Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science (CBIKS)

The natural and built environments of our modern world interact in complex ways that affect our global community. Understanding these interactions and their effects on society requires collaboration, coordination, and sharing of knowledge and data among researchers, communities, and organizations. The Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science (CBIKS) advances knowledge about environmental variability and its effects on food and cultural systems at local and global scales through a focus on combining Indigenous Knowledge (IK) with western science (WS) in effective, ethical, and novel ways.

Based on a comparative analysis of over 30 place-based projects to be carried out by CBIKS and nearly 60 partnering institutions and Indigenous communities, CBIKS develops a set of generalizable findings, tools, trainings, protocols, and best practices for integrating IK and WS. Through its research activities, the CBIKS team aspires to fundamentally transform how challenges related to environmental variability, food systems, and cultural heritage conservation are approached.

CBIKS broadens the participation of groups underrepresented in science, principally through the realization of a cohort of Indigenous scientists who will lead future efforts in integrated WS and IK research in the areas of archaeology, geosciences, natural, and environmental sciences. The CBIKS team mentors and provides research opportunities for numerous postdoctoral researchers, graduate student research assistants, undergraduate student researchers, and Indigenous community member and youth research assistants, across multiple research hubs and working groups.

Institutional engagement includes two tribal colleges, four American Indian and Alaska Native-serving institutions, two Hispanic Serving Institutions, two Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions, a Native Hawaiian Serving institution, a Native American Serving non-tribal institution, and numerous other public and private research institutions. Data and findings from CBIKS are widely disseminated through a publicly accessible repository as well as formal and informal learning activities for K-12 students and teachers, scientists, and communities.

CBIKS is organized based on Indigenous models of consensus decision-making and intergenerational learning and responsibility and has three main aims: 1) to develop a common publicly accessible repository for the storage, organization, and sharing of methods, ethics, and guidelines for effective integration of IK and WS systems; 2) to implement methodologies through a series of place-based studies in partnership with 57 Indigenous communities at 8 regional hubs, each constituting a different natural environment; and 3) to aggregate and distill data from the place-based studies through working groups with the objectives of advancing knowledge on environmental variability, food systems, and cultural resources and refining methodologies and ethical guidelines for integrated IK and WS research. Eight regional research hubs include partners from multiple institutions across the social sciences, geosciences, and environmental sciences, and each works in partnership with diverse Indigenous communities.

Seven working groups serve all research hubs, focusing on a range of cross-cutting themes related to research development and design, data sharing, and science education, training, and dissemination. Through this convergent and collaborative model, CBIKS can advance not only what we know about interactions between the natural world and human societies, but also how we investigate and address related societal challenges.

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.