Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ecological Restoration and Indigenous Science

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

The doctoral dissertation project examines North American Indigenous relationships to ecology and how Indigenous knowledge systems have developed and changed over time, with particular attention to socioeconomic difference, health, and environmental change. Globally, ecosystem changes due to environmental disturbance, natural events, climate change, or a combination thereof leads to species being unable to adapt.

This directly impacts societies where relationships to the natural world are an integral dimension of everyday life. This project, which supports the training of an Indigenous graduate student in anthropology in empirical, social scientific data collection and analysis, considers how an Indigenous community addresses the political and environmental forces that impact everyday life and expressions of identity and community health as they relate to Lake Sturgeon (Nmé) restoration.

This doctoral research investigates how the enactment of the Nmé Stewardship Plan correlates with Odawa expressions of identity, understandings of health, and legal relationships with the environment. How is the Little River Odawa community navigating contemporary environmental and social impacts from the historical depletion and current restoration of Lake Sturgeon (Nmé)?

What role do Indigenous and Western science play in affecting these views and practices? What does this mean for Odawa treaty rights in the face of climate change? To answer these questions the researcher interviews community members and tribal natural resource managers and carries out participant observation in daily community activities related to fishing.

Archival research at university and government archives adds further depth to the study. The resulting research products contribute to an understanding of Indigenous science and how it encompasses humans' accountability towards the environment and identifies opportunities for strengthened environmental planning at local, regional, and national scales.

This has implications for both Indigenous peoples and for the study of species restoration across the ecological and social sciences.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.