Mason Impact

Mason researchers partner with Indigenous nations to promote environmental resilience

Mariam Aburdeineh — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 20:29:47 +0000

Mason researchers partner with Indigenous nations to promote environmental resilience Mariam Aburdeineh Fri, 09/02/2022 - 16:29

In This Story

Thomas Wood

It’s common to think of Indigenous peoples as living in the past. We may think of them around Thanksgiving or in old films and books. But Native Americans are very much here and now, said Jeremy Campbell, and after decades of struggle, that’s starting to be recognized.

Dancing at an Upper Mattaponi Powwow in May 2022.

In 2018, U.S. legislation granted federal recognition to six tribes in Virginia. A ��AV team has been partnering with two of them, the Upper Mattaponi and Chickahominy nations, as they embark on being sovereign nations.

“What really has been an honor to be a part of is building the capacity and the sovereignty of native tribes,” said Campbell, a College of Science professor co-leading the Mason team with School of Integrated Studies professor Tom Wood. “This is a wonderful opportunity for us, as a university, to build a sustainable and respectful relationship that has the potential to last for decades.”

Supporting Tribal Sovereignty

When tribes become sovereign nations, they must set up governments and structures to communicate with the U.S. government, said Campbell, associate director for strategic engagement at Mason’s Institute for a Sustainable Earth. That includes a department of environmental management, which both tribes are setting up.

That’s where Mason comes in.

Over the summer, Campbell and Wood led a multidisciplinary team of 10 undergraduates and two graduate researchers to collect environmental data in partnership with tribal governments as part of a Summer Impact Project. Their research will support tribes in making informed decisions for their communities when it comes to conservation, restoration, and environmental matters.

Chickahominy Connections

George Mason student Sara Jefferson is a member of the Chickahominy Tribe. Photo provided.

For junior psychology major Sara Jefferson, the project hits home.

“My favorite part about working on this project is being able to teach others about my culture and my people, while also learning about the natural world around me,” said Jefferson, a member of the Chickahominy Tribe and of Mason’s Native American and Indigenous Alliance.

Jefferson is part of three groups supporting the Chickahominy tribe in food security, wildlife assessment, and digital mapping.

“In the food security group, we’re researching the accessibility to different food sources in the surrounding Charles City area, and assisting the beginning process of community gardens within the tribe,” she said.

Jefferson is also part of a wildlife assessment group that’s identifying wildlife commonly found in the area and declining species. This involves expeditions along the Powhatan (James) River at dawn—when animals are most likely to be out—and recording where and when animals are discovered.

“This project has been very valuable to the Chickahominy Tribe, as it’s helped us establish a baseline of information about our tribal lands and waters that will help us as we make decisions going forward,” said Dana Adkins, tribal environmental director of the Chickahominy Indian Tribe. “As we work to strengthen our community’s role as stewards of our ancestral lands, it’s been great to partner with the students and learn from them as they learn from us.”

The team during a wildlife assessment. From left to right: Brian Jiménez, Olga Cheltsova, Maiya Justice, Dominique Hannon, Dana Adkins (Chickahominy Tribal Environmental Director), Dr. Tom Wood, Guadalupe Meza-Negrete.

Uncovering What Was Lost

In the wildlife assessments, the teams are also tracking what they didn’t find, such as native plant species being pushed out by invasives, Campbell said. Talking with their Indigenous partners helps them understand what the ecosystem should look like.

Collaborating with the tribes is of utmost importance for upholding tribal sovereignty, and for expanding students’ understanding.

“Leading with humility is really important, especially when you’re working with a group that’s been historically marginalized,” said senior sociology major James Condo. “Understanding that you’re going to be a student of everyone else around you is really important to keep in mind for research and in life.”

That mindset can be powerful, Campbell said, especially as the system most people are used to has ignored or marginalized Indigenous ways of knowing.

“If we connect with those ways of knowing and relationships, it can enrich our personal lives, and our ability to perceive and interact with nonhumans, and other communities, in a way that leads to more profound awareness.”

Prof. Tom Wood, Brian Jiménez and Mason team members using a spotting scope during a wildlife assessment.

Going Digital

The Mason team is also training tribal members in how to create geospatial information systems (GIS) databases. These include information about landscape changes, and air and water quality.

“We pull it into a system like ArcGIS, and overlay culturally significant points,” Campbell said. “We’re working with the tribes to train them, so that, if we’re successful, we can stand back and just stand ready for the new kinds of questions and challenges that might come up.”

Students also benefit.

“This has started to get me versed in GIS, and geospatial data is on the cutting edge of a lot of social science fields,” Condo said. “It’s really a great access point for a lot of interdisciplinary spaces.”

Mason students working with Chickahominy participants in a GIS skills building workshop.

Protecting Indigenous Data

“Tribal sovereignty is at the heart of this partnership, which is necessary and important,” said Leigh Mitchell, environmental and cultural protection director of the Upper Mattaponi Indian tribe. “Indigenous priorities have led the way in this research.”

For the Upper Mattaponi, who recently took land into trust, one of those priorities includes documenting how their landscape—which borders on the edge of urban expansion—has changed over the past 50 years, and how people are interacting with the land.

The Mason team is also constructing protocols to ensure that Indigenous people have control of their data in accordance with the principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty—the right of a tribal nation to govern the collection, ownership, and application of its own data.

“[Indigenous Data Sovereignty] encourages us to think of data as another kind of valuable resource that people need, use and care for, the way we might think of natural resources,” Campbell said. “As Virginia’s tribal nations reassert their sovereignty, it is important that their control over information pertaining to their communities, landscapes, and waterways be securely and affirmatively under their control.”

One of the team’s next steps, Campbell said, is to create a digital environment where tribes can grant tiers of access to non-native collaborators.

Research in Dialogue

Learning directly with the tribes has been a major draw, Jefferson and Condo agreed.

In addition to providing tribes with information needed to make informed environmental decisions, relationship building has been at the project’s center.

“It’s very much a dialogue,” Campbell said.

From left to right: Adam Edwards, Olga Cheltsova, James Condo, Patricia Troup, Elizabeth Schierbeek, Dr. Jeremy Campbell, Upper Mattaponi Chief Frank Adams.

Topics

Native American

Native American Indigenous Alliance

Office of Student Scholarship Creative Activities and Research (OSCAR)

Summer Impact

Mason Impact

Institute for a Sustainable Earth (ISE)

Sustainability

Community Partners

Campus News

Environmental Research

School of Integrative Studies

Students, faculty showcase summer research projects in virtual presentations

Colleen Rich — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 17:23:43 +0000

Students, faculty showcase summer research projects in virtual presentations Colleen Rich Mon, 08/16/2021 - 13:23

Linguistics major Bren Yaghmour was part of the Summer Impact Project team that used a special ultrasound machine to track the tongue's movements in people learning a new language.

Undergraduate and graduate students from ��AV presented the results of their summer multidisciplinary research and creative projects on Aug. 5-6 in a virtual celebration of student scholarship.

Videos created by the students about their research projects can be viewed on the Celebration of Student Scholarship and Impact website. A total of 98 students participated either individually or in groups, and they created 60 video presentations.

The celebration highlights Mason’s emphasis on ensuring students have research opportunities. Many of the students conducted their research through the Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Research’s (OSCAR) Undergraduate Research Scholars Program.

Other students participated in a Summer Team Impact Project (STIP).

Julia Sullivan Burns, Mason Impact student support specialist, said the virtual celebration is a way to showcase the wide variety of summer research projects in which Mason students were involved.

Biology major Louise Singer studied the microbiome of snails.

“Intellectual curiosity is one of the greatest assets we have as human beings,” Burns said. “One way Mason students get to satisfy their curiosity is by engaging in research. Every chance we have to display their research and intellectual curiosity is a chance to validate the work these students have done.”

Three projects were declared the Summer 2021 Top Presentations.

Louise Singer, a senior biology major, used her OSCAR funding to examine snails from two different lakes in Fairfax County. Her video presentation is called “Analyzing the Microbiome of Avian Schistosomiasis Vector Gyraulus Parvus.”

“My project was looking at how much of an influence location has on the microbiome of snails,” Singer said. “It was great that people valued my research enough to fund it.”

Singer said that it was meaningful to design and execute her own research project.

“The idea that people could be interested in it is exciting,” she said.

Faculty members Vincent Chanethom and Harim Kwon oversaw a Summer Team Impact Grant project using ultrasound to analyze tongue movements when English speakers learn French. The student team helped build and populate a linguistic corpus website aimed at furthering our understanding of how tongue movements affect accents.

Hannah Brennan, a senior English major concentrating in linguistics, said participating in the linguistics corpus research project was fun, especially learning to use the ultrasound machine and helping collect data.

“I was giddy the whole summer,” she said. Brennan worked with fellow students Domi Hannon, Bren Yaghmour and Jaxon Myers on the project.

Kwon said she was proud of the students who helped conduct research over the summer.

“You can see it in their videos how much fun they are having,” said Kwon, an assistant professor of linguistics, “and how motivated they are.”

Another of the top presentations was by Casper Brooks who was experimenting with web-based storytelling under the guidance of English professor Jessica Hurley.

For the research project, Brooks focused on apocalyptic trauma by creating a narrative framework and a website for the lead character’s organization, The Aspera Group.