Organized Oral Session
Jason McLachlan
Professor of Ecology
University of Notre Dame, United States
Joseph Gazing Wolf
Doctoral Fellow
Arizona State University, Arizona, United States
James Rattling Leaf
University of Colorado - Boulder, Colorado, United States
Michael Dietze
Department of Earth and Environment
Boston University
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Indigenous communities in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere have confronted and adapted to environmental change for thousands of years, and Indigenous knowledge provides a robust framework for confronting new changes this century. Indigenous communities are actively and independently anticipating and addressing the challenge of changing environments to land, water, and biota on tribal land and beyond. Simultaneously, academic ecology has developed analytical tools, including innovative observational infrastructure, statistical and machine learning, and ecological forecasting that provide insights into and predictions of environmental change. It is often the case that Indigenous researchers are under-represented in these academic fields and that predictive modeling has not been tightly coupled to the needs and expertise of Indigenous communities. The breadth of knowledge and expertise across all these approaches should be synergistic and there are useful examples of this. At the same time, obstacles, including the paucity of Indigenous researchers in some analytical fields, questions about the sovereignty of indigenous data and knowledge, and the racist legacy of the academy and natural resources institutions pose challenges to integrated work on environmental predictions with Indigenous communities.
This session, jointly sponsored by ESA's Traditional Ecological Knowledge section and the Ecological Forecasting Initiative, highlights the work of Indigenous researchers and efforts to work with Indigenous communities to overcome these challenges. We present new contributions to environmental understanding and prediction from the perspective of Indigenous communities and efforts to develop a more inclusive view of predictive ecology. Our goal of identifying the ways that active work in Indigenous communities can be amplified by emerging ecological data and analyses has both applied and basic importance for the field of ecology. Native peoples own and manage a large and diverse array of lands in North America and beyond, and traditional ecological knowledge in Native cultures is universally relevant. If this knowledge and these perspectives are missing from efforts to forecast the impact of changing environments, we are both missing an opportunity to make better forecasts and reinforcing long standing injustices. Our speakers show how deep connections with Native communities improve ecological prediction. However, the success of our science will be determined not only by our predictive power, but by the extent to which our predictions are useful to the people affected by environmental change. We therefore highlight multiple examples of science generated from the specific interests of Indigenous communities.
Presenting Author: Ryan E. Emanuel, Ph.D. – Duke University
Co-author: Ryan E. Emanuel, Ph.D. – Duke University
Co-author: Jocelyn R. Painter – Duke University
Presenting Author: Georgia Smies – Salish Kootenai College
Co-author: Jason McLachlan – University of Notre Dame
Presenting Author: Jason McLachlan – University of Notre Dame
Co-author: Georgia Smies – Salish Kootenai College
Presenting Author: Kyle Bobiwash – University of Manitoba
Presenting Author: Dominique M. David-Chavez, PhD – Colorado State University
Co-author: Dominique M. David-Chavez, PhD – Colorado State University
Co-author: Serena Natonabah – Colorado State University
Co-author: Brianne D. Lauro – Colorado State University
Co-author: Stephanie Russo Carroll, PhD – Arizona State University
Presenting Author: Don Hankins – California State University - Chico