It Is Time to Reclaim Our Lands and Data: Steps for Ethically Engaged Environmental Research with Indigenous Communities

Abstract

Indigenous communities have shaped the health of landscapes through reciprocal and relational stewardship of their lands and resources since time immemorial. Colonization has caused harm to Indigenous-shaped lands and the hands that have tended them. Indigenous communities must be recentered as experts through a pathway that embraces justice, equity, and sovereignty to address today’s pressing environmental problems. Scientific research, in particular, is a critical component of this pathway forward. In this article, we provide a practical guide to conducting ethically engaged environmental research with Indigenous communities. These steps include operationalizing the Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, and Ethics principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty, engaging ethically and reciprocally with communities, appropriately acknowledging and citing Indigenous Knowledges, and continually engaging with communities once the research project is completed. We also discuss enduring challenges in ethically engaged Indigenous environmental studies research related to institutional timelines, the hegemony of positivist or Western research traditions, and benefit sharing between researchers and Indigenous communities. By incorporating these steps and lessons into the research being done to approach today’s most pressing environmental issues, we can weave together a better approach to this type of work.

INTRODUCTION

We are living through an unprecedented time of change, crisis, and reckoning. Many of the environmental injustices facing the world today are rooted in the effects of colonialism.¹ Indigenous communities are intimately familiar with such large-scale changes because they have endured harmful environmental and social transformations since the advent of colonialism.² In historical and new ecological crises, Indigenous people play a key role in managing and protecting landscapes. Many governing bodies are beginning to recognize the importance of Indigenous land stewardship for supporting biodiversity, reducing wildfire severity, and increasing the overall health of ecosystems and people.³ Therefore, Indigenous communities must be recentered as experts through a pathway that embraces justice, equity, and sovereignty to address today’s pressing environmental problems. Scientific research, in particular, is a critical component of this pathway forward. When including Indigenous communities in decision making, management, and the research process, this engagement must be done in an ethical and nonextractive way so as to not further colonial harms.⁴

Despite important contributions to healthy ecosystems, dispossession of Indigenous lands is historic and ongoing in the United States and Canada. Since 1776, the United States has seized ∼1.5 billion acres of land from the Native Peoples of North America.⁵ The reduction of Indigenous lands was near total, and the present-day land base of U.S. tribes is only 2.6% the size of their estimated historical area.⁶ This has had significant consequences for the health of ecosystems and Indigenous people, including loss of biodiversity,⁷ food sovereignty,⁸ and fire-adapted ecosystem health.⁹ As environmental injustices are commonly grounded in racial and economic terms and defined by the norms of distributive justice within a capitalist framework, the pursuit of environmental justice for Indigenous Peoples requires a slightly different lens that accounts for their unique history and positionality with respect to settler states.¹⁰ Environmental justice is therefore inextricably linked to the imperative of restoring Indigenous presence on landscapes that Indigenous people have historically and effectively managed. There are increasing opportunities for tribes to reclaim presence and authority on landscapes. Restoring Indigenous presence on landscapes can take place through land-use agreements, co-management or management agreements, transfer of title, or other arrangements. All of these have in common the component of access to physical landscapes.¹¹ Restoring Indigenous presence and rights to steward landscapes also contributes to restoring and respecting sovereignty of Indigenous communities, including improving food sovereignty. For many Indigenous communities, food sovereignty relies on access to land so that communities can steward and gather cultural foods.¹²

Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) is another important aspect of sovereignty that researchers should respect. IDS affirms the rights of Indigenous Peoples to determine the means of collection, access, analysis, interpretation, management, dissemination, and reuse of data and derives from the inherent rights of self-determination set forth in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and mandates that data be used to support and enhance Indigenous Peoples’ collective well-being.¹³ In addition, data sovereignty pertains to data in any format relating to Indigenous Peoples, lands, resources, communities, lifeways, and cultures.¹⁴ Researchers increasingly recognize the value of Indigenous data and knowledge though not always with consideration of how those data are generated and how Indigenous Nations may want the broader public to engage with those data.

Many scientific disciplines have a history of using data to further colonial projects. For example, researchers or federal agencies may use data to strategically extract natural resources from reservation lands¹⁵ or not be transparent funding sources and ownership or reuse of data after completion of a project.¹⁶ In order to not repeat these harms, researchers in recent years have worked to develop respectful and transparent research workflows within Indigenous communities; IDS is a powerful framework that has emerged from these efforts. In alignment with that framework, scholars should consider the additional steps and time this will add to their research methodologies, critically examine their own positionality, engage with tribal research oversight processes, understand that consent is an ongoing process, and work toward knowledge co-production and data repatriation.¹⁷ All of this takes time and a willingness for researchers to expand upon their Western methodologies and practices to account for the unique skills necessary to ethically engage with Indigenous communities. There are growing literature and community-specific examples for how researchers can engage in processes to take steps toward ethical engagement.^{18,19,20,21,22,23} Therefore, we aim to offer a unique perspective into these processes within the fields of land use change, Indigenous environmental studies and science, geospatial analysis, data science, environmental justice, and biodiversity studies across the geographic communities in which we have worked.

The goal of this article is to provide a practical guide to conducting environmental research with Indigenous communities. We start by explaining four steps for ethically engaged research grounded in IDS principles. For each step, we define a concept central to ethically engaged research and then provide a short case study from our own research experiences describing its application. Using these case studies, we synthesize our experiences into several practical considerations that we argue researchers should take when conducting research with an Indigenous community.

PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND STEPS FOR ETHICALLY ENGAGED RESEARCH WITH INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

In the following section, we demonstrate concrete examples of how work with, by, and for Indigenous communities can be ethically and beneficially approached when grounded in IDS. We also reflect on challenges we experienced through this work and offer generative questions for Indigenous environmental science. By examining the CARE (defined as Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, and Ethics) principles of IDS, approaches for ethical community engagement, appropriate ways to acknowledge and credit Indigenous Knowledge (IK), and what engagement with communities looks like once the research process is complete, we hope to offer steps and considerations for researchers wanting to engage with Indigenous communities. These steps are not all encompassing, nor are they directly transferable between communities. Instead, we use examples and reflections from our own work to help provide the beginning of a roadmap for these considerations. Figure 1 shows all of our research locations throughout the Pacific, Western United States, and Canada.

FIG. 1.

Approximate locations of the research collaborations discussed in this article.

Step 1. Operationalize the CARE principles of IDS in your work

L.H. (Kānaka ‘O¯iwi): Collaboration with Kānaka ‘O¯iwi farmers and community members

CARE principles of IDS

The Global Indigenous Data Alliance developed CARE as a response to the increased move toward open data and open science—championed by the FAIR Principles, which propose that data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable—that has long led to data extraction while disregarding power imbalances and historical injustices between researchers and communities.²⁴ Frameworks have been put forth to outline the potential application and operationalization of CARE to biodiversity, ecology and/evolution, and genomic data.²⁵ These frameworks emphasize engaging CARE and IDS not just at the point of data collection and analysis but throughout the entire data life cycle, for example, how research project goals and questions are asked, benefit sharing, and data governance. In this first case study, we focus on applying the CARE principles to the data life cycle, with an emphasis on the “authority to control” principle.

Case study: Biodiversity in the Kona Field System

My research is situated within the Kona Field System (KFS) on the leeward side of Hawai‘i island (Big Island). Kānaka ‘O¯iwi (Native Hawaiian) hands stewarded the landscape into an extensive agroforestry belt, incorporating perennial crops and flora into an agricultural plot. The KFS was historically touted as being productive and biodiverse.²⁶ Owing to colonization, it has largely been transformed into a coffee agroecosystem, as coffee was planted as a cash crop effort by Western missionaries and businesspeople.²⁷ However, community-led efforts to restore agroforestry have been underway, spurred by more extensive sovereignty and food sovereignty movements in Hawai‘i.²⁸ In my research, I collect whole insect communities from agroforestry and coffee monoculture plots in the KFS and use DNA metabarcoding to taxonomically identify them rapidly. The result is a massive amount of genomic data and relevant metadata to address ecological biodiversity pattern questions and pest and conservation effort-related questions posed by community members, resource managers, and farmers.²⁹

The governance structure in Hawai‘i, particularly related to ‘ōiwi, is such that we are not federally recognized by the U.S. government and, therefore, do not have a centralized governing body to implement and enforce research guidelines. However, there are guiding data governance documents put forth by ‘ōiwi groups. One of the first and overarching documents is the Paoakalani Declaration, which describes that all data gathered and generated in Hawai‘i and from Hawaiian knowledge are the intellectual property of ‘ōiwi and under the purview of ‘ōiwi.

To honor Paoakalani and operationalize CARE’s authority to control principle, I used the Local Contexts Hub (LCH), an online data hub created by Local Contexts, an Indigenous-led nonprofit. Researchers can create an account outlining their project and openness to appropriate and respectful attribution or contextualization through using Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Notices. A relevant community can create an account, view the data a researcher uploads, and apply labels that recognize community-relevant attribution and permission protocols. However, given the ‘ōiwi community’s particular governance structure, deciding who should create the community account has been challenging. To address this, we are forming a group of cultural, agricultural, and ecological leaders to come together to make data-relevant decisions. In the meantime, to protect the data as a community group is formed, the data are now held on a server owned by the Native BioData Consortium (NBDC), an Indigenous-led bio consortium on sovereign Sioux lands. NBDC is the only Indigenous-led biobanking operation on Turtle Island (North America). Given NBDC’s position on sovereign Sioux lands, it is under Sioux Tribal law and protection. Taken together, the LCH and NBDC provide two mechanisms for Indigenous communities to contextualize and govern (i.e., control) their data.

Step 2. Engage with communities in an ethical and reciprocal way

A.S. (Amah Mutsun) and A.T. (settler American): Collaboration with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band

Free, prior, and informed consent

Free, prior, and informed consent is a specific right granted to Indigenous Peoples in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which states that Indigenous communities have the right to grant or withdraw consent for projects that impact them at any time.³⁰ Because UNDRIP and the principles of free, prior, and informed consent are not legally binding, it is imperative that researchers take it upon themselves to continually obtain consent throughout the research process.

Case study: Reciprocal research collaboration with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band

In this section, we pull from the example of our work with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band along the Central Coast of California. Before beginning our research, we met with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Council to discuss our research interests and received their written approval to proceed in alignment with the principles of free, prior, and informed consent. We next conducted semi-structured interviews with elders and cultural practitioners in the Amah Mutsun community to understand community priorities, with a focus on the implications for our respective interests in geospatial analysis and Indigenous environmental governance. Each interviewee received an honorarium as well as a box of culturally relevant foods and gifts. As our research began, we participated in community events and site visits when invited, supporting our ability to learn through shared experiences on Mutsun land. This process of relationship building and gauging the community’s various research interests has been iterative and has required many years.

This relationship-building phase was particularly critical for me (co-author A.T.), as a non-Native ecologist with no prior experience working with the Amah Mutsun community. At the start of our collaboration, I volunteered to contribute to their existing ecological stewardship work by creating maps and organizing their existing spatial data. Over the course of those first two years, I was ultimately asked to create maps and spatial databases for the tribe’s cultural plants, sacred sites, and local property ownership information. This work helped me learn more deeply about the ecological priorities of the tribe at the same time that I was talking with more tribal members at community events and through our interviews. Engaging first in work that was deemed necessary by my collaborators also helped to counter the colonial tendency to pursue my predetermined research ideas. Before sharing any information (either through a presentation or through a publication) that might be culturally sensitive, I check in with tribal leadership and have refrained from publishing mapped results that were deemed confidential by the Tribal Council.³¹

As an Amah Mutsun Tribal Member (co-author A.S.), the division between my community engagement as a researcher and a community member is opaque. I seek to understand tribal land access and stewardship through ethnographic research and have made myself accountable to materially supporting access and stewardship endeavors beyond my academic focus. This commitment is demonstrated in my advocacy and organizing work for the Protect Juristac campaign, a campaign to protect an Amah Mutsun sacred site from a sand and gravel mining proposal (2018–present, www.protectjuristac.org). It has also involved co-organizing several educational site visits to ancestral places for the Amah Mutsun Youth Group and serving on the Lands Committee of the tribally led Amah Mutsun Land Trust (AMLT, 2021–present). Following research interviews by Taylor and I that were primarily conducted via Zoom because of COVID-19 shelter in place mandates, I have since shifted research interviews to occur at sites of cultural importance, to support the maintenance of tribal member relationships. As access can be difficult for tribal members because of cost and time of travel, I have made sure to reimburse travel costs and offer honoraria for their time. By facilitating land access opportunities as a community-engaged scholar, I seek to create collective benefits for the tribal community.

We have experienced several challenges in our efforts toward ethical community engagement. One of these is that research ideas and community priorities change over time, but requesting continuous feedback from an Indigenous community is often a burden on that community’s time and resources. Our answer, in part, has been to ensure that the research we are conducting with the community is mutually beneficial and reciprocal, therefore justifying some of the time that they invest in us as researchers. In addition, we direct our questions toward AMLT staff who are compensated for this partnership work whenever possible. We both found that our engagements with the tribe beyond what is traditionally considered research were a critical part of our efforts toward ethical and reciprocal collaboration.

Step 3. Appropriately acknowledge and credit IKs

C.W. (Diné) in collaboration with tribes living adjacent to the Bears Ears National Monument

IK

IK represents a cumulative body of knowledge, practices, and beliefs that evolve by adaptive processes and are handed down through generations by cultural transmission, broadly related to the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment.³² This knowledge is place based and should not be viewed as merely supplemental but rather as having real governing value.³³ IK has important value in supporting self-determination, resurgence, and collective continuance manifest within Indigenous communities.

Case study: Using research studies to support advocacy efforts at Bears Ears

As a former founder of Utah Diné Bikéyah’s Traditional Foods Program, I (co-author C.W.) share my experience in Bears Ears advocacy through community organizing, mobilizing, programming, and interest to advance tribal sovereignty and self-determination through Indigenous-led nonprofits, tribal community engagement, and Indigenous-led research in southeastern Utah. This section discusses Indigenous-led land conservation, research, and advocacy that have helped shape and secure cutting-edge protections for the 1.36 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument.³⁴ The Intergovernmental Cooperative Agreement signed on June 18, 2022,³⁵ guides federal and Tribal Nations of the Bears Ears Commission (the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, and the Pueblo of Zuni) to “ensure Tribal knowledge priorities and interests are incorporated into the management of the monument.” Model examples of co-management derive from two studies published on firewood and plant species richness within the Bears Ears National Monument. These studies provided an opportunity for the Bears Ears Commission to use current Western scientific data and research approaches to understand and recommend policies and practices to tribes, the Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Forest Service.

First, the “Firewood and Energy Sovereignty on Navajo Nation” project implemented an applied collaborative research process guided by reciprocal relationships that centered Indigenous concerns to exert sovereignty and self-determination on outlets and authorship decisions. Research questions were guided by Indigenous concerns over access, sustainability, and management of firewood and approved by the Navajo Nation Institutional Review Board (IRB) with a cultural investigation permit by the Navajo Nation Heritage and Historic Preservation Department. Indigenous collaborators informed all aspects of how the research framework was developed and were consulted and involved in various steps through dialogue, participation, and guidance. This study highlights that “this recent action restores codified Tribal involvement in the processes of land management, creating a pathway for Indigenous voices—and the cultural legacy and ongoing relationship between Indigenous people and these ecosystems—to be represented in the future governance of the landscapes of southeastern Utah that hold important cultural and economic resources for Indigenous people, including firewood.”³⁶

Second, I discuss the study titled “Plant species richness at archaeological sites suggests ecological legacy of Indigenous subsistence on the Colorado Plateau.” The best example of ethnographic species richness enhancement from Bears Ears National Monument is that of the tiny, 10,000+ years old Four Corners Potato known as Solanum jamesii.³⁷ Here, I conducted ethnographic accounts of traditional knowledge and uses of S. jamesii by listening to Diné elders and Indigenous farmers throughout the Four Corners Region in partnership with researchers at the University of Utah. Overall, collected memories, knowledge, and use of S. jamesii face contemporary challenges with drought, grazing, historical land displacement, political governance issues around land access, use, and loss of inherent rights to ancestral gardens. This study informs special management regimes that should be “cross-cultural, developed with tribal input to emphasize the conservation and restoration of archaeo-ecosystems that contain ‘high priority’ plant species, especially those held sacred as lifeway medicines.”³⁸

Lessons learned from both studies include how to center Indigenous values and voices in both the arboreal ecosystem and the archaeo-ecosystems to inform land management decisions and public policy. In addition, these studies show us how to secure resources, create spaces, and build capacity in Indigenous-led research so that tribes gain security in holding their own knowledge and building a future based on the values and priorities of the elders and ancestral landscapes who are the greatest teachers in land conservation. Indigenous-led work is not necessarily about policy but more so about healing existing relationships to the cultural living landscape and the reclamation of Indigenous communities’ inherent rights to land and data.

Step 4. Continue engaging with communities after the research is done

M.P. (settler American): Collaboration with Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation and Sambaa K’e First Nation

Becoming and defining “experts.”

As researchers, we are often regarded as experts in our field. By generating publications and policy recommendations, we have a unique opportunity to add to the discourse on social and environmental justice issues. Research outputs are a particular form of knowledge production, among the most valued by governing institutions and policy-making bodies. IK is not usually valued in the same way (or at the same level), nor are community members often regarded as experts, yet Indigenous environmental science and studies cannot occur without meaningful engagement and expertise from community members. As we consider what engaging with Indigenous communities looks like, we need to critically consider how the benefits of research are distributed and to whom new knowledge contributions are attributed.

Case study: Engaging beyond the project; agroecological research with Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation and Sambaa K’e First Nation in the Dehcho region, Northwest Territories, Canada

This section extends from research that I conducted in collaboration with Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation (KTFN) and Sambaa K’e First Nation (SKFN) in the Dehcho region, Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada. As a settler American from the United States, I was unremarkably and unquestionably a guest on the territory of the Dehcho Dene. When I began my dissertation research on agricultural development in the NWT in the summer of 2019, I approached my relationships with KTFN and SKFN through slow introductions, first through a local NGO that was actively supporting agriculture projects within both communities and later through a Canadian research group that had established over 10 years of collaboration, mutual agreement, and trust with KTFN and SKFN.

After several years of engagement with communities in the NWT, in 2021–2022, I led a team of four academic researchers and three members of SKFN and KTFN in developing a northern-adapted agroecological framework that prioritizes Indigenous environmental stewardship and land and food sovereignty in far northern agriculture development.³⁹ Since the framework was published, all members of our research team have continued working with SKFN and KTFN through interviews, workshops, and informal conversations, to better understand how Dene values are imbued in current and future community agriculture and climate adaptation projects. Carla Johnston, a co-author of the agroecology framework, co-developed with SKFN a five-year community agroecology plan that outlines community priorities in agriculture, traditional harvest, and stewardship.⁴⁰ As a broader research team, we continue to actively advocate for agricultural policies that support Indigenous land stewardship and food sovereignty in territorial and federal discussions around northern food security and agriculture development.

Despite our collective contributions to this policy framework, our ongoing collaborative research in climate change and agriculture, and our shared authorship, the benefits of the research have not always been equitably distributed. Such inequities are evidenced when I, as the first author of the agroecology framework article,⁴¹ am called to serve as an expert on federal discussions of northern food security and sovereignty, rather than KTFN or SKFN, though I am neither directly affected by the system nor engaged in everyday acts of living out sovereignty. The ethics of research funding are also a continual challenge. Though we work to creatively allocate every dollar to communities that our funders will allow (through community salaries, informant compensation, experts and knowledge guardians, infrastructure, and material goods), the reality is that much more money goes to fund the research complex itself (academic salaries, plane tickets, workshop meeting rooms, conference fees, article processing charges, etc.). A key CARE principle, collective benefit, proposes that the benefits of research should be shared equally between communities and researchers. If this is to be taken seriously, we have much more work to do, institutionally and as individual researchers, to ensure that benefits are shared across all realms of expertise, finances, authority, professional advancement, and material gain.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Many of our Indigenous cultures use weaving—from intricate baskets to rugs with complex patterns. Ultimately, this is how we view our work as researchers (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) who work with Indigenous communities. It is our obligation to weave together these strategies for ethical research engagement in our work with communities to address the environmental problems that are impacting across the globe. Though we have tried to approach our work in ethical and reciprocal ways, it has not been without challenges. The steps this article outlines are important and provide a path for other researchers; however, institutional change is also needed to support community-driven and ethically engaged Indigenous environmental studies and science research. There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach that would serve all communities well. Therefore, we must not approach this work in a rigid way. Figure 2 outlines ways that the steps we mention in our case studies can be woven together with the pressing environmental problems of today, to create a better, more sustainable future for all.

FIG. 2.

This figure demonstrates how we can weave together the steps for ethical approaches to environmental research with Indigenous communities while addressing pressing environmental issues. (I) Lists out the various categories of research and steps researchers should take that have been discussed in this article. These are linked and should be woven together to create new approaches to research that does not further colonial harms. (II) Demonstrates how many processes are cyclical—including environmental change and research engagement with communities. Once we weave together our basket of topics from (I), we can build a better world for all while tackling pressing environmental problems.

We conclude this article with some recommendations to researchers and institutions that would aid in the work of weaving together Indigenous environmental challenges and opportunities for ethical research engagement. As graduate student researchers transitioning to early career scholars, there are several points of support that we have identified that would have been crucial in helping us develop relationships with tribes and institutionalize support beyond our own communities.

Formalize research agreements in a written way. Clear communications about the scope of work, data collection, data ownership, and ultimate goals should be addressed up front and continually discussed. Although questions may be added or changed as the community’s needs evolve, there should be relatively set, co-developed guidelines that are considered ahead of time. One way to do this is to consider tribal IRB processes, which are likely to address many of these concerns. However, not all tribes have an IRB committee within their community. An alternative or addition to the IRB would be a memorandum of understanding (MOU). A signed agreement between both parties would aid in the life cycle of the research project and in communicating shared expectations from all parties. However, MOUs are nonbinding agreements and, therefore, require both parties to commit to the agreements set forth within them.

Work to institutionalize support for graduate students and early career faculty. Graduate students and early career faculty who are building new research relationships with communities face challenges with regard to the length of time required to build trusting relationships. It can take years to fully engage with community members and tribal councils and to formulate research questions and methods. Given that many PhD programs are only 5–7 years in length (similar to tenure review for faculty), relationship building with Indigenous communities is challenging given time pressures to reach certain academic milestones. One consideration for universities would be to create a tribal liaison position that oversees and helps connect researchers to communities that have approached the university with specific research questions or to aid in the outreach thereof. However, the people who ultimately hold and steward those relationships should be considered. There may be times when it is more appropriate for an individual researcher or community member to hold the relationship rather than the institution. Still, more institutional support should be prioritized and financially supported.

Recognize the colonial underpinnings of the positivist, extractive culture of research that is the dominant paradigm in the university today and how that privileges certain types of research and products. Researchers must acknowledge that what “counts” as research (i.e., what the academy recognizes as productive work) does not always align with what a community wants. For example, there may be times when a community does not want certain information published or may keep reports internal. In these cases, research may be done, but it may not be accessible to the broader public in clear ways. In other instances, a community may prioritize a certain outcome, for example, plain-language research summaries, or community programming, that are not a priority to the university. Although time intensive, this work may not contribute to the advancement of a researcher’s career within the current structures that measure academic success. However, researchers engage in this work all the same, creating a higher workload for people who conduct this type of ethical engagement. This could prove challenging to graduate students trying to graduate or early career faculty trying to get tenure. We encourage universities to consider ways of valuing this work in career advancement structures knowing that outputs from the work may not always be the same as that of other types of research.

Be a bridge builder. As someone who is connected with communities—usually across an entire career—people who do this work should consistently share their skills. This could be through conducting the research itself or by hosting workshops or webinars with the tribal community to build internal capacity. If an individual researcher does not have a particular skill set that a community needs, they have an obligation to collaborate with other researchers who can help address the issues communities prioritize and to vet those collaborators accordingly.

Indigenous Peoples have been scientists since time immemorial. They hold deep knowledge and relationships with the land and all the relatives on it. In a time of drastic environmental change and challenges, many researchers are turning to Indigenous people for their help in addressing these topics. How we approach this work is crucial so as to not repeat the harms that other structures of colonialism and white supremacy have perpetuated. To work toward environmental justice for Indigenous communities, we must respect the sovereignty of these communities, as researchers, by thoughtful engagement from project initiation to completion.

Though Indigenous researchers only make up a fraction of a percent of graduate students and faculty at universities, there are more of us now than there have ever been. We are hopeful that there can be the necessary paradigm shifts to create a future that respects, supports, and uplifts our knowledge and the knowledge of our communities as central to research processes.

Footnotes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Van Butsic, Mary Adelzadeh, and many other collaborators, colleagues, and fellow graduate students for their valuable feedback, which greatly improved the structure of this article. The authors are forever grateful to the various Indigenous communities that they come from and that have supported them in this work.

AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS

M.S. conceptualized the framework and wrote the first draft of the article. All authors contributed to outlining, writing, and editing the article.

POSITIONALITY STATEMENT

All authors are current PhD students or candidates in the Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Department at University of California (UC), Berkeley, which sits on the territory of xučyun (Huichin), the original landscape of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people. M.S. is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. A.S. is an enrolled member of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. C.W. is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. A.T. is a settler American. M.P. is a settler American researching within the Dehcho Dene territory in the NWT, Canada. L.H. is Kānaka ‘O¯iwi.

AUTHOR DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

FUNDING INFORMATION

M.S.’s work was supported by a Berkeley Chancellor’s Fellowship, The Cobell Foundation, and the Gates Millennium Foundation. M.P.’s work was supported by Fulbright Canada and NSF Arctic DDRIG: grant #2210055. L.H.’s work was supported by a faculty seed grant from the Berkeley Food Institute. A.T.’s work was supported from the UC Berkeley Graduate Division Fellowship and the PBK Graduate Fellowship.