[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmgFSu-owxU&feature=relmfu[/youtube]

In this video, Daniel Wildcat explains two unique ways that science and indigenous knowledge are working together to combat/adapt to climate change.

The first is a research project at the University of Kansas that is looking at the movement and changes of ice sheets using satellite imaging.  The University of Kansas asked the Haskel Indian Nations University to partner up on this project, and Wildcat’s idea was to have students and academics on the research team helping to explain how culture and land coexist.

The second had students at the Haskel Indian Nations University and Northwest Indian College working directly with technology to understand and solve local issues.

Both of these projects are valuable ones to the Native and non-native communities, not to mention all of humanity.  The first project has First Nations people explaining the link between land and culture and how and why this is necessary.  Perhaps if Westerners had more of a connection to a region, there would be more regard for the land.  The second project skips the middle man–the non-native researcher–and has the First Nation people working directly with the technology to solve real problems that affect them daily.  This has many positive repercussions in my mind, including, but not limited to celerity of problem solving, relevance of the issues being solved, bolstering of the local FN economy, bolstering of the local autonomy…