conditions. 51-58 For Central Africa's Batwa population, insufficient resources and a heavy burden of disease are likely to create significant vulnerability to the projected health impacts of climate change. 59-62 These challenges are likely to be elevated for Uganda's Batwa, where eviction from traditional forest lands to high-density fixed settlements with poor sanitation and limited access to water and food has increased exposure and sensitivity to climate-related health risks including malaria and parasitic infections, while violence and discrimination limit access to formal health services. 50,63,64 Projections of increased frequency of high-intensity rainfall events could be particularly problematic, with waterborne disease outbreaks (e.g., typhoid, bacillary dysentery, Escherichia coli, and cryptosporidiosis) typically following heavy rainfall events and associated with fecal matter being washed into local water sources. 65-67

Significant Adaptive Capacity of Indigenous Populations

The literature indicates that existing sensitivities will result in climate change impacts occurring faster and of greater magnitude for many indigenous populations. Yet indigenous populations may also have significant adaptive capacity. Empirical work, mostly conducted in the Arctic, describes adaptations currently being employed to cope with a rapidly changing environment with a strong focus on food systems and dangers of engaging in harvesting activities. Adaptations are underpinned by traditional knowledge of lands and resources, cultural identity, and strong social and kinship networks, within health systems that combine allopathic and traditional approaches. 19-22,24,68 This adaptive capacity is critical for managing the risks of climate change. A number of studies also describe community-based initiatives to raise awareness of climate change impacts and using research to empower communities, and there are examples in the Arctic of the development of surveillance infrastructure for climate-related health outcomes. 69 Few studies, however, have examined how non-Arctic groups are responding to the health effects of climate change, and how economic resources, institutions, technology, equity, and information and skills affect this ability.

There is concern expressed in the literature that social, economic, and political transformations-rooted in colonial history, assimilationist policies, and accelerated by globalization-are having implications, many negative, for indigenous populations and their adaptive capacity. Poverty, marginalization, and lack of legal land title are all important contextual factors that affect adaptation and will be key challenges in the future. In Alaska and northern Canada, transformations of identity and community have resulted in loss of control, cultural continuity, and a weakening of traditional knowledge systems and social capital. Notwithstanding these historical conditions, significant progress has been made in developed nations in settling land claims and recognizing indigenous title, national governments have apologized for the colonial practices of history (e.g., Canada, Australia), and devolution of power to indigenous institutions has occurred in some jurisdictions. These developments hold promise for addressing some of the broader determinants of socioeconomic and health inequality that lie at the heart of indigenous vulnerability to climate change.

Poorer nations face more substantial challenges. Particularly in remote regions experiencing significant resource development pressure, indigenous integration into the global economy is occurring often with limited respect for local autonomy, and accompanied by social and political violence. Associated acculturation challenges have been linked to problems of addiction, suicide, and a weakening of social networks and traditional knowledge systems that play an important role in indigenous health systems and contribute to significant adaptive capacity. 33 The process of change and how groups experience and respond to outside stresses, however, is dynamic, and one in which indigenous peoples are actively making, remaking, and challenging their circumstances, with varying degrees of success. Inevitably there will be winners and losers, with concern expressed that climate change could exacerbate existing inequalities at community, regional, and national levels. 22 In the Peruvian Amazon, for example, Hofmeijer 49 describes how socioeconomic changes linked to resource development and improved transportation have enhanced access to regional health centers and monetary resources important for adaptation, but have also undermined traditional knowledge systems. Similarly, working with the Tsiname peoples of the Bolivian Amazon, Reyes-García et al. 70 documented increasing access to the market economy leading to a loss of knowledge of folk plant use. The potential health implications of an erosion of traditional knowledge systems in the context of climate change have not been examined outside an Arctic or Australian context, although the loss of response diversity and flexibility embodied in such knowledge systems has relevance for the management, response to, and avoidance of climate-related health risks that are projected to become more problematic in the future.

Gaps in Understanding

Existing scholarship develops a baseline understanding of the characteristics and determinants of vulnerability to the health effects of climate change for indigenous populations in a number of high-income nations, but there are significant geographic disparities. It is estimated that there are approximately 370 million indigenous people globally and at least 5000 distinct groups, with only a small fraction explicitly studied with regard to the health impacts of climate change. We know the least about regions with the largest indigenous populations, including Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It is likely that vulnerability will be high on account of a high burden of ill health, marginalization, and current exposure to climate-related health risks. Population-specific understanding on the nature of vulnerabilities and determinants remains unknown, however, and compromises our ability to safeguard the health of the most vulnerable. 71 In particular, adaptation financing provided through the UNFCCC-the United Nations convention that provides a global architecture for responding to climate change-depends upon the identification of urgent and immediate priorities for intervention: information that is generally lacking for indigenous peoples' health. This deficit is also evident in completed National Adaptation Programs of Action assessments conducted in the least developed countries and funded by the UNFCCC to identify urgent and immediate needs of the poorest nations to adapt to climate change. As of March 2011, 45 of 49 National Adaptation Programs of Action assessments had been submitted, with explicit reference to indigenous populations made in 5 (data available as a supplement to the online version of this article at http://www.ajph.org). In these cases, assessments note the potential for heightened vulnerability among indigenous populations, and identify importance of traditional knowledge for adaptation, but do not focus on health or identify specific concerns or needs for indigenous populations in light of a changing climate.

Although there is a strong bias toward high-income nations in the literature, there are also widespread disparities within and between these nations. In Canada, only 2 indigenous populations are studied, there is no reporting from Scandinavia or Russia, and only 1 paper reports from the conterminous United States. Disparities are also reflected in the nature of studies conducted, with the majority of empirical and adaptation research taking place in the Arctic and reflective of strong climate change signal evident in this region. Few studies have focused on differential vulnerability at a community level or examined high-risk groups (e.g., elderly, children) and research has largely been conducted in remote regions where indigenous peoples are often disadvantaged greatest but where links to traditional livelihoods and activities are strongest.

A ROADMAP FOR FUTURE RESEARCH AND ACTION

There is an emerging scholarship focusing on indigenous health and climate change, but there is a lot that we do not know. This deficit in understanding is not commensurate with the risks posed by climate change to indigenous health. Insights for indigenous populations can be derived from regional and global studies focusing on nonindigenous populations, but generalizing is problematic for indigenous groups where scholarship indicates that impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability are highly place- and culture-specific, and mediated by worldviews that place significant value on interpersonal and environmental relationships, stewardship, life experience and balance, spiritual considerations, family, tradition, and oral history. 6 I outline a roadmap to guide future research and identify how decision makers at various levels can use existing knowledge.

A Global Workplan

Addressing the indigenous health deficit requires a global workplan that develops a sustained process to mobilize resources for research and combines leadership by national and international bodies. Without such a workplan, indigenous health in a changing climate will continue to be neglected. Although the World Health Organization and United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples have noted the special needs of indigenous populations, and a number of initiatives have brought together indigenous peoples and organizations to assert their rights in a changing climate, 72,73 the importance and need for studies on indigenous health and climate change is not currently reflected in research agendas articulated in the scientific literature or through international bodies.

From a research and policy standpoint, we need to know how global processes interact with local conditions to create vulnerable (or adaptable) populations in light of a rapidly changing climate, where indigenous people are at greatest risk, what characteristics of a population make them vulnerable or adaptable, and what health risks are most pressing. For those regions and populations where the research need is particularly acute, there is an opportunity to build upon existing information on indigenous livelihoods and the determinants of health to identify and characterize the broad-scale factors likely to affect vulnerability to climate change. Such review-based studies are useful for locating populations or regions where targeted research is required and identifying broader structural conditions that will shape vulnerability, 14,41,74,75 and offer a low-cost, rapid entry point for initial research. How these broader factors affect vulnerability at lower scales, however, will not be uniform, depending on location-specific socioeconomic and biophysical factors, and varying at a regional, community, and intracommunity level. This diversity in how climate change will play out locally reinforces the importance of place-based and population-specific studies. 12,22,41,76

In identifying research priorities, it is important to begin discussions with indigenous peoples and their organizations, with priorities likely to differ by region and population. The following are key components of a roadmap for future research:

1. Indigenous conceptualizations on and approaches to health need to be articulated and central to research if we are to focus on relevant health risks and capture the complex, culturally mediated interaction among social, biophysical, and biomedical determinants of vulnerability. In working with communities, it is imperative to recognize the broader structural and colonial factors shaping vulnerability, alternative worldviews, and group-specific conceptualization of health and healthy living. Failure to do so will limit our understanding of vulnerability and likely reduce the effectiveness of policy intervention. 10,11,77,78

2. The collection of baseline data on socioeconomic and biomedical determinants of vulnerability is important. For indigenous populations, we know very little about the incidence and prevalence of most infectious diseases, waterborne illnesses, and food and water insecurity. 37,50,79 There is a need to develop an understanding of the sensitivity of health outcomes to climate, including the identification of indicators to measure and monitor, drawing upon both traditional and scientific knowledge. 22,80 Data on the social determinants of health are often lacking, including demographics, governance, resource availability, infrastructure, and a host of other factors that influence vulnerability.

3. There is a need to develop and improve surveillance and environmental monitoring systems (e.g., climate data, vector distributions) that systematically collect information on health outcomes and determinants relevant to indigenous populations and that are necessary to determine the occurrence and spread of health risks. 81 Existing surveillance systems provide some coverage, particularly in developed nations, although limitations have been highlighted. New research initiatives should work with indigenous populations to collect information on climate-related health outcomes using this information for future modeling in light of projected climatic conditions where feasible, and also tap the considerable knowledge indigenous populations have in this regard. Building capacity at a local level to support surveillance activity and integrate local needs is essential. 22

4. It is imperative that studies combine fundamental scientific research with an evaluation of opportunities for policy intervention. Proven interventions exist for many climate-related health risks and traditional approaches to health offer a foundation for promoting health and well-being. With recognition of this, a comprehensive evaluation of adaptation needs to examine the effectiveness, desirability, and feasibility of adaptations; assess urgency; evaluate durability of adaptations under different climate and socioeconomic scenarios; and assess equity considerations 82,83 working closely with indigenous peoples to this end.

5. Interdisciplinary approaches to research are required, involving collaborations across the health, natural, and social sciences, and the active engagement of indigenous communities and organizations, health professionals, and policymakers in cooperatively planning, developing, and conducting research. In particular, the humanities and interpretative social sciences have an essential role to play alongside biomedical science in examining the risks posed by climate change to health, and for too long have been neglected in mainstream health and climate change research. 10 Thus, indigenous myths and stories, oral tradition, and observations hold valuable information about climate-society interactions, climate-related health risks, and current and future vulnerability and adaptation determinants. 6,18,24,43

Many of these research needs have been articulated in the general health and climate change scholarship, and at a global level are captured in the World Health Organization's Climate Change and Health Work Plan. 84 They are even more pertinent in an indigenous context, and offer a means of generating important baseline information on current health risks alongside potential vulnerabilities to climate change.

What We Can Do With Existing Knowledge

This roadmap for future research recognizes that our current understanding is insufficient and likely to constrain adaptation. Yet this should not be used to justify inaction, and a number of emerging themes from this analysis identify potential entry points for health adaptation. Changing traditional knowledge systems, for example, have been identified as a key driver increasing vulnerability to climate-related health risks in numerous contexts. Efforts to preserve, document, and promote and teach traditional knowledge among younger generations, and strengthen links to traditional activities, offer key adaptation interventions. Addressing socioeconomic and health inequalities between indigenous and nonindigenous populations, securing land tenure, confronting colonial history and current reality, and community empowerment are consistently identified as essential for addressing existing health challenges, which in turn will increase resilience to climate change. These examples of entry points have widespread relevance and, though important for adaptation, also concern ongoing policy initiatives and needs in areas of social, cultural, economic, and health development. Climate change provides additional rationale for these interventions, and is consistent with scholarship that has argued that "mainstreaming" or "normalization" of adaptation is likely to be the most effective means of reducing vulnerability. 85-88

A CRITICAL TIME

The international policy architecture for addressing climate change through the UNFCCC is at a critical juncture as signatories debate what will replace the Kyoto Protocol when its implementation period ends in 2012. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is essential if we are to avoid "runaway" climate change and the crossing of key climate system thresholds. 1,3,89 The health impacts of such change would be significant and for some indigenous populations would inevitably result in the loss of homeland, livelihoods, and culture. Adaptation will also be necessary given that we are most likely locked into at least 2 °C of warming globally this century, 1,90 with climate change already affecting indigenous health. As part of the Copenhagen (2009) and Cancun (2010) Conference of the Parties meetings to the UNFCCC, industrialized nations pledged to provide $100 billion per year by 2020 to help poorer nations adapt, with an interim target of $30 billion by 2012. Whether the promised funds will materialize, or be additional to overseas development assistance, remains to be seen, 91,92 but, regardless, adaptation is increasingly being viewed as a cornerstone of climate policy at international to local levels. For indigenous populations, adaptation offers an opportunity to strengthen livelihoods, culture, and health in the face of multiple stresses, and to (re)assert (inter)nationally recognized "special rights." To seize this opportunity, however, requires significant effort by indigenous organizations and leaders, political actors, nongovernmental organizations, and the scientific community, to identify and justify what adaptations and support are needed. Public health research-working closely with indigenous populations and organizations-has an important role herein, providing an evidence base of the risks posed by climate change, and determinants of vulnerability and adaptability, and needs a more prominent role in future research activities.

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The global climate is changing and will continue to change. 1,2 Research is only beginning to examine the potential health implications and indicates significant vulnerabilities. 3 Key risks include increasing exposure to infectious diseases, exacerbated water and food insecurity, natural disasters, and population displacement, detailed descriptions of which are provided elsewhere.

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“It even sounds like music when you’re braiding sweetgrass."
-Debra Nicholas

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“It’s more than just a basket,” says Neptune. “It’s cultural survival.” There are many ways of looking at a basket, just as there are many ways of seeing a painting or reading a poem. Each person brings their own experiences to a work of art, their own biases. This can be a beautiful thing, like when an image moves you to tears. It can also be a poisonous thing, like when a creation is dismissed out of hand, devalued, destroyed. Sometimes, objects are revered but their makers are not."

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Issue: September 2020
"Glooskap came first of all into this country, into Nova Scotia, Maine, Canada, into the land of the Wabanaki, next to sunrise. There were no Indians here then (only wild Indians very far to the west). First born were the Mikumwess, the Oonabgemessuk, the small Elves, little men, dwellers in rocks. And in this way he made Man: He took his bow and arrows and shot at trees, the basket-trees, the Ash. Then Indians came out of the bark of the Ash-trees." From "Glooskap the Divinity," The Algonquin Legends of New England, Charles Godfrey Leland, 1884
Maine didn't exist until two hundred years ago. That's a minor blip on the timeline of geological history, a small portion of the timeline of biological history, a single entry in the timeline of human history. For centuries, Maine wasn't. But there was land here, and there were people here. And anywhere that people exist, art does too.

Of all the art forms practiced by indigenous people in this region, the weaving of ash baskets is perhaps the broadest and deepest tradition. Birch bark baskets also have a great and significant history, and there are certainly carvings to be mentioned, but baskets occupy a special place in Wabanaki culture. "Basketmaking, and all our art forms, was what helped us survive and adapt," explains Penobscot weaver Jennifer Neptune, director of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance.

"It's pretty amazing," she says. "The glacier was here 20,000 years ago. The water level was different. The Gulf of Maine had islands in it that are now just banks. We know our ancestors were hanging around during that time, because scallop draggers and fishermen bring things up from the ocean floor. We've been here longer than 13,000 years."

Baskets, she explains, were made first for practical use. These were the work baskets, the storage baskets. Made from wide strips of pounded, flexible ash wood, they were strong and durable. "Everything about ash that makes it a junk wood for other industries makes it incredibly great for weaving baskets," explains Passamaquoddy basketweaver Gabriel Frey. "Black ash is an incredibly fibrous hardwood. When we pound it, we are reverse-engineering how nature puts the tree together. What we are doing is taking the cellular structures of a tree and rearranging them into a usable container." Ash pack baskets ("one of our most ubiquitous traditions," notes Frey) helped people move from place to place. For their own pleasure, people also made fancy baskets, distinguished from the storage containers by their tight weave, small scale, and decorative function.

Once colonizers arrived and began to forcibly seize land and slaughter the native population, baskets took on a new meaning, particularly the fancy baskets. At first, the Wabanaki Nations (a group of peoples that includes the Maliseet, Mi'kmaq, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy) traded their storage baskets and fancy baskets for dried beans or other foods. Then, as time went on and the U.S. government demanded more and more assimilation, the practice of weaving baskets became a way to resist demands that the Wabanaki settle in one place. For thousands of years, the Wabanaki had been traveling inland in the winter to hunt, to the coast in the summer to escape the flies and gather clams, fish, eggs, and sweetgrass. "They wanted to turn us into farmers, but we were hunters and gatherers," says Neptune. "It was an act of sovereignty to say no and go where we wanted. To go to the coast to sell baskets, or go to New York City, or Philadelphia. To say, no one will stop us."

The sale of art, she explains, "built our communities." It enabled students to pay for college. It kept families fed. It bought clothes and cars and houses. "It's more than just a basket," says Neptune. "It's cultural survival." There are many ways of looking at a basket, just as there are many ways of seeing a painting or reading a poem. Each person brings their own experiences to a work of art, their own biases. This can be a beautiful thing, like when an image moves you to tears. It can also be a poisonous thing, like when a creation is dismissed out of hand, devalued, destroyed. Sometimes, objects are revered but their makers are not.

For a long time, U.S. art institutions didn't consider fancy baskets to be art, but this has begun to change. According to Neptune, Wabanaki art and craft was once "relegated to history and anthropology museums, to the past." She says, "That's too bad. By not looking at contemporary artists, you miss out on so much. You only get a sliver of the story, and the whole cake is better than a slice."

It isn't possible to present the whole cake in a single article, a single museum exhibit, or even in a single book. But Tilly Laskey, curator of the Maine Historical Society, has been trying to showcase basketweavers both past and present. "Wabanaki history is Maine history," she says. She is working to change the perception of "what is art and what isn't." "A pot made in ancient Greece was put in an art museum, but something made by Wabanaki people didn't go into a museum. Or pots made in the Southwest weren't in the art museum," Laskey points out. These choices reflected the values of white culture and worked to uphold and reproduce them. In Holding Up the Sky, a 2019 exhibition curated by Laskey and eight Wabanaki scholars and experts, the Maine Historical Society showcased a mix of historical objects and contemporary pieces. The aim was to educate viewers on how things were made, how they were used, how artists are still working within the various traditions today, and to provide context that a visitor to an ordinary art museum or gallery might not get. For instance, historical baskets were shown alongside the forms they were made on and next to jewelry featuring basketweaving techniques, as well as nonfunctional, purely decorative "baskets" by contemporary artists. The opening, Laskey says, was "the best night of my life," the result of years of efforts to recenter Native voices and move toward "sharing authority" within the organization. But, she notes, "we have so far to go still."

Exhibitions like this one show a non-Native audience an element of culture that exists alongside mainstream U.S. culture. They help educate Mainers and visitors about an underrepresented and often misun-derstood practice. Basketmaking is neither something of the past nor a newly revived phenomenon-it's ongoing; it ebbs and flows. "I remember living with my gram and her sons, my uncles, and watching them pound ash," says Passamaquoddy artist Debra Nicholas. "I would wake up to the sound of pounding ash. It sounds musical. You'd hear someone pounding it on one side of the road, and then you'd hear it again coming from the other side." Life on the Maine reservations was filled with these moments, the call-and-response noise of breaking down wood, the rituals of going out to collect sweetgrass, ash, and porcupine quills, the many stages of pounding and braiding and dying and weaving. "It even sounds like music when you're braiding sweetgrass," says Nicholas, who grew up watching her mother and her aunts work on their baskets, fingers flying.

For Frey, the urge to innovate began over a decade into his basketmaking career. "I was always a strict purist when it came to form, but then about seven years ago, I remembered something my grandfather said in his teachings," he explains. "He said he could teach me how he makes baskets, but I had to learn how I make baskets." Frey had been wondering for some time about how to bring the art form into the twenty-first century and make it relevant and useful for contemporary people. "I was thinking things like, 'Why not have a pack basket for yoga? Why not have one you can carry on the subway?'" He began using the fancy basket techniques to create large, practical carriers for yoga mats and books. He began to create small, delicate handbags that you could take on a night out (including one stunning rainbow-hued handbag he made for a private client because "they wanted something really special for Pride," he says).

Jeremy Frey, Gabriel's brother, has also spent the past few decades innovating. "I'm seeking to elevate baskets to the level of luxury handbags, but Jeremy's in a whole different realm," Gabriel says. "He's making fine art." From the 1990s onward, the Freys have seen an increase in respect for their wares, which Jeremy credits to the creation of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance in 1993. "I believe that program changed things," Jeremy says. "It kicked off a new wave of basketry." It helped makers connect to other makers, to buyers, and to new sources of inspiration and education. Jeremy says that when he first started making his dramatic fine art pieces, he faced a lot of pushback from the elders. "They couldn't understand," he says. "They were trapped in tradition."

But Jeremy didn't want to stagnate, and he didn't want to see this art form he loved so much stagnate either. He kept pushing and pushing, making ever more intricate objects, like baskets that nestle within each other, baskets that are unable to be opened, baskets that are shaped like urns and others shaped like urchins. These baskets sell for hundreds-even thousands-of dollars. (Price is determined by size, shape, and complexity. For instance, the price for a custom basket decorated with porcupine quills starts at $1,000 and go upward from there.)

"I respect the people who use the original designs so much," Jeremy says. "It's like hearing a language, seeing their work. It's beautiful. But it's not for me. I have to redesign." His work, he says, carries "an energy." That's how he knows a piece is worth its price, worth its place in a fine art institution. "When you see a piece, and you know-you know if there is an energy there. It's something that can't be replicated. You know if it's art."

We're living during a time of instability. We don't know what damage climate change will cause-not really, at least. We have models and ideas. We know it is causing more "weather events" and increasing the spread of certain diseases. We know the sea is rising. We also know the emerald ash borer, an invasive species of jewel beetle native to Asia, has come to Maine. Like climate change, it's already here. Since its introduction to North America in the early 2000s, the emerald ash borer has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees. Humans spread the disease by moving forest products (usually firewood) from one region to another. No ash species native to North America is resistant to the burrowing pest. Even in Maine's isolated forests, where the pest has been slow to take hold, it's already doing damage.

For some people, this means the end of an era. Gabriel Frey views the coming infestation as a looming apocalypse. "Ultimately, I think basketweaving as we practice it is headed for extinction. Probably within my lifetime, and I don't think there is a way to stop it," he says. "I see a tsunami crossing the country. A millennium-old art form is on the verge of extinction. That is one of the prices of globalization."

Without black ash trees, the many basketweavers can't continue doing their work. Jeremy has been focusing his energy on building up a store of ash, but that will run out. "No matter what we artists do, there will come a point where we can no longer make ash basketry," he says. "Even if I can still produce work and make a living, it's a crazy loss. It's like the loss of a language, or a sacred ceremony you never do again. It hurts inside." Ash is central to Wabanaki myths, to the culture. Ash leaves flutter through the histories of the peoples. Ash fibers tell the story of seasonal movements, cultural resistance, and contemporary innovation. That's not something that can be easily replaced, even if you can find other materials to work with.

Still, Neptune keeps hope alive. She believes they may be able to mitigate the damage done by emerald ash borers, that science may still find a way to stop the spread of this pest. "We have so much," she points out. "We have other weaving traditions of basswood and cedar bark, other materials." No matter what happens, art will persist. She knows that.

Neptune also draws strength and hope from the stories of her ancestors. "We've been here," she says, "adapting to all the changes, all the fluctuations in climate, in sea level. We've been here for the tundra turning to trees turning to dense forests. Our ancestors were here and learned to survive contact with settlers. All these things, they found ways to deal with." Right now, as coronavirus continues to sweep across communities and through hospitals, Neptune thinks it is more imperative than ever to honor our artistic impulses, to embrace the opportunities that we have. "Each day is not guaranteed. That's in our face right now," she says. "What will you do with it? What will you make with what you have been given? Do it now. Don't wait."

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Weaving Stories The Wabanaki art of basketmaking has been passed down from generation to generation, but there's a new threat to its future by Katy KelleherPhotography by Nicole Wolf Issue: September 2020 "Glooskap came first of all into this country, ... Continue reading →

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Climate Change Will Force Native Americans to Adapt Religious Rituals Yet Again

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Climate Change Will Force Native Americans to Adapt Religious Rituals Yet Again

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Indigenous communities can be resilient and adapt their internal religious beliefs to outside challenges, as Native American tribes from the turn of the 20th century have proven. Climate change presents yet another challenge.

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The Colorado River, one of the longest rivers in the United States, is gradually shrinking. This is partly a result of overuse by municipalities and seasonal drought. The other reason is global warming.

The decline in the river reservoir will have serious implications for large U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, that depend on the Colorado River as their water source. In addition, this will also affect the Native American tribes who view the Colorado River as sacred to their religions.

The U.S. government made certain Native American religious practices illegal in the 19th and early 20th century.

As Ka-Voka Jackson, a member of the Hualapai tribe and a graduate student working to address climate change on the Colorado River and restoring native plant species along its banks, said, "The Colorado River is so sacred not just to my tribe, but to so many others."

As a scholar of Native American religions and the environment, I understand how indigenous people's religions and sacred places are closely tied to their landscape. For the past 100 years, indigenous peoples have been forced to adapt to changes in their environments and modify their religious rituals in the United States. The U.S. government made certain Native American religious practices illegal in the 19th and early 20th century. Although these policies have since been rescinded, they led to changes in many indigenous practices.

Global warming, however, is different. The question is whether indigenous people will be able to adapt their beliefs all over again amid the impact of global warming on the natural world.

Adapting to change

The Blackfeet tribe in Montana changed their relationship with the natural world as a result of the policies of the U.S. government from the 1880s to the 1930s.

For example, the Blackfeet purposefully moved religious ceremonies from one time on their liturgical calendar to completely different times to avoid the U.S. government penalizing native people for dancing or participating in religious ceremonies.

The Blackfeet moved their annual O'kan, or sundance festival, from late summer (usually held at the end of August) to the Fourth of July celebration. They avoided U.S. government punishment by masking their ceremonies within state-sanctioned public events.

Native American tribes learned to adapt to the challenges placed before them.

Policies related to the mining of natural resources and damming of rivers on indigenous lands have also led to changes in Native Americans' religious practices.

Historian David R. M. Beck interviewed elders and researched how the Menominee tribe in Wisconsin adapted to the loss of their sacred fish, the sturgeon, after a paper mill built a dam across the Wolf River.

The sturgeon disappeared after the dam was built in 1892, because they could no longer swim upstream to spawn. For more than 100 years, the Menominee tribal members continued to pray and conduct their annual "returning of the sturgeon" ceremony in the spring-even though no more sturgeon were in the river. The Menominee ultimately won the right to return the sturgeon to the Wolf River in 1992, and the tribe revitalized the full ceremony and celebration of their sacred fish.

In all these situations, Native American tribes learned to adapt to the challenges placed before them, modify their religious practice and embrace a different relationship with the natural world.

Global warming and religion

Global climate change affects everyone, not just specific groups in specific places. But for many indigenous peoples, natural resources are closely linked to religious beliefs and practices.

Historically, indigenous peoples used the natural seasonal cycles of weather, plants and animals as part of their liturgical or religious calendar. The Blackfeet held their annual "beaver bundle ceremony" in the early spring as ice melted off rivers and beavers returned to the open waters. In Blackfeet mythology, a beaver served as a deity who taught humans how to cultivate tobacco, which the tribe used for important religious ceremonies and as a peace offering to their enemies.

There are signs, though, that beavers are now moving north because of global warming. Biologists are currently studying both beavers and the birch and alder shrubs that beavers eat, as both move north into new regions. Scientists worry that as a keystone species, the movement of beavers will change the northern ecosystems as they cut off waterways and build beaver dams. And shrubs will change the local waterways that they grow by. This will affect local animal species.

What will happen when there are no more beaver in Blackfeet territory? Will their religious traditions adapt similar to the Menominee when they faced the loss of their sacred sturgeon?

Religion and resiliency

From the arctic tundra to the American desert southwest, and places worldwide, indigenous peoples will be facing the impact of global climate change.

Regarding the shrinking of the Colorado River, researchers Brad Udall and Jonathan Overpeck have concluded that, "Failing to act on climate change means accepting the very high risk that the Colorado River basin will continue to dry up into the future."

If this river faces a drier future, it will likely affect the Mojave, a people indigenous to the Colorado River basin, who believe the river was created by their ancient deity Mastamho as part of their sacred landscape.

While last week's G-20 summit in Germany covered global issues including climate change, indigenous scholars, such as myself, are wondering what the future holds for indigenous peoples, their environments and their religions.

Indigenous communities can be resilient and adapt their internal religious beliefs to outside challenges, as Native American tribes from the turn of the 20th century have proven. Climate change presents yet another challenge.
This article was originally published by The Conversation. It has been edited for YES! Magazine.
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Climate Change Will Force Native Americans to Adapt Religious Rituals Yet Again - YES! Magazine

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The Colorado River, one of the longest rivers in the United States, is gradually shrinking. This is partly a result of overuse by municipalities and seasonal drought. The other reason is global warming. The decline in the river reservoir will have serious implications for large U.S.

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How Maine Tribes are Adapting to Climate Change

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How Maine Tribes are Adapting to Climate Change

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“The worst thing we can do is just have some expert at some high level make a decision that impacts so many people, if they haven’t really embedded themselves in what’s really important to those to those local people," says Darren Ranco.

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In northern Maine, the Aroostook Band of Micmacs has for decades been trying to protect important tribal cultural resources, including traditional foods, from pollution. And warming temperatures are expected to further that threat. But the Micmacs and other Maine tribes are taking steps to adapt.

In a tiny studio nestled in his backyard near Houlton, Richard Silliboy gathers, splits and weaves together long thin pieces of ash that will eventually form a basket. The vice chief of the Aroostook Band of Micmacs, Silliboy says he learned the art as a child from his mother, who'd craft up to 120 baskets a week that were used by workers in the nearby potato fields.

As he sits and weaves, Silliboy describes the practice as spiritual and part of the tribe's creation story.

"I think about my past. I think about my family. Think about the Creator. Think about the problems that we face as Native Americans. And always trying to resolve some problem that's out of my reach," he says.

Those problems include the threats to ash trees and other cultural resources from the environmental effects of invasive insects and a changing climate.

Credit Robbie Feinberg / Maine Public

"The tribe has been living here in what is now Aroostook County for thousands of years. And the tribe learned to make use of all the natural resources that were available. And now our natural resources are changing because of climate change," says Fred Corey, the natural resources director for the Aroostook Band of Micmacs, which he says has been dealing with environmental challenges for years.

Corey says pollution and contamination of waterways have diminished the supply and quality of culturally significant food sources such as wild brook trout. And now some reports indicate that trout could be at risk of losing cold water habitat in some areas due to factors including reduced stream flow and warming water temperatures.

"Brook trout fishing has been a legacy that many families in the tribe have practiced for thousands of years. And to see that practice eventually go away, or our brook trout become so fragile that we're not able to fish for them, is really scary for the future," he says.

"These are all, both, scary situations. But also I see, on the tribal side, a great ability and a resilience to respond to these potential challenges," says Darren Ranco, a professor of anthropology at the University of Maine who has worked with tribes as they prepare and adapt as climate change threatens important species such as moose, long hunted as a source of food and now under pressure from infestations of winter ticks.

Credit Robert F. Bukaty / Associated Press

Ranco says in the effort to adapt to these pressures, it's important that indigenous knowledge and science be considered, along with expertise from outside of the tribe.

"The worst thing we can do is just have some expert at some high level make a decision that impacts so many people, if they haven't really embedded themselves in what's really important to those to those local people," he says.

To adapt to present and possible future threats to brook trout, the Micmacs have decided to grow the fish themselves. More than 30,000 trout swim inside two giant, bubbling tanks at a hatchery they've built in Caribou. While some of the fish head to restaurants or markets, the tribe estimates that nearly a third are distributed to its members.

Environmental specialist David Macek says the hatchery offers a way to provide a sustainable, clean food source for the Micmac community while conserving trout populations in the wild.

"It's really important because we know it's going to be available. We know where it's coming from. We know how it's being produced. And it's going to be there, even as climate change might start taking a toll on the wild stock," he says.

Credit Robbie Feinberg / Maine Public

The tribe is also planning for other climate related changes, including a study of the effects of mosquitoes and potential vector-borne diseases, which staffers hope will begin next year. Tribal officials say they want to be proactive and learn from other tribes across Maine and the country to preserve the resources they've relied on for centuries.
This story is part of a week-long reporting project "Covering Climate Now," by Maine Public and more than 300 other news outlets around the world. The series comes in advance of the United Nations Climate Action Summit on Monday Sept. 23 in New York. More information here. Originally published 5:47 p.m. Sept. 17, 2019

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How Maine Tribes Are Adapting To Climate Change, Threatening Thousands Of Years Of Culture

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In northern Maine, the Aroostook Band of Micmacs has for decades been trying to protect important tribal cultural resources, including traditional foods, from pollution. And warming temperatures are expected to further that threat. But the Micmacs and other Maine tribes are taking steps to adapt.

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Project Aims to Bring Together Tribes to Share Knowledge, Solutions to Climate Change

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Project Aims to Bring Together Tribes to Share Knowledge, Solutions to Climate Change

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Maine environment and based on Wabanaki epistemologies and traditional values. The workbook would be based on the federal regional climate adaptation workbook, a strategy guide for natural resource policy and management in a dynamic and rapidly changing global system, and will take into account traditional ecological knowledge and knowledge transfer.

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Natalie Michelle remembers when her father used to tell her stories about fishing in Maine.

"You'd only have to stand on the shore and cast a net and then he said you'd pull up a whole netful of fish and that was all you needed for the day," she said. "There's been an extirpation of a lot of the fishery species that we relied on. They're just not there anymore."

Now Michelle, who is both Penobscot and Passamaquoddy, works with tribes around the state to protect those very same environments and species.

Michelle, an interdisciplinary PhD candidate at the University of Maine, is at the forefront of recent efforts to bring tribes in Maine together against the obstacles posed by climate change.

She is in the process of establishing an intertribal climate change coalition. Other Maine-based climate change groups that have had tribal membership - like Governor Janet Mills' Maine Climate Council - have involved state actors, but this group would be specifically charged with developing culturally relevant adaptation strategies for tribes in Maine.
'This is our workbook'
It started with a report.

Supported by the University, Michelle finished a project in 2017 called the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Tribal Comprehensive Adaptation Planning report, a nearly 82-page document which aimed to articulate the major climate change-related concerns of tribes in Maine.

Michelle said the project was a necessary step for communities that have lacked a cohesive voice on the issue of climate change. She interviewed traditional harvesters and members of each tribe's natural resource department staff, compiling their worries in the report and scrupulously analyzing by hand transcriptions of all her interviews.

There are five tribal communities and four federally recognized tribes in Maine: the Penobscot Nation, Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy, who have two reservations in Washington County.

Michelle sees the report as the first step in better preparing tribes in Maine for new environmental realities. It laid the groundwork for taking action on climate change adaptation. That's her priority now.

While the intertribal coalition is still in its nascent stages, Michelle has big plans. She wants it to be a forum where tribal members can collaborate on tailored solutions for climate change, a need she hasn't yet seen answered by existing groups.

"[The tribes] felt that they didn't have a whole lot of voice in the state of Maine in terms of fisheries or river issues or those kinds of conflicts that have come up over the years," she said.

One of the main goals of this partnership will be creating a climate change adaptation workbook targeted toward the Maine environment and based on Wabanaki epistemologies and traditional values. The workbook would be based on the federal regional climate adaptation workbook, a strategy guide for natural resource policy and management in a dynamic and rapidly changing global system, and will take into account traditional ecological knowledge and knowledge transfer.

Traditional ecological knowledge often denotes a set of beliefs and practices implemented into tribal decision making. For the Penobscot, for example, decisions are made thinking about ramifications seven generations in the future.

Michelle said that similar frameworks have already been successfully developed by other federally recognized tribes.

"There are tribes that have already developed that," Michelle explained. "But it was based on their own epistemology. And so we want to have our own that is unique to this environment."

The Maine-specific workbook, if brought to fruition, will take inspiration from projects like Dibaginjigaadeg Anishinaabe Ezhitwaad: A Tribal Climate Adaptation Menu created by the Anishinaabe group of tribes in the midwestern United States and Canada. The first part of the name of the workbook in the Anishinaabemowin language means "Doing something based on the Anishinaabe way."
An issue of sovereignty, too
For Michelle, this work is not only about safeguarding the tribe's economies and customs, it's about protecting their sovereignty.

Creating an action group and climate change workbook is, in her eyes, an expression of autonomy for tribes in Maine. For too long, she said, indigenous communities in Maine have had to negotiate with the state about natural resource management in an unequal power relationship.

With these initiatives, she hopes that the tribes will develop strategies and collaborative partnerships for adaptation that prioritize tribal concerns and respect traditional ecological knowledge.

Referencing years of legal disputes between the tribes and the state on a variety of issues, Michelle said, "the Tribes haven't been able to focus their resources that they do have on addressing some of these climate change issues, because they're always litigating with the state. And we feel that it's deliberate, so that we can't build cultural solvency through our self determination efforts. And it's another way of sort of kicking the can down the road."

Michelle pointed to the ongoing discussions in the Maine Legislature over the Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement, which seek to put an end to some of those legal disputes.

In 1980, in an effort to avert expensive and time-consuming litigations over land claim issues, the Penobscot Nation, Passamaquoddy Tribe, and Houlton Band of Maliseet signed an agreement with the state of Maine which was subsequently modified by the state, sent to Congress and ratified. The agreement said that the tribes would rescind their claim on nearly two-thirds of land in Maine and put a moratorium on future claims.

It also included a slew of legal changes to the relationship between the state and the tribes. In order to be included in changes made by new federal Indian laws, for example, tribes in Maine needed to be specifically named in the law.

The document has effectively dictated the relationship between the tribes and the state for the last 40 years, time during which jurisdictional conflicts over land and water protection have arisen between the state and tribes.

This spring, a coalition composed of tribal leaders, a representative from the Mills administration and state lawmakers presented 22 recommendations to the state legislature which they claim would fix the errors established by the Land Claims Settlement Act. As of now, deliberation on the bill has been postponed until the legislature resumes after the session was cut short due to the outbreak of coronavirus.

The recommendations are varied but united by a theme: recognition of tribal sovereignty by the state. One calls for the tribes to be able to regulate fishing and hunting on tribal lands, another for greater jurisdiction of tribal courts.

There are some that have an explicit environmental dimension, with one calling for the restoration of tribes' rights "to exercise regulation of natural resources and land use" in accordance with federal Indian law.

Advocates of reforming the Land Claims Settlement Act say that doing so would be a recognition of tribal sovereignty and an important change to the tribe-state relationship.

Penobscot Nation member Dawn Neptunes Adams, an activist and journalist with the Sunlight Media Collective, believes that the current arrangement with the tribes has led to an increase in environmental degradation. For example, she said companies have been allowed to pollute tribal waters in Penobscot Territory.

"If the state of Maine actually had to follow federal Indian law, we wouldn't constantly have to show up at the Maine State House to remind lawmakers to respect our stewardship of the land and water, or to petition them to not give industrial polluters harmful permits," Adams said. "If our jurisdiction was recognized, we would do what the state has consistently failed to do: protect the environment for all the people of Maine, and for the next seven generations."

It's against this complex backdrop that the climate work of Michelle and her colleagues is taking place. For her and so many others, the question of how the tribes will develop and carry out tailored climate-change mitigation policies could be influenced by whatever legal and political developments arise in the near future.
Photo: This portion of the Penobscot River that flows around the western side of Marsh Island, home to the University of Maine, is often referred to as the "Stillwater River." | Brawley Benson, Beacon

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Project aims to bring together tribes to share knowledge, solutions to climate change

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Natalie Michelle remembers when her father used to tell her stories about fishing in Maine. "You'd only have to stand on the shore and cast a net and then he said you'd pull up a whole netful of fish and that was all you needed for the day," she said.

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Name: Passamaquoddy Food Sovereignty

Address: Vera Francis

Passamaquoddy Tribal Office

9 Sakom Road

Pleasant Point, Maine 04667

Mailing Address:

Passamaquoddy Tribal Office

Perry, Maine 04667

Phone: 207-853-2600

Email: vfrancis@wabanaki.com

Products and Services:

-assistance with establishing home gardens

-nutrition education

-raised beds

-community garden

What Makes The Passamaquoddy Food Sovereignty Program Unique?

Integral to the Passamaquoddy Nation is a bond with the land, the forests, the rivers, the lakes, and the ocean. The ability of the Passamaquoddy People to access food from their natural surroundings can be traced back thousands of years. Even their Tribal name of "Peskotomuhkat" is associated with the gathering of food from nature as it means "those of the place where pollock are plentiful."

Outside of the Tribal Office at Pleasant Point there is a sign that says "Gedakina - Our world, a way of life." This refers to an endeavor to strengthen and revitalize the culture and identity of Native People. It is tied in with the conservation of natural resources and sacred lands. The concept of being "keepers of the earth" is promoted.

Unique Maine Farms had the opportunity to meet with Vera Francis, the Community Planner and Economic Development Director at the Passamaquoddy Reservation this past August. In her efforts to focus on many of the critical environmental issues that relate to the Passamaquoddy People and in the way that she lives, she is a true "keeper of the earth."

Vera has worked tirelessly to restore the health of Passamaquoddy Bay. She explained that the ability to "access food and fish is vital to our spiritual and cultural sustenance." She worked for many years to keep LNG out of the area and established the non-profit group N'tutlankeyutmonen N'kihtaqmikon which means "We are taking care of our land." In 2010, Vera was awarded the People's Choice Award by the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

Honoring and protecting the natural resources

for use by future generations has been intrinsic to the Passamaquoddy People. Vera Francis has played a major role in supporting the idea of a Food Sovereignty program on the Sipayik Reservation. According to Elizabeth Sprague, the former Program Manager of the Wabanaki Business Innovation Center at Four Directions Development Corporation, Vera had been talking with The People for over a year about growing, preserving, and sharing food in the community.

Vera reminisced about the influence of her Grandmother. She described her as a person who

commanded that food come to the home. It was expected that fish would be caught and plants such as berries, herbs, and sweet grass would be harvested. There was a pride in the ability to choose food that was based on a sense of culture. Vera discussed that the concept of food was "not just about having enough, but also about sustaining our very being, our cultural lifeways." She explained the idea of how traditional knowledge will enable Tribal members to have a sense of vibrancy and the ability to enjoy longevity.

Plansowes Dana and her husband, Javier Lopez, and their children, Petak, Sigon, and Maya, maintain a beautiful large garden at their home at Sipayik. Plansowes has been one of the lead people in the Food Sovereignty program on the Passamaquoddy Reservation.

Plansowes grew up on the Sipayik Reservation. There were six children in the family. Gardening and preserving food were always part of the home. There was always plenty of food. Plansowes feels that it is important for The People to get back to the traditional ways. The Dana-Lopez garden completed its seventh season in 2013. The family takes pride in growing their own food. They have planted and tended strawberries, grapes, watermelon, cantaloupe, a large variety of vegetables, and garlic. They also planted five fruit trees and enjoy the apples from four apple trees that were already established on their property.

Plansowes will be establishing the community garden for the Tribe at the Tribal Farm on the Golden Road in Perry. Some haying has taken place at the farm and one of the Tribal members has pastured their horses there. Plansowes explained that the community farm will enable Tribal members who don't have raised beds or access to enough space to grow any kind of vegetables and crops such as potatoes and corn. Rhonda Stevens, a teacher at the Beatrice Rafferty School on the Passamaquoddy Reservation, has been bringing her students to the Tribal Farm to prune the apple orchard and try to bring it back.

Hilda Lewis, is an enthusiastic supporter of the Passamaquoddy Food Sovereignty project. She is the owner of Bz Bee Floral Designs in Eastport. Her grandfather always tended a garden and she remembers enjoying the string beans, cucumbers, squash, and peas. Her grandmother and mother preserved all types of food. She recalled the long project of sterilizing all the jars and her grandfather's special recipes for the pickles and the cucumbers in the crock. When she was ten years old she planted her first garden of radishes. She recalled how the grandfather of Grace Dana, who lived across the street, preserved cranberries and currants. There was a root cellar. In later years when Hilda lived in Ohio, she maintained a garden with corn, cukes, tomatoes, and peppers and zucchini. She canned tomatoes, preserved peaches, and made jams and jellies.

Hilda elaborated on the importance of the Food Sovereignty program. She explained how significant it was to have the opportunity to feed yourself and not have to depend on food from grocery stores. In her opinion, knowing where your food originated is extremely important. She is leery of vegetables that have been shipped from far away and appreciates that homegrown vegetables have no preservatives. Circumstances during the past year prevented her from being around her garden, but her face lit up when she explained how she was already planning a "good, solid garden" for next year. Her raised bed garden is situated adjacent to the raised gardens of her relatives-Jane, Lena, and David.

As part of the Four Directions Development Corporation's funded work on Tribal food sovereignty, the Four Directions staff members, Alivia Moore and Elizabeth Sprague reached out to The People to organize a community gathering and discussion about matters of food access and growing food within the community. Alivia Moore and Vera Francis organized the community meetings.

In the early spring of 2012, members of the Passamaquoddy Tribe gathered. According to Elizabeth Sprague, "Thanks to the deep work that Vera had done for so long, this meeting included many families and people of all ages and standing in the community. Food for the meeting was prepared by a Tribal member and a good lunch was had by nearly fifty tribal members."

At this meeting, the Tribal members spoke about their desire to rehabilitate old gardens and to learn how to preserve what they grow using the old ways as well as modern canning methods. They identified the challenges of living in a food desert and how it was different than traditionally sourcing food from their surroundings. According to Elizabeth, there were many people at the meeting who had the knowledge that their neighbors sought and who offered to share and teach.

Vera helped to organize three workshops that focused on the introduction of garden plots for interested individuals and families residing on the Reservation. Jim Hanna, the Executive Director at the Maine Coalition for Food Security, helped to conduct the first workshop in April of 2012. Mark Fulford, a highly-respected and world-renown farmer, educator, and consultant, participated in leading a workshop in May of 2012. He returned in the fall of 2013 to do a follow-up. His thoughts on these gatherings are included in a separate webpage in this profile.

Vera set about making raised bed building materials widely available in Sipayik. Thirty prefabricated raised beds were purchased and set up in the spring. Materials were bought for an additional twenty raised beds and they were constructed and set up in the fall. Anne Brewster of Special Scents Flower Farm in Perry contributed thousands of vegetable seedlings to the Passamaquoddy Food Sovereignty program.

Over fifty families have participated in the Food Sovereignty program on the Sipayik Reservation.

Additional raised beds are planned for the next growing season. Vera Francis is envisioning a time when extended gardening through the year will take place. She has dreams of more food preservation, a community greenhouse, a root cellar, cold frames, and a place to process food. Considering her track record with all the other projects that she has successfully introduced, there is a good likelihood that many of her dreams for the Passamaquoddy Food Sovereignty program will indeed materialize.

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Name: Passamaquoddy Food Sovereignty Address: Vera Francis Passamaquoddy Tribal Office 9 Sakom Road Pleasant Point, Maine 04667 Mailing Address: Passamaquoddy Tribal Office Perry, Maine 04667 Phone: 207-853-2600 Email: vfrancis@wabanaki.com Products and Services: -assistance with establishing home gardens -nutrition education -raised beds -community garden What Makes The Passamaquoddy Food Sovereignty Program Unique?

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COVID-19 Issue Spotlight: Food Justice

Immigrant-Led Cooperatives and Farming

Somali Bantu Community Association

The Somali Bantu Community Association (SBCA) has been doing culturally-appropriate emergency food distribution directly to the doors of New Mainers in Lewiston during the pandemic. In an April 30th instagram post they shared, "We were able to grow, harvest, and distribute 51 bags of fresh, chemical-free arugula from Liberation Farms to members of the Somali Bantu community this week to bolster food security during this challenging time."

SBCA is also actively fundraising to secure new farmland. Through partnership with the Agrarian Trust, they've formed the Little Jubba Central Maine Agrarian Commons, described as "a transformative new model for community centered land tenure." In the press release about this new farmland, Executive Director Muhidin Libah shares, "For the last 30 years we have been refugees, moving through different towns in Somalia and living in refugee camps in neighboring Kenya. For 30 years we have been looking for a place we can call home. Home in our community means a place that is safe and secure, where we can farm freely and where we can exercise our cultural traditions. Getting this property will check all the boxes and for the first time we have a place we call home."

Sustainable Livelihoods Relief Organization

Wabanaki Food Security and Food Sovereignty

Maine-Wabanaki REACH

As we highlighted in a recent spotlight on Wabanaki Sovereignty, this pandemic has exacerbated inequities for Indigenous communities in Maine and across the country. Maine-Wabanaki REACH has been providing support to Wabanaki peoples, most recently to address food insecurity. In a call to action they shared, "During this crisis, many people are not able to work, without a safety net to catch them. Maine-Wabanaki REACH established a Community Response Fund to help those in need. Largely, we have sought to put food on the tables in Wabanaki homes." They are also supporting food sovereignty by assisting gardening and growing efforts by Wabanaki people and in Tribal communities by providing seeds and seedlings.

American Friends Service Committee - Wabanaki Program has also been addressing food insecurity within Maine's Tribal communities. In addition to planting community gardens, they've delivered 102 jars of applesauce and bread to families at Sipayik. Denise Altavater, coordinator of the Wabanaki Youth Program shares, "In the midst of these trying times, our youth and our community have come together to do something amazing for our community. Our youth stepped up and made homemade apple sauce and baked bread for those within our community who have nothing. Our people have not been receiving the help that they need, and we could no longer sit by in silence. We were able to reach more than 60 households, and our hope is to reach the whole tribe. It was such an honor to be able to help our community in the time of need."

Community-Based Responses to Food Insecurity

In addition to the above grantees, we want to acknowledge that many more of our grantees are engaging in critically important food distribution work:

SHARE: Help spread the word about the Somali Bantu Community Association's land acquisition fundraiser

SIGN: Sign-up for New Roots' seasonal CSAs to get local farm fresh vegetables and support Immigrant farmers in Maine

SUPPORT: Support the Maine-Wabanaki REACH Community Response Fund or any of the Wabanaki Community Food Pantries

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Immigrant-Led Cooperatives and Farming Somali Bantu Community Association The Somali Bantu Community Association (SBCA) has been doing culturally-appropriate emergency food distribution directly to the doors of New Mainers in Lewiston during the pandemic.

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We provide education and engage in activities that build the capacity of Wabanaki people to feed their families and communities and increase their understanding of how stewardship of land and waters impacts wellness.

We focus on decolonizing our diets - educating about how indigenous food ways have been interrupted by colonization, and supporting the production of food and medicine, seed sharing, and other collaborations with tribal food projects.

We are committed to the transmission of knowledge to coming generations, and cultivate Wabanaki youth to engage in community work - gardening, hosting community suppers, feeding elders, distributing food, learning proper protocol and traditions around gift giving, gratitude, ceremonies, and identification of plants, trees, and medicines.

A few of our past projects include:

Creating a medicine garden with Sipayik school children, planting food gardens with the Sipayik youth council, and co-creating food gardens for the Indian Island day care

Providing technical and hands-on support to help Indian Township Food Pantry Gardens expand food production with a hoop house

Hosting a meet and greet with author and biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer at The People's Garden on Indian Island

Providing education in Wabanaki communities about co-operative economies and how they are aligned with Wabanaki ways.

In collaboration with the Schoodic Riverkeepers, hosting a 5K History Run in Calais along the river now known as the St. Croix to bring awareness to the connection between our wellness and the health of the river ecosystem.

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We provide education and engage in activities that build the capacity of Wabanaki people to feed their families and communities and increase their understanding of how stewardship of land and waters impacts wellness.

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Maine Wabanaki REACH
A few of our past projects include:

Creating a medicine garden with Sipayik school children, planting food gardens with the Sipayik youth council, and co-creating food gardens for the Indian Island day care

Providing technical and hands-on support to help Indian Township Food Pantry Gardens expand food production with a hoop house

Hosting a meet and greet with author and biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer at The People’s Garden on Indian Island

Providing education in Wabanaki communities about co-operative economies and how they are aligned with Wabanaki ways.

In collaboration with the Schoodic Riverkeepers, hosting a 5K History Run in Calais along the river now known as the St. Croix to bring awareness to the connection between our wellness and the health of the river ecosystem.

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The Effects of Food Insecurity on Indigenous Women in Maine

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The Effects of Food Insecurity on Indigenous Women in Maine

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"Traditional foods - including the processes of “obtaining, preparing, and sharing them” - are an essential part of Indigenous culture and heritage, and represent peoples’ close relationship with the land (Gurney et al., 2015, p. 685)."

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Chip Colwell

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017; 336 pp.; 10 b/w illus.; ISBN 978-0226298993; Hardcover: $30.00

In 2007, Chip Colwell was hired as senior curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science to do a job he describes as "a paradox": to protect and interpret twenty thousand Native American objects the museum had collected for the public trust, and at the same time to negotiate with hundreds of Native American nations over the return of objects and human remains that tribes maintained should never have been entrusted to the public in the first place. The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) requires United States museums that receive any form of federal funding to publish inventories of the Native American objects and human remains in their collections. Furthermore, the act mandates that materials be returned to tribes that can prove cultural affiliation with such objects. The controversies surrounding NAGPRA, and the complex negotiations it continues to generate, are the subject of Colwell's book. Shuttling between the specific repatriation claims at his own museum and the larger history of collecting and repatriation in the United States, Colwell outlines the thorny colonial histories that led to museums stockpiling Native American bodies and cultural heritage, and the difficult (but surprisingly positive) new relationships that NAGPRA has instigated, all in a manner that the public will understand.

Colwell divides his book into four parts-Resistance, Regret, Reluctance, and Respect-to chart the changing attitudes of museums toward Native American heritage. In part one, "Resistance: War Gods," Colwell chronicles the efforts of the Zuni of New Mexico to repatriate their Ahayu:dah (often translated in English as "War Gods") from museums in the 1970s, before a legal framework for repatriation had been established in the United States. Ahayu:dah are sacred beings, twin gods who, as long as they are placated, serve as protectors for Zuni Pueblo and for the world at large. Their wooden embodiments are carved-born, as the Zuni say-each winter solstice in the hands of appropriate clan members, who later place the Ahayu:dah in mountain shrines to the east and west of Zuni Pueblo. As Colwell outlines, these remote shrines became targets in the early twentieth century for anthropologists and collectors, who blatantly stole Ahayu:dah when Zuni people refused to sell them. By the 1970s, one of these Ahayu:dah was in the Denver Art Museum; six more were nearby in the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

In 1977, the Zuni approached the Denver Art Museum for the return of the Ahayu:dah. Due to a lack of repatriation legislation at the time, as well as their own cultural protocols, the Zuni appealed to the museum to voluntarily return the sacred Ahayu:dah on humanitarian and moral grounds. Initially, the museum administration resisted, saying that "the object has in reality entered the public realm of world art" and that the museum "could not deprive the world public of further access to it" (37). Other museums defended the Denver Art Museum, stating that the return of the Ahayu:dah would be a "devastating precedent" that could "kill the museum" by draining it of its collections (37-38). But the Zuni persisted, and public opinion soon turned in their favor, with increasingly more people pressuring museum officials to honor Native American beliefs about their heritage. In March 1979, more than a decade before the passage of NAGPRA, the Denver Art Museum returned the Ahayu:dah to the Zuni. Colwell establishes that this was not the first precedent for repatriation in the United States, and he notes a few nineteenth-century examples. However, with other Ahayu:dah subsequently returned to the Zuni from the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Brooklyn Museum, the case ignited a national debate about repatriation.

In part two, "Regret: A Scalp from Sand Creek," Colwell shifts focus from sacred objects to the even-more sensitive category of human remains. This chapter details the work of Arapaho and Cheyenne communities to repatriate skulls and scalps that the United States military had taken from their ancestors at the infamous 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in southeastern Colorado. Colwell also charts the rise of federal legislation in the twentieth century that led to the creation of NAGPRA. In 1986, a delegation of Northern Cheyenne traveled from Montana to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, where they were horrified to realize that the museum vaults held the remains of 18,500 Native Americans: "the largest Indian cemetery in the country" (75). They addressed their complaints to Montana senator John Melcher, who drafted the first federal legislation aimed at the repatriation of Native American heritage from museums in the United States: the Native American Museum Claims Commission Act. Melcher's bill was never enacted, due in part to protests from the Smithsonian Institution and the Society for American Archeology, but it added more fodder to the national debate about who should control Native American remains.

In 1989, after several more attempts to draft a repatriation bill were thwarted, Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne/Muskogee), president of the National Congress of the American Indian, was invited to Santa Fe to negotiate a new version of the bill with various stakeholders, including Secretary of the Smithsonian Robert McCormick Adams, an archeologist who had earlier opposed repatriation. Just before their meeting, Harjo learned that Adams's museum held six skulls "collected" from the Sand Creek Massacre-skulls that belonged to her own Cheyenne ancestors. As Colwell explains, Harjo confronted Adams with the weight of this personal story, and Adams conceded to the compromises that Harjo and other Native American leaders requested. The resulting bill, the National Museum of the American Indian Act of 1989, established repatriation guidelines for the Smithsonian Institution and became the first federal repatriation legislation in the nation. It was followed the next year by NAGPRA, which covered all federally funded museums and agencies in the United States.

Colwell charts the slow compliance of museums with NAGPRA in the years following its passage in part three, "Reluctance: Killer Whale Flotilla Robe." He describes how the Alaskan Tlingit quickly established one of the most active repatriation programs in the United States. Their numerous repatriation requests initially confirmed the fears of American museum professionals, who worried that NAGPRA would decimate their collections (176). Colwell outlines the specific difficulties that the Denver Museum of Nature & Science faced in giving up a Naaxein robe (also known as a Chilkat robe) called the Kéet Xaa Naaxein, or Killer Whale Flotilla Robe. The robe is considered the at.óow, an "owned or purchased thing," of the Naanyaay.ayí clan. As a collectively owned object, it is recognized under NAGPRA as an "object of cultural patrimony" that should not be alienated from the tribe.

In the 1970s, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science bought the robe for $25,000 from art dealer Michael R. Johnson, who claimed it had been legally sold in the 1940s by the leader of the Naanyaay.ayí clan, Chief Shakes. However, Colwell shows how Johnson misrepresented the provenance of the object and presents clear evidence that it was the widow of Chief Shakes-a woman from an "opposite" clan as her husband, and therefore without the right to her husband's clan's at.óow -who sold the robe to an Alaskan curio dealer during the Great Depression. The Tlingit filed a claim for the Killer Whale Flotilla Robe, and the Denver Museum repatriated it in a 2008 ceremony. Curator Joyce Herold openly wept at the ceremony, but acknowledged that the lengthy negotiations and visits with Tlingit people resulted in a profound sharing of knowledge that helped her better interpret and care for other Tlingit objects in the Denver collection. Since these exchanges, Herold and other museum officials have personally delivered repatriated objects to tribal members, become guests at Alaskan koo.éex' (or "potlatches"), and have been adopted into Tlingit clans.

In part four, "Respect: Calusa Skulls," Colwell turns to one of the most difficult problems for NAGPRA: culturally unidentifiable human remains. Many museums do not know from which tribe-or sometimes even from which region-human remains in their collections derive. In the 1990s, some archeologists maintained that returning unidentifiable remains for reburial equaled the "unwarranted destruction of our human heritage," while many Native people held that there was no such thing as an "unaffiliated" Native American ancestor (221, 225). The issue was so thorny that Congress passed NAGPRA without specifying action for culturally unidentifiable human remains, placing that section of the bill "in reserve" and asking the newly formed NAGPRA Review Committee to determine its fate. It would take twenty years-until May 14, 2010-for the committee to issue language for Sec. 10.11, which holds that museums must consult with tribes on culturally unidentifiable remains (first with those tribes whose reservations or trust lands the remains came from; then with those tribes whose traditional territory encompassed the site of the remains; and, finally, with any federally recognized tribe who wants to claim them). If a tribe claims the remains, the museum must return them, whether or not affiliation can be proven. Whether to keep these remains in museums or return them to tribes that might be related is still controversial. It is also difficult to implement. As Colwell notes, by 2010-twenty years after the passage of NAGPRA-only about 27 percent of the Native American human remains in 650 museums in the United States were affiliated with a particular tribe (200).

It is in this section that Colwell makes his best contribution to scholarship on repatriation. While the edited volume by Devon Mihesuah- The Repatriation Reader, published in 2000-and Grave Injustice: The American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA by Kathleen Fine-Dare, published in 2002, do a better job of contextualizing the repatriation movement within the larger campaign for tribal sovereignty of the American Indian Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, both books were published before the 2010 decision on unidentifiable human remains. In addition, unlike the excellent 2013 volume, Accomplishing NAGPRA, edited by Sangita Chari and Jaime Lavalee, Colwell's book was written with the express intention of reaching a general audience. His first-person narrative of his experiences as a curator at the Denver Museum-combined with a wide-ranging history of repatriation across the United States-is one of the best introductions to NAGPRA available for a lay reader, and his insights into the repatriation process will interest scholars as well.

Colwell keeps the language clear and the narrative exciting throughout this wide-ranging and thorough history of repatriation. He includes treatment of everyone from Maria Pearson, the Yankton Sioux woman known as the "Rosa Parks of NAGPRA" for her work in the 1970s to ensure that Iowa state law provided equal protection to Native American and non-Native American graves; to Kennewick Man, the nine-thousand-year-old skeleton found on the banks of the Columbia River in 1996 and locked in a museum until courts could decide whether such ancient remains were actually Native American. DNA tests later confirmed that Kennewick Man was Native American; he was given a burial by Oregon tribes in 2017.

A few of his narrative decisions made me pause. Colwell frequently recreates historical dialogue drawn from interviews, notes, or recordings, but notes that he could not necessarily verify the wording. At times, I was suspicious of such inclusions. How did he know what a curator said in a Smithsonian museum vault decades before he entered the profession? How dare he recreate the words that Maria Pearson's grandmother spoke from beyond the grave! Dialogue, however, is also part of what makes this book a compelling narrative, rather than a scholarly treatise on the history of repatriation in the United States. We need more scholars to do this kind of vivid and engaging writing and invite a general audience to participate in such inquiries.

Near the end of the book, Colwell describes his own decision to repatriate a Calusa skull to the Miccosukee tribe of Florida, despite the lack of evidence that these tribes were culturally affiliated. He writes:

I am an archeologist. A scientist. I know how much the field has to teach us about the past. . . . But the value of my profession . . . does not trump all other human obligations. In a multicultural society, we have a duty to ensure that our own beliefs do not unjustly impinge on the freedom of others to pursue theirs. For me, it is a question of how we can try to respect cultural difference (238).

Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits is notable for this kind of clear, respectful reflection on the issues of repatriation, and for inviting more Americans to understand the complex issues at stake over Native American heritage in museums.

Cite this article: Emily Moore, review of Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America's Culture, by Chip Colwell, Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 4, no. 1 (Spring 2018), https://doi.org/10.24926/24716839.1643.
PDF: Notes Moore, review of Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits
About the Author(s): Emily Moore is Assistant Professor of Art History at Colorado State University.

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Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America's Culture

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Chip Colwell Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017; 336 pp.; 10 b/w illus.; ISBN 978-0226298993; Hardcover: $30.00 In 2007, Chip Colwell was hired as senior curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science to do a job he describes as "a paradox": to protect and interpret twenty thousand Native American objects the museum had collected for the public trust, and at the same time to negotiate with hundreds of Native American nations over the return of objects and human remains that tribes maintained should never have been entrusted to the public in the first place.

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Climate Change Threatens Wabanaki Livlihood, Culture

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Climate Change Threatens Wabanaki Livlihood, Culture

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The circumstances are inter-related. For example, he explained, moose are experiencing greater mortality due to the increased prevalence of winter ticks, which is related to rising temperature. Rising water temperature is impacting fish species and forest practices. As temperatures warm in Maine, the range of brown ash trees is moving north, making it difficult to maintain stock for basket-making.

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Climate change is having a serious impact on the Wabanaki Tribal Nations, threatening livelihoods, cultures, and self-determination.

That was the message from Darren Ranco, a University of Maine professor who gave a July 10 webinar presentation called "Climate Change, Environmental Justice, and the Wabanaki Tribal Nations," hosted by Augusta-based Maine Conservation Voters.

Ranco examined current and future climate change impacts to the Wabanaki and their climate adaptation priorities and activism.

The Wabanaki comprise the Aroostook Band of Micmac, Houlton Band of Maliseet, Passamaquoddy Tribe, and Penobscot Nation.

Ranco said the Wabanaki are among the groups of people who are more impacted by climate change, due, in part, to uneven climate mitigation and adaptation policies on the part of governments.

"We're not on a path to climate justice," he said.

Climate change is threatening indigenous livelihoods such as agriculture, hunting and gathering, fishing, forestry, energy, recreation, and tourism, he said. As a result, it's also threatening physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Indigenous life, he said, is based on interconnected social and ecological systems that are being disrupted by changing climate.

Because indigenous people, by and large, live close to the land, those impacts will be dramatic, he said.

Successful adaptation and disaster management, in the indigenous context, relies on indigenous knowledge and community-led relations, he explained. But that's hampered by barriers that include limited access to traditional territory and resources. Additionally, a history of colonial policies prevents indigenous people from practicing self-determination.

Ranco said he and others are looking at the concept of "adaptive resilience," which considers adaptations based on social and cultural systems. Identifying community assets will be key to bolstering adaptation.

Climate threats across Wabanaki Tribal Nations include increases of temperature, winter ticks, invasive species, precipitation, and erosion; and potential loss of moose and other culturally important species, leading to losses of food, hunting activities, and culture.

The circumstances are inter-related. For example, he explained, moose are experiencing greater mortality due to the increased prevalence of winter ticks, which is related to rising temperature. Rising water temperature is impacting fish species and forest practices. As temperatures warm in Maine, the range of brown ash trees is moving north, making it difficult to maintain stock for basket-making.

Ranco said his work on Wabanaki climate change priorities and adaption planning was funded by a federal Bureau of Indian Affairs grant secured by the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Pleasant Point/Sipayik, which has emerged as a leader among Maine tribes in developing climate adaptation strategies.

Sipayik is near Eastport, where sea level rise, combined with the bay's dramatic tidal zone, is threatening infrastructure. Since 2012, he noted, the tribe has been working with federal planners to develop hazard mitigation strategies in response to climate impacts to community infrastructure.

However, impact mitigation is not limited to single communities, he said. The Wabanaki work collectively across traditional territories, including Canada. That's important to how the work process is framed, he said, because it ensures that everyone is included in understanding problems and identifying potential solutions.

Overall, he said, climate justice must be oriented toward Wabanaki adaptation policies.

That goal is part of an overall effort to restore tribal sovereignty in Maine. Toward that end, the four tribes in June formed the Wabanaki Alliance, whose first initiative is to advocate for passage of LD 2094 "An Act To Implement the Recommendations of the Task Force on Changes to the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Implementing Act." The act is designed to correct policies of the 1980 Maine Indian Claim Settlement Act that stripped the tribes of sovereignty.

The Wabanaki face other environmental hazards not related to climate change. For example, a longstanding issue is related to mercury pollution on the lower Penobscot River. Although a Penobscot River restoration project removed two major dams, the toxic waste has put the increasing population of anadromous fish at risk as they swim to reservation waters, he said.

Ideally, he said, adaptation and mitigation will take into account Wabanaki traditions and management techniques.

For example, preferred landscape management uses non-chemical, non-mechanical approaches that are far more sustainable and would see a return and proliferation of certain landscapes and species, Ranco explained. The challenge, he said, is to scale up indigenous approaches through partnerships with each other and with non-indigenous people.

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Climate change threatens Wabanaki livelihood, culture - Island Institute

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Climate change is having a serious impact on the Wabanaki Tribal Nations, threatening livelihoods, cultures, and self-determination. That was the message from Darren Ranco, a University of Maine professor who gave a July 10 webinar presentation called "Climate Change, Environmental Justice, and the Wabanaki Tribal Nations," hosted by Augusta-based Maine Conservation Voters.

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Why Native Americans do not Separate Religion from Science

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Why Native Americans do not Separate Religion from Science

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Five tribes managed to repatriate the remains of the "Ancient One" or the "Kennewick Man."

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Last year five Native American tribes in Washington state managed to repatriate the remains of the "Ancient One," as they called him, or "Kennewick Man," as scientists called him.

For the tribes, the Ancient One is to be revered as a human ancestor. But for the scientists, the rare specimen of a 9,000-year-old Kennewick Man was important to understanding the history of North America. After a 20-year court battle, the tribes finally reburied the Ancient One. However, this could be done only after scientists had created his multi-dimensional model for future study.

For a long time, the relationship between Native Americans and scientists has been a contentious one. It would appear from this case that what matters most to Native Americans are religious beliefs and not science.

While this might be the case with human remains, which are a sensitive issue with most tribes, scientific endeavors are very important to Native Americans.

That is why indigenous scientists and scholars including myself supported the March for Science on April 22.

Sacred ecology

Scientists began thinking and writing about how Native Americans understand the natural world in the 20th century. Instead of seeing a conflict between Western science and Native American knowledge, they started thinking about ways to learn how Native Americans addressed environmental and ecological issues differently.

Ecologist Fikret Berkes pointed out these distinctions in his seminal book " Sacred Ecology," where he noted that both Western and indigenous science can be regarded as "the same general intellectual process of creating order out of disorder."

Carling Hale, CC BY-NC-ND

He provided his own research as an example. He stated that the Native Americans he worked with knew far more than he did about aquatic ecological systems, even though he had academic training. He noted their knowledge was both scientific and viewed through a religious lens.

"One important point of difference is that many systems of indigenous knowledge include spiritual or religious dimensions (beliefs) that do not make sense to science.... This is 'sacred ecology' in the most expansive, rather than in the scientifically restrictive, sense of the word 'ecology.'"

Traditional knowledge

Native American scholars are now writing about this blending of science and religion.

Native American scientist Robin Kimmerer, for example, tells her story as a trained botanist learning about Native American worldview in her book "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants." She describes how she learned words in her native language, Anishinaabe, that explained biological processes better than Western science could in English.

As a Native American scholar, I, too, have spent the past year at the intersection of science and religion at Harvard Divinity School, researching "ethnobotany" and "ethnopharmacology" - the scientific study of the medicinal qualities of plants and Native American belief.

I learned from my grandmother, Annie Mad Plume Wall, who was regarded as a "doctor" on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana, that certain plants were medicine. She understood the ethnopharmacology of plants that were used as analgesics, antibacterials or anti-inflammatory agents. She knew which plants to use when one of her patients was ill.

The knowledge of the medicinal qualities of these plants clearly grew out of a process of observation and experimentation. She learned how to distill the essential elements of a plant to create an extract of its medicinal properties. In fact, her refrigerator was filled with bottles of extracts.

Nick Oxford/Reuters

However, some of these plants also had mythological stories that spoke of their origin in the supernatural realm. These stories instructed the Blackfeet how to communicate with the plant, to care for it, how to protect its ecosystem, restrict knowledge of the plant and its over-harvesting.

My grandmother believed that a powerful supernatural being, "Ko'komíki'somm," gave humans certain plants to use as medicine. She also understood, based on their scientific properties, that a plant was indeed a medicine.

Alternative paradigm

It is true that Western science and Native Americans have a complicated history, as the struggle over the Ancient One attests. Anthropologist Chip Colwell discusses in "Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America's Culture" that the problem is that the items scientists consider "objects" for study, such as human remains, Native Americans would view through their own worldview, their own belief system.

More recently, there has been a better recognition of the role of indigenous sciences. In 2016, a U.S.-Canada joint statement on Climate, Energy, and Arctic Leadership recognized the importance of both Western science and indigenous science to help solve global issues. It urged that both "science-based approaches" and "indigenous science and traditional knowledge" be incorporated in efforts to both address commercial interests in the Arctic, such as oil and gas development and shipping lanes, and protect the Arctic and its people.

Native American scientists and scholars have also weighed in on this debate. For the March of Science, many Native American scholars, including Kimmerer and myself, have written a declaration of support that states:

"Let us remember that long before western science came to these shores, there were scientists here....Western science is a powerful approach, but it is not the only one. Indigenous science provides a wealth of knowledge and a powerful alternative paradigm."

For many Native Americans, like my grandmother, myth and medicine, religion and science, are not viewed as separate, but are interwoven into the fabric of our lives.

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Why Native Americans do not separate religion from science

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Last year five Native American tribes in Washington state managed to repatriate the remains of the "Ancient One," as they called him, or "Kennewick Man," as scientists called him. For the tribes, the Ancient One is to be revered as a human ancestor.

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Will Global Warming Change Native American Religious Practices?

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Will Global Warming Change Native American Religious Practices?

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The Colorado River, one of the longest river in the US, is gradually shrinking. Large cities and Indigneous tribes depend on the Colorado River as a water source, however, to the Hualapai tribe, it is sacred.

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What does the shrinking of the Colorado River mean for Native American religions? Ken Lund, CC BY-SA

The Colorado River, one of the longest rivers in the United States, is gradually shrinking. This is partly a result of overuse by municipalities and seasonal drought. The other reason is global warming.

The decline in the river reservoir will have serious implications for large U.S. cities, such as Los Angeles, that depend on the Colorado River as their water source. In addition, this will also have an impact on the Native American tribes who view the Colorado River as sacred to their religions.

As Ka-Voka Jackson, a member of the Hualapai tribe and a graduate student working to address climate change on the Colorado River and restoring native plant species along its banks, stated,

"The Colorado River is so sacred not just to my tribe, but to so many others."

As a scholar of Native American religions and the environment, I understand how indigenous people's religions and sacred places are closely tied to their landscape. For the past 100 years, indigenous peoples have been forced to adapt to changes in their environments and modify their religious rituals in the United States. The U.S. government made certain Native American religious practices illegal in the 19th and early 20th century. Although these policies have since been rescinded, they led to changes in many indigenous practices.

Global warming, however, is different. The question is whether indigenous people will be able to adapt their beliefs all over again due to the impact of global warming on the natural world.

Adapting to change

The Blackfeet tribe in Montana brought changes in their relationship with the natural world as a result of the policies of the U.S. government from the 1880s to the 1930s.

For example, the Blackfeet purposefully moved religious ceremonies from one time on their liturgical calendar to completely different times to avoid the U.S. government penalizing native people for dancing or participating in religious ceremonies.

The Blackfeet moved their annual O'kan, or sundance festival, from late summer (usually held at the end of August) to the Fourth of July celebration. They avoided U.S. government punishment by masking their ceremonies within state-sanctioned public events.

Policies related to the mining of natural resources and damming of rivers on indigenous lands have also led to changes in Native Americans' religious practices.

Historian David R. M. Beck interviewed elders and researched how the Menominee tribe in Wisconsin adapted to the loss of their sacred fish, the sturgeon, after a paper mill built a dam across the Wolf River.

USFWSmidwest, CC BY

The sturgeon disappeared after the dam was built in 1892, because they could no longer swim upstream to spawn. For over 100 years, the Menominee tribal members continued to pray and conduct their annual "returning of the sturgeon" ceremony in the spring - even though there were no more sturgeon in the river. The Menominee ultimately won the right to return the sturgeon to the Wolf River in 1992 and the tribe revitalized the full ceremony and celebration of their sacred fish.

In all these situations, Native American tribes learned to adapt to the challenges placed before them, modify their religious practice and embrace a different relationship with the natural world.

Global warming and religion

When it comes to global climate change, it affects everyone, not just specific groups in specific places. But for many indigenous peoples, natural resources are closely linked to religious beliefs and practices.

Historically, indigenous peoples used the natural seasonal cycles of weather, plants and animals as part of their liturgical or religious calendar. The Blackfeet held their annual "beaver bundle ceremony" in the early spring as ice melted off rivers and beavers returned to the open waters. In Blackfeet mythology, a beaver served as a deity who taught humans how to cultivate tobacco, which the tribe used for important religious ceremonies and as a peace offering to their enemies.

Bryn Davies, CC BY-NC-ND

There are signs, though, that beavers are now moving north due to global warming. Biologists are currently studying both beavers and the birch and alder shrubs that beavers eat, as both move north into new regions. Scientists worry that as a keystone species, the movement of beavers will change the northern ecosystems as they cut off waterways and build beaver dams. And shrubs will change the local waterways that they grow by. This will affect local animal species.

What will happen when there are no more beaver in Blackfeet territory? Will their religious traditions adapt similar to the Menominee when they faced the loss of their sacred sturgeon?

Religion and resiliency

From the arctic tundra to the American desert southwest, and places worldwide, indigenous peoples will be facing the impact of global climate change.

Regarding the shrinking of the Colorado River, researchers Brad Udall and Jonathan Overpeck have concluded that, "Failing to act on climate change means accepting the very high risk that the Colorado River basin will continue to dry up into the future."

If this river faces a drier future, it will likely affect the Mojave, a people indigenous to the Colorado River basin, who believe the river was created by their ancient deity Mastamho as part of their sacred landscape.

As the G-20 convenes in Germany this week to discuss global issues including climate change, indigenous scholars, such as myself, are wondering what the future holds for indigenous peoples, their environments and their religions.

Indigenous communities can be resilient and adapt their internal religious beliefs to outside challenges, as Native American tribes from the turn of the 20th century have proven. Climate change presents yet another challenge.

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Will global warming change Native American religious practices?

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The Colorado River, one of the longest rivers in the United States, is gradually shrinking. This is partly a result of overuse by municipalities and seasonal drought. The other reason is global warming. The decline in the river reservoir will have serious implications for large U.S.

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