ecology

TEK is a Verb: Activating Indigenous Ecologies at ESA

 

Speaker: Frank K. Lake and Lydia Jennings | Air Date: August 5, 2024 | Run Time: 43 mins | Season 4
Photograph by Alexandru Salceanu

 

TEK is a Verb: Activating Indigenous Ecologies at ESA

In this episode, Melissa Nelson interviews two Native scientist colleagues at the annual 2023 Ecological Society of America conference in Portland, Oregon where they discuss Indigenous ecologies, the history of the TEK section, and data sovereignty.

Traditional Knowledge or TEK is a responsibility and to be able to put into action the gift of that knowledge and wisdom from the elders and community members ceremonial leaders... what benefits the tribe is also going to benefit society.
— Frank Lake

About Frank K. Lake

Frank Kanawha Lake is a Research Ecologist, and the Tribal Liaison/Climate Change contact for the Pacific Southwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service. His research involves wildland fire effects, indigenous knowledge, tribal agroforestry, Climate Change, and ethno-ecology with an emphasis on cultural management and fire ecology of forest, shrub, grassland and riparian environments in the Klamath-Siskiyou and Pacific Northwest regions.

Other projects and research include: American Indian Tribes and Climate Change; Agroforestry practices of Indigenous and tribal people, Indigenous Fire Stewardship/Cultural burning, and Wildland Fire effects on Heritage and Cultural Resources. He mentors and serves as a graduate committee member for several students working on tribal food security, wildland fire, and forest management.

Frank is a Fire Line Qualified Resource Advisory (REAF) working on wildland fires with agencies and tribes. Frank is the Forest Service PSW coordinating scientist to the Western Klamath Restoration Partnership and for the Yurok Redwood Experimental Forest. His current focus is on Indigenous Knowledge data governance regarding the Co-production of Knowledge for research and resource management. Frank is of mixed Native American and European ancestry, being raised with and identifying more with his Karuk and Yurok family’s heritage in Northwestern California.

Photo courtesy of Frank Lake

Lake Property Klamath River TREX burn, October 2015 conducted by Karuk and Yurok ignitors. Photo courtesy of Frank Lake

Frank Lake explaining forest thinning at pre-conference field trip at ESA 2023 in Portland, Oregon. Photo by: Melissa Nelson

Frank Lake with USDA Forest Service and NRCS Scientists, Forest Service Fire Managers, Tribal Elders, discussing Black Oak restoration in the Sierra National Forest, June 2013. Photo by: Jonathan Long, USFS-PSW

Expert Q&A: Frank K. Lake, Biohabitats

 

About Lydia Jennings

Dr. Lydia Jennings (she/her) is an environmental soil scientist.

Lydia, citizen of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe (Yoeme) and Huichol (Wixáritari), earned her Bachelors of Science from California State University, Monterey Bay in Environmental Science, Technology and Policy.

She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in the Department of Environmental Sciences, with a minor in American Indian Policy.

Her research interests are in soil health, environmental data stewardship and science communication. Lydia is a 2014 University of Arizona NIEHS Superfund Program trainee,  a 2015 recipient of National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program, a 2019 American Geophysical Union  “Voices for Science” Fellow, a 2020 Native Nations Institute Indigenous Data Sovereignty Fellow, and a 2021 Data Science Fellow. Lydia is currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Arizona State University’s The School of Sustainability and the Research Fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

Outside of her scholarship, Lydia is passionate about connecting her scholarship to outdoor spaces, through running and increasing representation in outdoor recreation.

Field sampling at an Arizona mining site. Photo courtesy of Lydia Jennings

Presenting at the 2019 American Geophysical Union National Conference on my work with establishing biological metrics for mining reclamation in arid ecosystems. Photo credit: Dr. Laura Meredith

Indigenous women scientists representing the TEK section at ESA 2023, Portland, Oregon after speaking together in the TEK Inspire Session. From Left to Right:  Gwen Bridge (Cree), TEK Section Chair, Jaime Grimm (Saulteaux), Danielle Ignace (Coeur d’Alene), TEK Section Secretary, Lydia Jennings (Yaqui/Huichol), Melissa Nelson (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), TEK Section Vice-Chair, Ellen Simmons (Cree),  Jocelyn Painter (Winnebago), Ruth Ann Plenty Sweetgrass-She-Kills (Hidatsa, Mandan, Dakota, and Nakota). Photo courtesy of Melissa K. Nelson

Melissa Nelson and Lydia Jennings together after Native Seed Pod interview at ESA 2023, Portland, Oregon. Photo by: Melissa K. Nelson

 

about melissa nelson

Melissa K. Nelson, Ph.D. is an award-winning ecologist, writer, media-maker, and Indigenous scholar-activist. For over 30 years she has been dedicated to Indigenous rights and revitalization and the protection of Native lands and food sovereignty. Melissa is a professor of Indigenous Sustainability at Arizona State University and professor emerita of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University.

She is board chair of The Cultural Conservancy, an Indigenous rights organization, which she directed as a founding executive director and CEO from 1993 - 2021. Melissa is the co-producer and photographer of the award-winning documentary film, The Salt Song Trail: Bringing Creation Back Together, and has co-produced several other documentary short films with The Cultural Conservancy, the Native American Academy, and Philomath Films. She was a writer and host for the PBS website and documentary film, Circle of Stories, and consultant on the award-winning IMAX film, Into American’s Wild. She has co-produced several audio recordings, including Songscapes of Native America, Profiles of Native American Food Revitalization (with Slow Food USA), Red Earth Rising (with Canyon Records) and Sounds of Belonging (with ASU). In 2018 she co-founded the Native Seed Pod podcast and serves as its primary host and writer. Melissa has also edited and contributed to three anthologies focused on Indigenous ecological knowledges. She is Anishinaabe/Cree/Métis/Norwegian, a proud member of the Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa Indians.


CREDITS

Host/Writer/Director: Melissa Nelson
Producers: Mateo Hinojosa
Co-producer: Raven Marshall, Sara Moncada
Audio Engineering: Colin Farish
Audio Recording: Melissa Nelson
Episode cover photo: Alexandru Salceanu

Original Soundscapes and Songs

Soundscapes and Music Composed and Produced by Colin Farish
Listen to more of Colin’s music at colinfarish.com

Song credits

Music and soundscapes composed, produced, arranged by Colin Farish

Featuring:
Opening Frame Drums: Glen Velez
Drums: Capomo
Kanyon Chumash Grandmother Song: Kanyon Sayers-Roods
Tongva Song: L Frank Manriquez

Excerpts from Colin Farish’s 2024 Mesa Bluemoon release, Acoustic Menagerie:

“Chase Play part 2”
Colin Farish – piano
Jhaffur Khan – bansuri flute
Stan Poplin – bass
Shabda Al Owens – voice
Savannah Jo Lock – voice
Jaron Lanier – xun

“Acoustic Menagerie part 2”
Colin Farish- piano, frame drum
Paul McCandless – oboe, soprano sax
Savannah Jo Lack – violin
Don Lax – violin
Jose Luis De La Paz – guitar
Kyle Lemle – voice
Stan Poplin – bass
Throat Singers from Tuva – throat singing
Composed, produced, & arranged by Colin Farish

Winds of the Muse 2024 ASCAP

The Native Seed Pod is produced by The Cultural Conservancy

 
 

TEK Warriors use ethical space to indigenize ecology

 

Speaker: James Rattling Leaf and Gwen Bridge | Air Date: July 27, 2023 | Run Time: 51 mins | Season 4
Cover art by John Jairo Valencia

 

TEK Warriors use ethical space to indigenize ecology

Join Lakota leader James Rattling Leaf, a global Indigenous consultant, and Gwen Bridge, a Cree First Nations environmental leader, together with Native ecologist and host Melissa Nelson, in a conversation about the importance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). In this episode, we learn about their work with Tribes and First Nations in the US and Canada and how they are elevating TEK in academia, research, and government. They specifically discuss the growing movement of TEK within the Ecological Society of America (ESA), the world’s largest community of professional ecologists. From the ethical space framework and Canadian policies supporting the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in land management regimes, such as prescribed fire, to discussing tribally specific climate strategies during these extreme times, Gwen, James, and Melissa provide a concrete case study of Indigenous ecologists ethically and respectfully including TEK in a major ecological society of Western trained scientists and promoting Native ways of knowing through intergenerational Indigenous leadership. Ultimately, we encourage everyone to explore ethical space and learn about Indigenous policies to create more reciprocal collaborations between Indigenous and Western sciences. Join the TEK Section movement in ESA and support these strategies throughout the world.

Ethical space is a wonderful framework for providing the container, if you will, the space to be able to deeply explore the assumptions we’re bringing into the conversations we’re having between different worldviews. So the opportunity within ethical space is to, as my mentor in the space, Reg Crowshoe says, is to, deeply understand what needs to be understood from the other’s perspective and then create something new from that understanding.

Part of this work is on that individual commitment level to allow yourself to be transformed through your understanding, and then the creativity to be able to create something new.
— Gwen Bridge
 

About James Rattling Leaf, Sr.

James Rattling Leaf is a global Indigenous Consultant and Principal of the Wolakota Lab, LLC who serves as a guide and inspiration to organizations to work more effectively with Indigenous Peoples for a more equitable world. He has over 25 years’ working with the US federal government, higher education institutions and non-profits to develop and maintain effective working relationships with federally and non-federally recognized American Indian tribes, tribal colleges and universities and tribal communities. He specializes in developing programs that utilize the interface between Indigenous people’s traditional knowledge and western science. He sees a greater vision of human knowledge that incorporates the many insights of human cultures and provides a context for our better understanding of the planet.

https://nccasc.colorado.edu/

https://esiil.org/

About Gwen Bridge

Gwen is a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation and has been working for over 20 years with First Nations, all levels of government, and the private and non profit sectors, across North America, developing relationships and strategies that advance reconciliation. Gwen has been negotiating initiatives and advising on strategy and policy that recognize and implement Indigenous Knowledge, such as in the proposed South Okanagan Similkameen National Park Reserve. Gwen has also recently been advising the BC government on how to better consider indigenous knowledge in collaborative land use planning and forestry related climate change considerations. Support to local governments include developing strategies and principles for becoming “Cities of Reconciliation”, and advising on climate change policy and economic development engagement strategies. Indigenous led conservation focuses recently include the smelqmix Protected Area and caribou habitat conservation advancement in the territory of the Okanagan Nation Alliance. Advancing an understanding of the ecological, economic and equity based partnership mechanisms to support our collective reconciliation agenda through training is a recent focus. Other clients include First Nations and First Nation organizations, Parks Canada, US National Parks Service, National Geographic Society, other non profits, regional and municipal governments including Metro Vancouver, other consulting firms, the University of Washington, Blue Quills University, BC Ministries of: Environment, Indigenous Relationships and Reconciliation, Forests, and Land, Water and Resource Stewardship. 

Gwen is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Forestry at UBC. Gwen has a Master of Science in Forest Hydrology from the University of Alberta.

 
 
 

Melissa, James, Gwen, and TEK team in Montreal, Canada, 2022

 

CREDITS

Host/Writer/Director: Melissa Nelson
Producers: Mateo Hinojosa, Sara Moncada, Raven Marshall
Audio Engineering: Colin Farish
Audio Recording: Melissa Nelson, Raven Marshall, Alexis Stanley
Episode cover artwork: John Jairo Valencia

Original Soundscapes and Songs

Soundscapes and Music Composed and Produced by Colin Farish
Listen to more of Colin’s music at colinfarish.com

Song credits

Theme song “Life” by Colin Farish
From the the album Colin Farish: “Curious Species”
Featuring:
Piano: Colin Farish
percussion: Peter Medlam
bass: Chas Thompson

Featuring:
piano, guitar, percussion, synths, samples, and flutes: Colin Farish
voice: Capomo
piano: Jasnam Daya Singh
cello quartet: Fog Town Four
violin: Jeremy Cohen
guitar: Christen Konopka
flute & percussion: Jhaffur Kahn
beat-boxing, drums: Cameron Campbell


Featuring:
“Plants of the Sea, Ka Uluwehi O Ke Kai”
ukulele: Del Medina
voice: Linda Low
percussion: Colin Farish