Indigenous Climate Knowledges and Data Sovereignty

In this episode of Warm Regards, we talk to two Indigenous scientists about traditional ecological knowledges and their relationship with climate and environmental data. In talking with James Rattling Leaf, Sr. and Krystal Tsosie, Jacquelyn and Ramesh discuss how these ideas can challenge Western notions of relationality and ownership, how they have been subject to the long history of extraction and exploitation of Indigenous communities (practices which continue today), but also how Indigenous scientists and activists link sovereignty over data created by and for Indigenous people to larger sovereignty demands. You can find a transcript of this episode on our Medium page: https://ourwarmregards.medium.com/indigenous-climate-knowledges-and-data-sovereignty-4fc756b9476e James Rattling Leaf, Sr. North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center https://nccasc.colorado.edu Rising Voices: https://risingvoices.ucar.edu GEO Indigenous Alliance https://earthobservations.org/indigenoussummit2020.php Oceti Sakowin http://aktalakota.stjo.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8309 https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/plains-belonging-nation/oceti-sakowin Tribal Climate Leaders Program: https://cires.colorado.edu/news/tribal-climate-leaders-program Krystal Tsosie You can follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kstsosie Native BioData Consortium https://nativebio.org United States Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network https://usindigenousdata.org CARE Principle for Indigenous Data Governance https://datascience.codata.org/articles/10.5334/dsj-2020-043/ Finally, you can listen to Good Fire at their website or wherever you get your podcasts: https://yourforestpodcast.com/good-fire-podcast Further reading: Several of Kyle Whyte’s papers informed out team’s understanding as we prepared this episode: Indigenous Climate Change Studies: Indigenous Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene https://kylewhyte.marcom.cal.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2018/07/IndigenousClimateChangeStudies.pdf Indigenous Lessons About Sustainability Are Not Just “For All Humanity” https://kylewhyte.marcom.cal.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2018/07/IndigenousInsightsintoSustainabilityarenotforAllHumanity.pdf Too late for indigenous climate justice: Ecological and relational tipping points https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcc.603 Dominique M. David-Chavez and Michael C. Gavin, A global assessment of Indigenous community engagement in climate research. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf300/meta Eve Tuck & Wayne Wang 2012, Decolonization is not a metaphor https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/Tuck%20and%20Yang%202012%20Decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf For more on how climate change impacts Shishmaref, see Elizabeth Marino’s book, Fierce Climate Sacred Ground: https://www.alaska.edu/uapress/browse/detail/index.xml?id=528 Scott Kalafatis et al., Ensuring climate services serve society: examining tribes’ collaborations with climate scientists using a capability approach: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-019-02429-2 Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals http://www7.nau.edu/itep/main This Teen Vogue article is a nice introduction to land acknowledgements https://www.teenvogue.com/story/indigenous-land-acknowledgement-explained For more on the Land Back movement: https://landback.org/ This Flash Forward episode (with lots of links for further reading) https://www.flashforwardpod.com/2020/11/10/land-back/ The 2Land2Furious project by the Métis in Space podcast creators https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/back-2-the-land-2land-2furious http://www.metisinspace.com Jacquelyn would especially like to thank Katherine Crocker, who has deeply influenced her own thinking about Indigenous sovereignty and ethical partnerships. Check out her essay, Cricket Egg Stories: http://carte-blanche.org/hiyoge-owisisi-tanga-ita-cricket-egg-stories/