Supporting Indigenous researchers through fellowship, science

Shelby Ross is a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and for years she searched for a way to combine her passion for science with giving back to her tribe. After completing a master's degree in environmental science and engineering, she worked for the Tribe's natural resources department, where she learned about its first-ever climate adaptation plan.

A personal passion for climate change led Ross to dive deeply into the plan, and she quickly found areas for improvement: The report lacked sections looking at how climate impacts the health of the Tribe's members. She was inspired to find a way to dig into the topic - a PhD was the obvious way forward.

"I had a really broad idea of what I wanted to do, which was to look at climate change and health for tribal communities in the Great Plains Region," Ross said. "I wanted to learn tools and skills that I could later give back to my community."

Today, Ross is a PhD student studying geography and environmental health at CU Boulder, and she credits the Tribal Climate Leaders Program (TCLP) for turning her research idea into practical information her tribe can use.

The North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NC CASC)piloted TCLP in 2020 as a partnership between several entities: CIRES, the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Engineering, and the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies. The program aimed to provide science education and research opportunities for Indigenous students while supporting the integration of their new knowledge and experience with their tribes and on their reservations.

"It was really important for us to create a program that would give students the flexibility to design their own research projects so that the research would be useful in the students' home communities," said Heather Yocum, TCLP program coordinator, and NC CASC social science lead.

TCLP has supported four students. Two, William Crawford (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) and Ida Clarke (Oglala Lakota), graduated with master's degrees in 2022; Ross expects to complete her PhD in 2025. A fourth student, Violet Eagle (Sicangu Lakota), was a professional research assistant in Ecology and Environmental Biology professor Nichole Barger's lab and is now pursuing a master's degree in soil sciences at North Dakota State University.

Crawford studied environmental studies while working with former CIRES Fellow Lisa Dilling and Clint Carroll, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and an associate professor of ethnic studies at CU Boulder. As a TCLP fellow, Crawford blended science with his Dakota Tribal cultural knowledge while researching a threatened plant species that is culturally important to his tribe, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate.

Crawford's research took him out into the field where he interviewed tribal elders and spent time digging in the dirt to learn more about ṫípsiŋna (Dakota) or Psoralea esculenta (scientific). He found climate change, overharvesting, and loss of traditional knowledge of the plant over time led to the plant's decline. He successfully defended his thesis in 2022.

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