Indigenous communities have their own unique relationships with climate change. Indigenous communities maintain longstanding knowledge about adapting to changing climatic, environmental, and social conditions. However, many Indigenous communities have also been forcibly dispossessed of their lands and cultures through colonialism. The study of climate and Indigenous communities must therefore attend to different social variables, such as Tribal sovereignty and traditional ways of knowing. What’s more, Tribes have also developed some of the most advanced and innovative climate adaptation plans.
The Glacier Lab conducts research on Native and non-Native partnerships, as well as climate impacts and adaptations among Indigenous communities. Professor Mark Carey is a co-director (with Kathy Lynn) of the Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples Initiative at the University of Oregon. Several Glacier Lab graduate students have been involved with these projects related to Indigenous communities and climate justice, as outlined in this StoryMap profiling the work of Sijo Smith, Dara Craig, and Dehlia Wolftail. These Lab members and others study climate change and Indigenous communities around the world. Some recent publications include:
Holly Moulton and Mark Carey, “Futuremaking in a disaster zone: Everyday climate change adaptation amongst Quechua women in the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca,” Environmental Science and Policy 148 (2023): 103551, pp. 1-11.
Mark Carey, Kathy Lynn, Clarita Lefthand-Begay, and Haley Case-Scott, “The Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples Initiative: Community Lectures, Student Conferences, and Tribal Interactions for Academic and Tribal Partnerships, Western Humanities Review 74, no. 3 (2021): 111-139.
Henry P. Huntington, Mark Carey, Charlene Apok, Bruce C. Forbes, Shari Fox, Lene K. Holm, Aitalina Ivanova, Jacob Jaypoody, George Noongwook, Florian Stammler, “Climate change in context: putting people first in the Arctic,” Regional Environmental Change 19, no. 4 (2019): 1217–1223.