Everything is Connected: Indigenous Ecological Knowledge and Practices
How do Indigenous knowledges shape environmental policy, governance, and science? How can a broader understanding of this knowledge reshape the future? Join scholars Wendy F. K’ah Skáahluwáa Todd (University of Minnesota Duluth) and Clint Carroll (University of Colorado Boulder) for a critical conversation about the challenges and possibilities of Indigenous approaches to ecosystem management, tribal land conservation practices, and knowledge sharing. In the context of settler practices and shifting climate conditions, Todd and Carroll draw on their community-based research in tribal communities (Haida and Cherokee, respectively) to demonstrate how Indigenous peoples are navigating access to plants, waters, and places, and the environmental changes that make Indigenous environmental knowledges and strategies both more critical than ever and more difficult to practice. Mona Smith—celebrated Dakota artist and storyteller—moderates.
Image credit: FINDINGS, findingsproject.com. Mural of “Everything Depends on Everything Else” by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya . This mural of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) features three Haida matriarchs of the land, air, and water.
The (In)Justice Series presented by the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota brings together scholars, artists, activists, and community leaders to discuss different visions for what justice might look like. This event is presented in partnership with the Mellon Environmental Stewardship, Place, and Community Initiative (MESPAC) and Open Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place, and Community.
Clint Carroll is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, he works closely with Cherokee people in Oklahoma on issues of land conservation and the perpetuation of land-based knowledge and ways of life. He is the author of Roots of Our Renewal: Ethnobotany and Cherokee Environmental Governance (University of Minnesota Press), currently co-edits the Cambridge University Press seriesElements in Indigenous Environmental Research, and serves on the editorial boards for Cultural Anthropology and Environment and Society. He has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Udall Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Science Foundation. He is an active member of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology. He is a board member for Indigenous Education, Inc. (home of the Cobell Scholarship) and was recently elected to the Denver Botanic Gardens Board of Trustees (2022-2025).
Wendy F. K’ah Skaahluwaa Todd, Ph.D. is Alaska Native Haida of the Sáangaahl ‘Láanaas Sdast’as clan (Fish egg house). Dr. Todd is a Dr. Howard Highholt Endowed Professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth with an appointment in American Indian Studies and Earth & Environmental Sciences. She is an oceanographer and environmental scientist focusing on examining microbial ecology, molecular diversity, biogeochemistry, and biomineralization of groundwater. In addition, she conducts social science research on the impacts of diversity in STEM to gain a better understanding, appreciation, and respect for diverse students, faculty, and communities. She founded the Indigenous Geoscience Community, a community of Indigenous geoscientists who come together to share cross-cultural knowledge and is co-founder of the Indigenous Women’s Water Sisterhood to provide knowledge to the importance of water and Indigenous women’s role as water protectors.
Mona Smith, Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota, is a multimedia artist, educator, and co-founder of Allies: media/art and the Healing Place Collaborative. Her media work includes art projects for the web and multimedia installation work, most notably the Bde Maka Ska public art collaboration (2020), Cloudy Waters: Dakota Reflections on the River (Minnesota History Center, 2005, a permanent audio installation at the Mill City Museum’s Ruins Courtyard at the Minneapolis Riverfront in 2011, and Science Museum of Minnesota in 2015), the Bdote Memory Map (with the Minnesota Humanities Center), and the multimedia Dakota welcome installation to Hearts of our People: Native Women Artists exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2019. She has served as consultant for the planning for Indian Mounds Park (sic) and provided video work for the site. She has been part of the Dakota Community Council and is a member of the Native Partnership Council of the Friends of the Falls. She is a member of the PLaCE (Place, Location and Context and Environment) Research Consortium based at the University of West England in Bristol, England, and is a member of the Mapping Spectral Traces International Network. Her artistic and educational work uses image, sound, and place to work “between”—the place of healing, of relationship, of meaning where spirit and physical, life and death, fear and strength, night and day intersect.
“Water is life. It is a familiar phrase, frequently spoken today. Even so, little thought goes into what this simple phrase means. We exist in water throughout our lives, dependent on it from conception, surrounded in water in our mother’s womb, until our last water vapor breath….Taking our fragile dependence on water into consideration, one would think we would have policies and practices to protect water and respect the beinghood of water that humans feel entitled to.” —Wendy F. K’ah Skáahluwáa Todd
“Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is a combination of qualitative, quantitative, and spiritual knowledge that uses the same rigor as western science and represents knowledge of place, history, and spiritual/cultural philosophies about terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.” —Wendy F. K’ah Skáahluwáa Todd
“The allotment era, from about 1887 to 1934, broke up Indigenous systems of communal land ownership and opened Native lands to speculators in the market. Since this time, access has become a principal issue for Native peoples — specifically, the ability to access lands and waters through which to enact culturally sustaining practices and ceremonies that are tied to relations of reciprocal care.” —Clint Carroll
