Science Friday - Degrees Of Change: How Native American Communities Are Addressing Climate Change. Feb 7, 2020, Part 1

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

How Native American Communities Are Addressing Climate Change Indigenous peoples are one of the most vulnerable communities when it comes to the effects of climate change. This is due to a mix of cultural, economic, policy and historical factors. Some Native American tribal governments and councils have put together their own climate risk assessment plans. Native American communities are very diverse—and the challenges and adaptations are just as varied. Professor Kyle Whyte, a tribal member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, says that many of the species and food resources that are affected by climate change are also important cultural pieces, which are integral to the identity and cohesion of tribes. Ryan Reed, a tribal member of the Karuk and Yurok Tribe and a sophomore undergrad student in Environmental Science at the University of Oregon, and James Rattling Leaf, tribal member of the Rosebud Sioux, and Tribal Engagement Leader for the Great Plains Water Alliance, join Ira for this segment. “One Trillion Trees”… But Where to Plant Them? In this week’s State of the Union address, President Trump didn’t utter the words “climate change”—but he did say this: “To protect the environment, days ago I announced the United States will join the One Trillion Trees Initiative, an ambitious effort to bring together government and private sector to plant new trees in America and all around the world.” Planting trees to suck up carbon is an increasingly popular Republican alternative to limiting fossil fuel emissions—but how practical is it? In this segment, E&E News White House reporter Scott Waldman discusses the strategy. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. The climate is changing, and because we need to deal with it now, we open the next chapter of our series, Degrees of Change. Our series explores the challenges of a changing climate and how we as a planet and a people are adapting to the crisis. This hour will be talking about the climate issues facing Native American communities and how they are tackling and planning for environmental changes. More info on how you can get involved in our climate. our coverage and sign up for our climate newsletter at ScienceFriiday.com slash degrees of change. First, we check in on the gatekeepers, the decision makers, the controllers of the purse strings. And this week's state of the union address, President Trump, did not mention two little words with

big consequences, climate change. But he did say this. To protect the environment days ago, I announced that the United States will join the one trillion trees initiative and ambitious effort to bring together government and private sector to plant new trees in America and all around the world. Planting trees to suck up carbon is an increasingly popular Republican alternative to limiting fossil fuel emissions. But how practical is it? Joining me to talk about that and other climate stories in the news this week, Scott Waldman, White House reporter at E&E News in Washington. Welcome back, Scott.

Thanks for having me, Ira. Could you unpack this one trillion trees initiative for us, please? Sure. Well, this Trump first announced that the U.S. is going to participate in this. A couple weeks ago at Davos for the World Economic Forum. And essentially, it's a bunch of world leaders getting together saying that they're going to have this goal over the next few decades. It's planting a trillion trees all around the world. It's not just in the U.S.

It's all in places all around the world. and certainly this is part of what House Republicans are talking about right now as they craft their own climate policy. We talked about this issue with Abigail Whitaker, a project leader at the Center for Economic Development at Cal State University, Chico. And here is what she had to say. What you often see is that these public forest lands are, they're kind of used as like a regional piggy bank, where if your primary income source fails, you turn to the gig economy and these public lands, and public resources that everybody kind of dips into when they have an economic need in their household. So they're going to look there for opportunities to harvest firewood, food, to create

charcoal products. So if, say, a government or a business steps in and says we're going to take advantage of all of this public land that exists here, we're going to plant a large amount of trees, there are often kind of two ways the scenario plays out. Either the government brings in law enforcement to exclude those local people from using the common areas, and local people will lose out on those gig economy livelihood options, or they don't protect the land where they've planned the trees. The local people continue to use it for these other activities, and there's a pretty good chance that the survival rate of the trees will be pretty low.

So in terms of carbon sequestration outcomes, it's not a great situation in either case. Does not look like a win here. Scott, Republican lawmakers are working on a climate plan of their own that goes beyond the tree planting, right? Any hints on what that plan might be? It's a little vague right now, but they did specifically mention this and there's a bill that's going to be introduced soon that basically would help us participate in this initiative, sort of force the country to participate in it. But I think they're talking about carbon capture techniques investing in technology that would carry, excuse me, capital. capture carbon dioxide from fossil fuel production. And they're also looking at, you know, clean energy investments, better nuclear plants, potentially like more smaller nuclear plants, things like that, things that are going to produce less carbon dioxide. But ultimately, their plan does not include any sort of ideas that would restrict or reduce our usage of fossil fuels. It all really allows for just continued consumption of fossil fuels at roughly the current levels. One of your colleagues at E&E News had a story about how the snafoo with the Iowa caucuses, this was interesting, how that snafoo might change how candidates roll out their climate policies in the future. Can you fill us in on that?

Yeah, if you look at some of the other early states like North Carolina and Nevada, which could become more prominent if Iowa is knocked, you know, down from its place as the first in the nation caucuses that really sets the pace for the primary season, those other states have, those other states have. sort of more urgent climate needs. North Carolina has rising sea levels, tremendous inland flooding problems. Some communities are having to relocate. In Nevada, of course, you have drought, serious water shortage issues that are made worse by climate change. So if you have a year-long campaign where the candidates are visiting frequently in one of those states, you really can't get away without talking about climate change, probably fairly regularly. In Iowa, you sort of can. And they focus on agricultural issues and other things, but less so on climate. So we could see a shift there.

Yeah, unless you can tie the farmers in the land into carbon capture sequestration, things like that. Exactly. That's climate change also. You've also been reporting on President Trump's views on energy and water efficiency. I had trouble understanding this. Making toilets and showers great again? Yes, it's certainly unexpected. But this is when he gets to the environmental part of his speeches at rallies, he's really been going back to these talking points in the last few weeks.

And I guess since about two months ago where he talks about how toilets don't work like they used to, you have to flush them 10 times. And showers don't wash what he said, my beautiful head of hair. And what he's really talking about is stripping away regulations. That's obviously been a feature of his presidency is the deregulatory message. But, you know, showers are more efficient. They use a lot less water. So do toilets. And they operate just as well as they used to. The president seems to be suggesting, you know, sort of looking at, you know, our toilet or bathroom fixtures through the lens of nostalgia where they used to work as well, you know, much better in the past, but that's not really the case. So what he's really selling here is a deregulatory message. I think it's fairly abstract for the average person to sort of come to terms with, you know, when Trump is streamlining environmental impact statements for, you know, oil and gas production on public lands, that seems more abstract. but if they think about their bathroom and the toilets don't work like they used to,

they may sort of buy into his overall message about, you know, regulations. Same thing was true about the LED bulbs making him look orange, blaming that. That's exactly right. And you can get a whole range of bulbs, by the way, because I've done this in my own house, they look exactly like the old incandescent bulbs were used to. You're right. It's all part of the messaging that he's trying to reach out to his core voters. Let's talk about electric vehicles.

You also wrote about President Trump's views on Tesla, whose stock has gone bananas this week, right? That's right. I think he has this respect for Elon Musk, you know, the CEO of Tesla. He sort of sees him as this Einstein-like figure. Trump, I think, is impressed by the way, you know, obviously he's impressed by things like the way stock prices rise and fall. And Musk, through all the turmoil that Tesla's had as a company, has really had a pretty, they had a really good last quarter and just sort of overall, they have. a future this looking brighter than it ever has. I think the president respects that. Now, I don't see him turning around and suggesting that we should invest in, you know, electric charging stations all around the country, which is something we absolutely need to do if we're going to switch more of our cars away from fossil fuels. Of course, he thinks that

the American inventors and inventions like Tesla and the wheel should be protected in this country. One last story, which is, I don't know how to approach this. It's so sad. It's the canary in the coal mine. There was news this week about a glacier in Antarctica larger than the state of Florida, and we could get into what that means for the state of Florida, and how quickly it is melting. There's warm water coming up from beneath that's eating away at its foundation.

That's right. And some of the glaciers in Antarctica, the reason they're so important is, you know, when you have ice that's on land and that melts, that's what causes sea levels to rise. So if the ice that's over the water, you know, breaks off, it comes an iceberg, that's not going to cause sea levels to rise. But if you have this intrusion underneath the glacier where it is essentially connecting to the land or close to the land and the warmer water is sort of flowing into there, it's going to make the glacier, it's going to accelerate the ice loss and bring more of that ice into the water where it melts and causes sea level rise, you know, this is the kind of thing. that years down the road, this could lead to three feet of sea level rise in some areas, including probably Florida. But, you know, I think that's on a scale of centuries that we're talking about.

But nonetheless, it's a sign, a very troubling sign that, you know, the warming there is escalating. And also just, I should say, yesterday, Antarctica set an all-time temperature record. It was 65 degrees there, the highest temperature ever recorded for Antarctica. Yeah, that was crazy. That was in the peninsula. That's the part that's closest to South America. That's right.

It comes up and runs over the air. This is really interesting stuff. You know, there's going to be a debate tonight, a presidential debate, and I'm sure climate change is going to come up because climate change is now moved, right, to the top of people's or close to the top. I bring this up all the time whenever I talk about it. Who would have thought that after no one talked about climate change, you know, in the last presidential debate, it is now running on top of the news?

It's amazing. You're preaching to the choir. Are you as wild by this as I am? I absolutely am. As somebody who covers climate and Cody, you've paid attention to it for many years. We've never seen anything like this. Certainly there's a Trump effect here where the president has sort of, you know, been a hardline denier of climate science.

I think that's sort of motivating a lot of people, but we've seen a lot of pretty terrible natural disasters during his presidency from devastating hurricanes to flooding to deadly wildfires. I think people, those things in particular, there's plenty of research that's It shows that's really moving the needle on voters' concerns. It's not just Democrats. It's also more and more Republicans that are worried about this and want something done about it. Yeah, they have to find a way of owning this issue that they've denied for so many years, don't they?

That's right. And that's what they're trying to do now in the House. But, you know, I think it really, right now it centers around messaging where they want to be seen as doing something. And it's hard to imagine an effective climate policy where you don't limit the use of fossil fuels. Now, you can't go to South Carolina where the big primary is coming, and that's a border state. It's got all that shoreline, rising sea levels. You can't go there and not have some kind of climate change message or sea level rise message, can you? No, that's right.

And same thing with Florida. You know, it's going to be an important swing state for a long time. A lot of Republicans down there are driving, you know, the need in Congress to come up with a viable climate policy because you just can't deny it anymore. If you spend any time at a place like Miami, streets are flooding when it's sunny out. Always great to talk to you, Scott. Thank you very much for taking time to talk with us. Scott Waldman, White House reporter at E&E News in Washington, D.C. We're talking about climate change.

We're going to continue our theme because after the break, we're going to check in with Native American communities to see the climate change challenges and adaptations they are making. They have unique perspective on this because they've been dealing with, you know, the climate, native stuff around them in nature for centuries. And they will hear about their perspective and how they're adapting to new technologies after the break. So stay with us.

This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. Continuing with our Degrees of Change series, some of the communities most vulnerable to impacts of climate change are indigenous people for historical, economic, political, and cultural reasons. This fall at the Society for Advancement of Chicano's, Hispanics, and Native Americans in science, sci-fi producer Christy Taylor talked to Hilda Hiney, the president of the Marshall Islands. We depend on the land. Many of the activities that are part of our culture, they do emanate from our activities on the land. And so without that, the culture is going to be lost.

Everyone in the Marshall Islands has a connection to a piece of land in the Marshall Island. That's their home. And so without that, it's like, what are we? We don't have a home to come to. She was talking about Hilda Heaney, the President of the Marshall Islands, talking about a recently declared climate crisis due to rising sea levels. and that is, you know, threatening to wipe out a lot of nations that have low sea levels, a lot of island nations. And in this episode of degrees of change, we're focusing on the effects of climate change on the indigenous people here in the United States. Native American communities are very diverse, and so are the climate issues they are facing and their plans for environmental changes.

Tribes are putting together their own climate plans and risk assessments. The good news is that they have many years of experience. experience dealing with nature. So how do tribal knowledge? How does tribal knowledge play a part in the plans? We're going to take a look at what is happening in a couple of Native American communities. So let me please introduce my guests. Kyle White is a professor and Tim Nick Chair of Philosophy and Community Sustainability at Michigan State University in East Lansing. He's a tribal member of the Citizens Potawatomi Nation. Welcome to Science Friday. Nice to chat with you, Ira.

Padawada me. Sorry for getting that wrong. Ryan Reeson undergrad student environmental studies at the University of Oregon and Eugene. He's a cultural practitioner of the Chirac Tribe, Spring Salmonial Priest of the Hoopa Tribe and Hoopa Tribal Member and Uruk Descendant. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. We want to know from you, our listeners, are you a tribal member? tell us what climate issues and adaptations your community is facing. Give us a call our number 844-724-8255.

That's 844-Sai Talk, or you can tweet us at SciFri. Let me begin with you, Kyle. You said that for Native American communities, climate change and adaptation is not a new issue. What do you mean by that? Well, if you took a class in college that featured Native American history and our oldest traditions of political philosophy, one thing you'd find out is that going back to time,

you know, in Memorial, going back many generations, we designed our societies specifically to be adaptive to a constantly changing environment around us. And so you are always ready for some sort of climate change? We do our best to be, but, you know, the idea of having to be ready and thinking about both seasonal change, but also, you know, change across different years.

So climate change was a core part of our ceremonies, our cultures, our political life. And so we're always thinking about what does it mean to adapt? What does it mean to be resilient? What does it mean to adjust to change in the best ways possible for everybody? So tell me why indigenous and Native American communities are especially vulnerable. Well, one of the key reasons is that oftentimes due to decisions that were made against us, our communities are situated in small locations, in reservations, in jurisdictions that aren't very big. And so we don't have a lot of room to move around.

And so a change like coastal erosion or a change in water temperature, we don't have a lot of options to adapt in such small territories. And this is not how our ancestors lived. They lived in large regions where they were constantly moving. And so colonialism, as we experienced by the U.S., shrunk our territories and imposed boundaries on us that are not very good from the standpoint of being adaptive. Tell me what you mean by that. Well, for example, if your ancestors were living in an area that was the size of three or four states in the United States. But now you live in an area that is a fraction of that size, even a fraction of just one. one of those states, then that means that you really can only relate to plants and animals and

insects and to ecosystems within that very small area. And so what if the habitats in that area are ones that change and the plants or the animals that you care about are ones you can only relate to if you move off that reservation and engage with them in another location? But if the law says that you don't have the same rights to harvest or celebrate those plants and animals off reservation, then you can't. be able to continue those traditions and practices. So you're saying that then you have to adapt to something new?

And how long and what does that mean? Well, you know, it means actually having to negotiate some extremely challenging political issues. For example, tribes that are having to consider resettlement due to coastal erosion, they're having to realize that they might need to move to a new location and that they have to go through a nightmare of bureaucratic obstacles at the county level, the state level, the federal level, whereas a long time ago their ancestors who were able to move throughout those regions would have been able to situate themselves with much, much more ease. There are native communities putting together their own climate adaptation plans using

traditional knowledge systems. How do you put these plans together, Kyle? So I've worked with a number of tribes on their climate change adaptation plans and just on their environmental planning in general. And it's a community process. One of the things that indigenous people are taking leadership in is the idea that if you're going to have a plan for how a community is going to prepare for climate change, it has to be a plan in which all generations from children to elders are involved at the grassroots level. It has to be one that motivates people based on the idea that our traditional practices matter to us, and we have a longstanding history of being people who were very acutely aware of how to respond to climate change and to seasonal change, and that the climate change plans also have to be political.

Our tribal councils and our intertribal organizations have to endorse them and have to take them to Washington, and have to take them to other political centers of power so that we can have the adaptive capacity that we need. That's interesting. Ryan Reed, the Chiric tribe is in the Pacific Northwest. What environmental changes have you observed where you live and describe where you live and what's going on there? Yeah, so, well, our ancestral territory is northern California,

probably right at the border. Actually, a little bit of our ancestral territory, seeds into Oregon. And so I guess like just growing up in, you know, first-hand experiences, salmon's our main staple of food. You know, that's what feeds our people. That's what connects us to the relationship of salmon into our culture. And just the small period of time I've been on this earth, we have had tremendous population drops in salmon. You know, I went from as as a child catching up to 100 of fish a day, and now we're catching up to less than single digits in one year. And so that's probably one of the biggest changes I've seen as a firsthand

experience in addition to catastrophic high-tensity wildfire. And I think those are the two things that are like really penetrating our culture and really creating a big disparity within our social being. So you, the Carrick, have adopted a very detailed climate plan, I understand, and you mentioned these wildfires. They involve prescribed burns, do they? Yeah. So, Fire is a special tool. It's a give or takeer of life for us, you know. And so we use fire before contact, before colonialism, started to hit our people as a tool as to adapt to the climate change.

Because climate change isn't something that's new. It's not just a one single process event. And so we use fire as a tool to really battle those climate change and different weather patterns that occurred over geological time. And so fire prescribed burn fire today has been really significant and to really decolonize and revitalizing our culture and our resources around us that we need to survive on. Our number 844724-8255 are asking you to call in and talk about it.

Let's go to Justin in Baja California. Hi, Justin. Hey, how's you going? Okay. Hi there. Go ahead. Yeah, so we're, my tribe, the Coppah, we're in the Sonoran desert in Baja California and Sonora and then there's also a community up in Somerton, Arizona.

And we're facing a variety of climate challenges from the drying up of the river, changing our fishing, our traditional fishing at El Mayor is being forced more and more into the ocean. The river doesn't reach the ocean anymore. We're having hurricanes and things like that happening with the warmer waters that we don't normally experience. And high-intensity wildfires wiping out our cottonwoods and our salt cedars. And so all of these, along with the fact that we're a river and ocean tribe, the rise of sea level is all a big concern for us. Do you have an adaptation plan, Justin, in place in your tribe? It's something that we're working on.

because we're a binational tribe, the folks that we're down here in Mexico, we're talking about things like what happens if the sea level rises, how can we move? Of course, the Mexican government makes that a little bit more challenging, and the fact that the United States border is there also makes disaster response and planning across the border more challenging. That's good. That's great. Thank you. Thank you for calling in. Kyle, not all tribes have climate plans. He, they're trying, caller said they were trying to develop one. Why are, do they not have them yet?

Well, I first wanted to note that, you know, in the National Climate Assessment that came out last year, there's a tribal chapter that shows almost 800 different tribally led climate change initiative. So on the one hand, there's many tribes that have been doing this and taking leadership. on this. But on the other hand, a lot of us are working really hard to find ways for every tribe to be able to plan for climate change. But one of the key challenges is that a lot of indigenous people, a lot of tribal nations, we're really trying to rebuild our governments, and we're trying to create capacities to have those climate change plans. And so a lot of times the funding that would support a climate change plan either isn't available or it's not enough,

or it's not sufficiently sensitive to the types of employment situations that many tribes face. Ryan, you are all working with the Forestry Service on the plan. How does that work? You know, it's a very difficult process. Just considering our historical background and our historical relationship with Forest Service, it's very violent and very dehumanizing. You know, we were bounded to not set our cultural fires on our landscape and we're actually had a $5 scalp bounty on our backs for that.

And so to really revitalize that relationship in good terms is kind of been a, it's been a long process. But I think now that we have this climate change adaptation plan, it really gives us some support and really leverage to really significantly show that we know what we're talking about in a Western science context, which is. is very significant in today's day and age. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Let me ask both of you, individual tribes are working on their own climate action plans, and they're working with scientists who have a Western view of science.

What kinds of conversations or actions would you want to see to protect tribal knowledge in this process? Kyle? One of the key conversations that needs to happen is that our traditional knowledge, has a lot of elements that are private to it, that are intimate to our communities. But it also says certain things about the land and our relationships to the land that can oftentimes be exploited by others who might not know certain things about where certain fish are, where certain plants are. And so scientists really need to approach their relationship with us,

not from the standpoint of how can they get as much out of us, but rather how can they cooperate so that both parties achieve their goals. And Ryan, what do you say to that? Yeah, I really like that point that he made. In a way, it's not really our duty to do so. You know, we should have that mutual respect from Western science to really have that acknowledgement of our sacredness and our culture. But also, in addition to that, I think just having tribal members or tribe people of that land

who's grew up in that land and knows the ins and outs of that land to be there on the front lines, helping restore and rebuttal. build, rebuild our environment. You know, I remember we did a story recently about the sensitivity of scientists wanting to build a telescope on the top of Hawaiian mountain that was sacred to Native Hawaiian tribes. And they went through a long conversation. And finally, I think the government conceded that the Native Hawaiians had a point to be made over there. Do you sort of see this as a different battle, sort of in the same spotlight here of trying to, you make scientists aware of what your cultural sensitivities are?

Well, I've trained many hundreds of climate scientists in best practices and how to work with tribes. And one thing I've emphasized is that even though they're oftentimes compelling curiosities and questions that Western scientists are asking, sometimes there's a tendency to forget that our stories as native people not only have those compelling empirical and scientific questions, too, but also we're part of an extremely compelling. story of rebuilding our nations and rebuilding our cultures and societies and achieving success and sustainability in the future.

I think sometimes scientists need to realize that that's perhaps a greater goal to be part of, and that means they have to respect our interests, our needs, and what's sacred and private to us. We heard from the president of the Marshall Islands early. There are many indigenous communities globally facing similar issues and, and, you know, younger indigenous activists. How does that make it feel, Ryan? Hopeful?

Of course. You know, from what I've, my narrative has been building over and over, and I think the base of that is just starting with our youth. You know, they're the next leaders of our generation. And so to have them influenced by the end, being very aware of these issues that are occurring on their homeland and the places around them is very significant.

Just because, you know, that sets us for the next generations, And that's what a lot of cultures based on is the generations to follow. You know, that's how we prepare. That's why we do the things that we do is to really help the generations to follow. Well, it really looks like the younger generation is taking the lead in environmental consciousness. And hopefully in your tribes as well, I want to thank both of you, Kyle White, Professor and Timnich Chair of Philosophy and Community Sustainability, Michigan State University in East Lansing,

a tribal member of the citizens, Padawatomi, Nation, Ryan Reed, undergrad student in environmental studies, University of Oregon and Eugene, tribal member of the Raiian, a tribal member of the Hoopla Valley tribal member and part of the Kruak and Uruk tribes. Thank you both taking time to be with us today. Appreciate you. You're welcome. We're going to take a break, and we're going to come back and talk more about climate change issues and adaptations in Native American communities.

We're going to go out to the Pacific Northwest a little bit and talk about what's going on out there. So stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. Continuing our degrees of change series, talking this hour about climate change issues and adaptations in Native American communities.

I want to bring on a guest who is looking at water issues in his tribal community. James Rattling Leaf is a tribal member of the Rosebud Sioux, tribal engagement leader at the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center at the University of Colorado and Boulder. He's joining us from Roosbund. He's joining us from Rapid City, South Dakota.

Welcome to Science Friday. Good afternoon, Ira. Let me begin by introducing myself in my Lakota language. How amidakia, by, Chantewa, Shantewa, Nape, Chisholingle, James Rowlingleaf, Imachapi, and Chichungo Lakota-O-Yata-Montahan. Well, thank you for that.

We're approaching our 30th here on Science Friday, and we've never had anyone introduce themselves in their native language before. It's a good one. way to begin. I want to just tell our listeners also is, are you a tribal member? We want to hear from you. Tell us what climate issues and adaptations your community is facing. Our number is 844-8255. 844-8255. You can also tweet us at SciFri, and we do have some phone calls coming in. James, you're a member of the, as I say, the Rosebud Sue. Describe the community for us, please.

Yes, Ira, we're in the north-central Great Plains, South Central, South Dakota, and my tribe, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, is also part of a greater alliance called Oshetti-Chankovi, or also known as the Great Sioux Nation. And so we're in the Great Plains, grasslands, primarily an agricultural tribe, a lot of grazing and farming and those sort of sectors. You know, we face extreme events in this part of the country in terms of weather and climate patterns, but we're still here. We're also called the Buffalo people, the Tatanka or Buffalo people. And so we have a long history, a long memory of the land here and in this part of the country.

You're part of the Great Plains Water Alliance, which includes several different tribes. Tell us what the climate issue changes are that you're facing. What challenges are there? Well, certainly, you know, to talk about current realities for us is that we just went through a series of spring floods this past year. And the current outlook is we're going to have those floods again. And so, as I mentioned, extreme events seems to be the future for us here. And so flooding and the impacts of flooding have really impacted to the events of flooding have really impacted Two tribes in particular, the Rosebud as well as a Pine Ridge Tree Tribe.

And so tribes now are, have to deal with cleanup, have to deal with infrastructure issues in terms of delivering clean water to the communities. And so it's a tremendous challenge to our tribes here. And so obviously they're seeking resources and funding to address those issues, but certainly we got a long ways to go. When you say you're seeking resources and funding, who do you try to get them from the federal government or whom? Yes, Ira, as you know, American Indian tribes have a unique federal relationship with the government. And so we do those through treaties, 1851 and 1863. And in those

treaties, they are the supreme law of the land. And so we have this relationship with the federal government. And in that relationship, we work the federal government to do programs, to do projects to help support infrastructure in particular water. So we have one of the of the largest world water systems in our part of the country called the mini Wichoni and so that delivers clean water from the Missouri River as well as the Oglow Aquifer and so that took a tremendous amount of funding from the federal government to do that work but also interesting to know that also our non-tribal neighbors and counties and south could also benefit it from that waterline so

that that project brought many entities together and again it was through federal funding that made those things happen. So we continue to advocate strongly for those agreements and those promises the federal government made to us when we seeded land way back in the day. So we continue to advocate strongly for our treaties, implementation of treaties, those things like education, health care, and obviously water in those kinds of important aspects for nations continue to do that today. And now I know the Great Plains also includes the Standing Rock tribe, where the

Dakota Access Pipeline is. How does that action fit into all of this? Well, thank you for sharing that. I know that was a global event. And really, I think for the first time, again, it brought awareness to the world about our issues from our part of our country. And so we had a term,

we had a rallying cry called Mini Wichoni. It means water is life. And so the Standing Rock took the first action to make a stand, to make a declaration saying that these pipelines are harmful to the land, harmful to the water, harmful to our people. And so they took action. And they brought people together through prayer and ceremony that guided the people, guided the partners that came and supported the effort.

So again, it was a tremendous global event to bring awareness to the issues that we still face as tribes. but also I think it created a sense of energy, a visioning process to think about where do we go from here and what are the things that we need to do to prepare for a changing climate, but also all the other aspects of what it takes to manage our land and our resources. Okay, I want to go to the phones. Let's go to Elder from the Gila River community. Hi, welcome to Science Friday. Good, Josh. Hello. Hey there, go ahead.

I am an elder in my 80s from the Gila River Indian community in south central Arizona. We're midway between Phoenix and Tucson, and we are primarily, we live in the desert, but we originally were a farming agricultural community, and we lived off the Gila River. In fact, our tribal name, Akima Atomah is river people. We call ourselves river people because we live. lived is sustained for centuries off of a complex system of irrigation canals under the city of Phoenix and the entire metropolitan area until our water was stolen from us by upstream non-Indian farmers and it decimated our people and our agrarian and healthy way of life almost extinguishing

us until we fought for many, many years to get our water back. And we won the largest water rights settlement in 2004. And since that time, our tribe has been on a path to rebuild our agricultural economy and to teach our people to return to the values of living off the land and growing our own food and living a healthy lifestyle. And unfortunately, climate change has contributed now that we've got our our downstream water back, and we want it through the water right settlement. We do are affected by climate change by the decline in runoff from the thawing upstream.

But two things that your young, your two first young people spoke to, I would like to address as very good points. The first thing was adaptation. Yes, we have always adapted. That is a primary unique characteristic of Native American people. And you can adapt within your reservation environment. But in our case, and in most cases, the reservation lands that we were put on, has limited resources. Ours had a river, and when that was stolen, that stole our whole way of life.

Now we're rebuilding. And our tribe is really in the forefront of rebuilding a way of life through conservation and using water sparingly. And education, of course, is the key. And one of the things that we have done as a tribe is to integrate a conservation curriculum into our reservation schools. And one of the most notable things that has been by our tribal leaders is to develop the first ever long-term water plant for how to use the water that we have won

through the courts and through the Congress. use it and conserve it. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much. I want to mention. Okay. Quickly. The thing was partnership with the state of Arizona, a city of Phoenix,

to develop what is called the drought contingency plan, which is really a partnership between Arizona and Nevada and Colorado to preserve the water in the Colorado River. And our tribe has had the foresight to enter into partnerships with surrounding communities, non-Indian communities, as well as Indian communities, and to promote education and awareness among our youth. I'm glad you dropped that last bit in. Thank you. Thank you for educating us on that. James, you know, it looks like Native Americans have a lot to teach white people about how to deal with this with climate change. Well, I just sort of want to thank the caller and the input in her thoughts.

I know I'm somewhat aware of that work in Arizona and the importance of water adaptation planning and policy. I think in the discussion before the role of traditional knowledge came up, and that's the term that UN is using now, traditional knowledge, and so I'll use that today. I think it can be applied in many different ways. I'll share a little story. I was invited to Australia two months ago to be a part of the delegation of America with NASA, USJSA NOAA, to be part of something called the Global Earth Observations meeting. And in that meeting, we had the first time ever an indigenous effort, indigenous focus to look at bringing all indigenous people together to talk about our issues.

And so I had a chance and opportunity to meet with other indigenous people from all the continents. And we sat together around table, talked about what do we need to do? And one of the things that we emphasize, and I think this is reflective of traditional knowledge, is that we have a responsibility. And we as a need to understand it, we have a responsibility to this earth. And through our lifeways, through our ceremonies, and through our spirituality, we practice that every day. And we wanted the scientific community to know that. The second part is that we understand that, you know, that we, that we,

need to, with something called intergenerational knowledge transfer, that we need as older people and the elder that are called in, we need to be able to pass that knowledge on, that wisdom on to our youth. That's also important. And finally, we also agreed that partnerships are important. And so we wanted to really consider and reflect deeply how science and technology can help us, work with us, and advance, you know, our people. And so we, we're, we're, we're, critically reflecting, taking a deeper dive into the role of science technology and how that can support our vision. So that's exciting because that tells me that indigenous people around the world want to work together, and we're developing a platform for that.

So I appreciate the partners that brought us together, and we're going to continue that work. And that global work is important because, you know, we can learn from each other in terms of how we apply traditional knowledge. And that's the exciting part is technology can bring us together to do that. Interesting point. I'm Ira Flater. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking with James Raddingleaf of the Rosebud Sue. So what you're saying is you are adapting, you are melding in your cultural history with NASA-like technology to come up with new ideas. Yeah, that's right. Tell us about the Native View plan that you're working with. If you look at it, so I'm greeting you from the Black Hills of South Dakota, a geographic center of North America, and it's a sacred place to our people.

And I've seen maps drawn by elders who looked at the Black Hills and because of significance of that. And then you look at a satellite image from NASA, and you see how closely those geographic features represent. It's amazing. And so we know through our oral history that we have this understanding that we looked at the earth from above.

I think elders that tell us that we need to connect spiritually and physically between the skies and the earth is wisdom, and that's traditional knowledge. What happens above happens below, what happens below happens above. Those kind of things, those kind of philosophy, those kind of wisdom. is what's before us. And so NASA is very interested in other partners interested in these kind of discussions and dialogue.

So I can see, I can see in the future where we'll have these dialogues where we bring our spiritual people together, we bring our NASA scientists together around the table and have these deep discussions about what does this mean for the future. That's great. That's great. James, thank you so much for sharing this with us. It's quite enlightening. James Rathling Leaf is a tribal member of the Rosebud Sioux, Tribal Engage,

leader at the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, University of Colorado in Boulder. Thank you again for taking time to be with us today. Well, good. Thank you, Ira. And I guess, again, listen to your listeners. I encourage them to join us. Remember, the Lakota word means allies. And so we seek those allies that we work to advance our people, our nations, but also our country. So thank you very much, Ira. You're welcome. Thank you, all very much. And you can read more and listen to more interviews at our website at Science.

And you can listen more to our interviews with Hildie Hiney, the president of the Marshall Islands, about what her country and community is doing in the face of climate change. It's going to drop in the Science Friday podcast next week. So make sure you subscribe. One last thing before we go. We've been exploring the Great Lakes with our book club this winter, reading Dan Egan's The Death and Life of the Great Lakes next week. We're going to be wrapping it up. But in the meantime, producer Christy Taylor is here with a couple of reminders. Hi, Christy. Hey, yeah. So as you mentioned, we have gone all. all over the place with the Science Friday Book Club to the Great Lakes and the eight states from New York to Minnesota that touch them. We've learned about the connection between invasive muscles and toxic algae blooms, why clear water can actually be bad, and how native fish and biodiversity can make an ecosystem more resilient to the forces of change. I love what we're doing. What's next? What are we having another? We're having another chat next week, right?

Right. Well, and, you know, we're going to take some of your memories. We want to hear your memories of the Great Lakes and how they've touched you. And we are also going to bring it all together into a conversation. Same bat time. Same bat channel with some science nerds. In the meantime, we want to hear your thoughts and comments on our sci-fri box pop app. What did you learn?

What are your questions about the future of the Great Lakes or water health as a whole? We want to hear your voice memos. And then our New York listeners can come to the book club in person later this month. We're having a roundtable about New York City waterways and how they're being restored. Good news if you've been depressed about invasive species lately. and bringing author Dan Egan in to grill him about what's happened in the Great Lakes since he wrote his book. You can find all of this and more on our website, Science Friday.com slash book club. Looking forward to that, Christy.

Thank you. A sci-fi book club producer, Christy Taylor. That's about all the time we have this week. Charles Berkwist is a director, senior producer, Christopher and Taliatta. Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, and Katie Feather. Technical and engineering help today from Rich Kim, Kevin Wolfe, Lisa Gosselin, B.J. Leiderman composed our theme music. And, of course, you can listen to all our podcast.

Podcasts all week long. We're on social media. You know, every day is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato in New York.