Sustaining Collaborations and Knowledge Sharing: GLISA’s Engagement with Indigenous Tribes in the Great Lakes Region

Indigenous Tribal communities value the resources available to them from their reserved lands and treaty-ceded territories. Indicator species are used to understand when it is time to harvest these resources, and climate change impacts, which can cause important plants and animals to not thrive in certain areas, are major threats to these species. Devastating climate change events, such as extreme heat and extreme precipitation, will make climate adaptation efforts more difficult for Indigenous Tribal communities. The Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments (GLISA) is one of eleven NOAA-supported Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) teams helping the nation prepare for and adapt to climate variability and change. In the Great Lakes region, GLISA has engaged with a number of regional Tribal partners in a collaborative effort to assist in integrating western climate science information with Traditional Ecological Knowledges (TEK) held by these partners.

For this talk, we will present examples of the collaborative work that GLISA has performed with the Lac du Flambeau Tribe of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and the Inter-Tribal Council of Michigan. Our work with Indigenous Tribal communities has involved joint development of both the historical and climate projection information that was relevant to, and in a form that was usable by, each Tribal partner. The collaborations produced climate information which helped assess the climate-related vulnerabilities, as identified by the Tribes. These projects have highlighted the success and importance of using different knowledge bases together to form relevant climate information while aiding in GLISA's support of climate adaptation among Indigenous Tribal communities in the Great Lakes region.