ABSTRACT
Three courses at the University of Oregon (UO) merged in fall 2014 to analyze indigenous peoples and climate change under the umbrella theme of “environment, culture, and indigenous sovereignty in the Americas.” The four faculty collaborating in this initiative approached their courses through diverse perspectives. “Climate and Culture in the Americas” (Carey) was an interdisciplinary Honors College environmental history course that analyzed climate change through historical and cultural perspectives to underscore differential climate impacts and vulnerabilities alongside the cultural construction of climate through time and space, with case studies addressing the Andes and Arctic. “Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples” (Lynn) was an Environmental Studies course that examined both climate change impacts on indigenous ways of life, subsistence, lands rights, future growth, cultural survivability, spirituality, and financial resources as well as indigenous rights and tribal sovereignty in the United States. “Decolonizing Research: The Northern Paiute History Project” (Hatfield and O’Neal) was an Honors College history colloquium that emphasized the values of communitybased, intercultural, decolonizing, multidisciplinary research among native and non-native students, historians, and scholars, with a specific focus on the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and the Burns Paiute Tribe. These courses explored issues from distinct disciplinary and cross-disciplinary
perspectives, but with related core themes that transcended all three courses. A decolonizing research methodology underpinned our courses, which led us to include indigenous perspectives regarding traditional knowledge, to share our research with indigenous communities, and to follow appropriate ethics protocols, such as those outlined by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, who explains that “Indigenous methodologies tend to approach cultural protocols, values and behaviors as an integral part of methodology. They are ‘factors’ to be built into research explicitly, to be thought about reflexively, to be declared openly as part of the research design, to be discussed as part of the final results of a study and to be disseminated back to the people in culturally appropriate ways and in a language that can be understood” (Smith 15). These methodologies are crucial to examine because, while there is some recog-
nition of the ways in which epistemologies of indigenous knowledge and the natural sciences vary markedly, indigenous knowledge is nonetheless often marginalized from climate change research, policies, and media attention (e.g. Ford, Vanderbilt and Berrang-Ford). Further, in the context of global environmental change, traditional knowledge can inform indigenous strategies in response to climate change (Bennett et al.). Decolonized research methods that rely on tribal leadership and indigenous knowledge based in particular places and cultures can help produce culturally relevant and respectful knowledge held sacred by tribes. Identifying vulnerabilities and assessing adaptation strategies in the face of global change can only occur when the cultural values that mediate behavior and perceptions are both recognized and respected. Moreover, cultural resources may be threatened by changes in temperature and precipitation, rising sea levels, thinning sea ice, shrinking glaciers, drought, and
wildfire (Bennett et al.). Climate change can further erode cultures and indigenous sovereignty by reducing access to cultural resources and triggering yet another forced relocation of indigenous peoples from their lands.
