Climate Change Resiliency within Tribal Communities

Nikki Cooley is the co-manager for ITEP’s Tribal Climate Change Program. She is of the Diné Nation by way of Shonto and Blue Gap, AZ, and is of the Towering House Clan, born for the Reed People Clan, maternal grandfathers are of the Water that Flows Together Clan, and paternal grandfathers are of the Manygoats Clan. Nikki received her Bachelors and Masters of Forestry from Northern Arizona University (NAU) with a few years of post-graduate study at Michigan State University. Prior to ITEP, Nikki has worked with the Merriam Powell Center for Environmental Research on a Climate Change Education Program, and at NAU Talent Search working with underrepresented, low-income, potential first generation college students at 10 middle and high schools in Northern Arizona.

In addition, as a river guide and cultural interpreter working on the Colorado River-Grand Canyon and San Juan River, Nikki is the co-founder of the Native American River Guide Training Program and Fifth World Discoveries, was the first Native American President and Vice-President of the Grand Canyon River Guides Association (GCRG), and is a former associate director of the Native Voices Program.

ITEP

Science Moab:  Having grown up on he Navajo Nation, what kind of impacts of climate change have you seen? 

Cooley:  My grandfather would tell me water is the new gold and that someday I would have to fight on behalf of the earth alongside a lot of other people who were and are going to be doing the same thing. Being intimate with the environment that I grew up in, I was very conscious of what was available. So for example, when herding sheep and goats, we wouldn’t overgraze.   We would find new pastures for them to feed and water.   There was always water available. I could name water sources and I would direct them there. As I grew into my high school years, I found that the water holes were decreasing. Now they’re nonexistent. In addition, some of our wells are drying up, or the waters are contaminated. So yes, as a 41 year old Navajo woman, I noticed drastic differences. And we’ve been calling it climate change for a long time in our own language. 

Science Moab:  What work are you doing for the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals in terms of the climate change adaptation?

Cooley:  I bring tools and services to tribes to promote and encourage climate change adaptation, and now mitigation planning. We provide training on climate change and adaptation planning.  Tribes know what climate change is, but to communicate it in their own language in their own way of doing is really important. There’s a lot of young people and many older people who don’t understand how to translate the Western idea of what climate change adaptation planning is. To bring those two knowledge bases together is one of our specialties. 

Science Moab:  In terms of the Navajo Nation adaptation plan, can you give some examples of what that really looks like? 

Cooley:  Basically, an adaptation plan goes through five steps. The first one is really to scope out who’s going to be involved in the planning, meaning, what kind of topics on tribal lands are priority. So for example, the Navajo Nation, a few of their priority topics are water, feral horses, and lack of communication. They decided that those three topics were to be a priority to be addressed for the whole nation.  So, after getting funding, community support, leadership approval,  and also the power to push those actions through, part of the plan is also to monitor how it’s going like a research project.

Science Moab:  There’s incredible traditional knowledge held within all of these tribal communities. Can you talk more about traditional knowledge and its role in climate change mitigation and adaptation?

Cooley:  I’m a scientist on the western side with my degrees, but also growing up, I did my own monitoring, I did my own data, gathering my own observations. It’s important to understand that Native people, tribal people have the knowledge, they know what science is, it’s just communicated in a different way than the Western, non Indigenous, non tribal way of doing science. It’s important to distinguish the two because they come from two very different foundations. For example, growing up in forestry school, we revere Aldo Leopold, Gifford Pinchot, James Mooney…all these folks that are men, white men.  We didn’t talk too much about the significance of the efforts of Native Americans, the tribal people who were already here on this continent, and were already taking care and managing the environment. We suppress those efforts and we’re facing those consequences right now. Tribal people were telling BIA, US Forest Service, that we should be burning every year as we’ve been doing for hundreds and hundreds of years. Traditional knowledge really refers to how the native or tribal intergenerational teachings have been handed down for millennia.  It describes a relationship that is reciprocal, rather than one being superior over the other. We really promote and encourage them to write these climate change adaptation plans in their own tribal language and to include traditional knowledge . It’s very evident in these plans that people need to include traditional knowledge, and there’s a lot of non-researchers who still don’t understand it.  So part of my job is to encourage people, tribal nations who are working with universities, or any academic institution, NGOs, consultants, to really say that traditional knowledge has to be incorporated. Because it’s who we are. It is the identity of our people. And without it, it’s just another research paper.