Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians

Jamestown, CA

This project will help the Tribe’s Cultural Department increase climate resiliency through improving soil health via an onsite composting system, cultural burns, and enhancement of Cultural Center grounds. The intern will help manage and maintain the creek and pond restoration at the Cultural Center and provide direct assistance to the Cultural Manager with various programs happening at the Cultural Center. Further projects include providing environmental education classes/curriculum as it relates to culture and tradtional ecological knowledge for tribal youth and children and exploring ways to enhance Cultural Center programs.

Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation

Pendleton, OR

This internship will contribute to the CTUIR Long-term Huckleberry Phenology Monitoring project. Huckleberry is a culturally significant food plant for the CTUIR, and it is the mission of the CTUIR Department of Natural Resources to protect, restore, and enhance this and other First Foods for the perpetual cultural, economic, and sovereign benefit of the CTUIR.  We accomplish this by utilizing traditional ecological and cultural knowledge and science to inform: 1) population and habitat management goals and actions; and 2) natural resource policies and regulatory mechanisms.

Recent research based on future climate projections, habitat suitability models, and predictive phenology models found that the timing of fruiting of huckleberry may shift from 30-52 days earlier in the future, and suitable habitat may shift to higher elevations (Prevey et al. 2020).  The Huckleberry Phenology Monitoring project established the infrastructure and data management framework to identify information gaps and develop additional data sets through installation of environmental data collection equipment, time lapse cameras, and data collection and storage of seasonal environmental factors for huckleberry at three local research sites along different elevations. Internship work for Summer 2024 will include familiarization with the station equipment and its maintenance, data management and interpretation into descriptive statistics, and outreach to traditional gatherers to collect information about the 2024 harvest.

Climate Advocates Voces Unidas (CAVU)

Santa Fe/Albuquerque, NM

The education intern will work closely with CAVU’s Indigenous Education Liaison to facilitate CIC (Climate Innovation Challenge) programs including leading workshops for Native youth camps, assisting in classroom presentations, recruiting teachers and students in the program, working directly with Indigenous communities, and bringing Indigenous perspective and knowledge to climate change lessons and activities. The intern will help with creating community-led climate change lessons by centering Indigenous examples and perspectives in the CIC curriculum; working directly with schools to pilot community-led, student-led curriculum for climate change education; and collaborating with students, teachers, and community members to create activities and lessons that are land-based and connected to culture and language.

The intern will also help grow our alliances with ITEP, All Pueblo Council of Governors, Santa Fe Indian School, Institute of American Indian Arts, Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, Native American Community Academy, Native American Student Services, Affiliated Tribes of NW Indians, Climate Adaptation Science Centers, and Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes EAGLES Initiative. There are ample professional development opportunities through participation in ATNI’s Tribal Climate Camps, National Indian Education Association, and other ongoing workshops and trainings.

7 Directions of Service

Reidsville, NC

7DS Collaborative will implement and share land-based educational materials developed in collaboration with families, communities, educators, and researchers. We are using these materials created by ISTEAM, supported by a National Science Foundation grant. We are keeping an Indigenous resurgence through (re)making relations with lands, waters, and each other towards just, sustainable, and culturally thriving futures. Indigenous people are grounded with Indigenous knowledge systems – roles, relations, responsibilities, and gifts between and within human and other-than-human communities – and intergenerational arrangements in teaching and learning. These materials, developed by Indigenous STEAM, are intended to create the conditions for collective thriving and deliberately support generative navigation, distinct from historically powered, between, and amongst different ways of knowing. 

We are supporting equitable science instruction and exploration. By using these tools and resources from Indigenous STEAM curriculum, we are supporting projects that include Learning Tools and that engage learners in equity-focused, field-based socio-ecological investigations and decision-making in our indigenous neighborhoods and other places that are important to us in our communities. 

Copper River Native Association

Glennallen, AK

 This intern will work to implement the Copper River Native Association Regional Climate Change Adaptation Plan.  This includes support of and outreach for food sovereignty, salmon habitat conservation, invasive species, seed banking of native species, education and mentorship of youth, and emergency planning at the village level.

The intern will engage local youth, show possibilities for a future in conservation and climate planning, and work towards intergenerational knowledge sharing.  The intern will work closely with the Climate Change Coordinator to extend the reach and abilities of the position.

Office of Tribal Relations, US Forest Service

Virtual

The Office of Tribal Relations (OTR) within the U.S. Forest Service (within the U.S. Department of Agriculture) seeks an intern for the summer 2024 period to support the mission and activities of the Office. The Office priorities are high-level in supporting the USFS to meet its responsibilities including, recognizing and supporting the inherent sovereign status and reserved rights of Tribes; conducting substantive and meaningful consultative processes with Tribe, promoting collaborative natural and cultural resource management, including protecting and providing access to tribal sacred places; encouraging use of traditional knowledge in combination with the best Western science and technology; advancing American Indians and Alaska Natives in the workforce; and respecting and helping maintain tribal connections to traditional landscapes; and facilitating information exchange between Tribes and Forest Service researchers. The intern would support several of these areas, and in particular, would support the USFS in the interagency effort to hold the Native Youth Climate Adaptation Leadership Conference, including youth outreach and engagement, logistical support at the week-long conference. The intern would also support the co-stewardship efforts of the OTR that will ultimately help build the climate-resilience of the forestlands lands adjacent to Tribal lands. The intern may be able to visit local US Forest Office and shadow a USFS Tribal Relations Specialist to learn about the local and regional collaboration efforts with Tribes (dependent upon where the intern is located). 

U.S. Geological Survey Grassland Bird Habitat Study

Fort Collins, CO or Virtual

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is studying grassland bird habitat across the western Great Plains under a changing climate. The goal of this research is to create maps of projected bird distribution, given vegetation and land-use change under multiple future climate scenarios. Predictive bird distribution maps will help land managers and other decision-makers understand how their site-level projects fit within regional and climatic contexts. Training modules and a web-based application accompanying these maps will increase capacity among Federal, State, Tribal, and private partners in their conservation planning under a changing climate. We seek an ITEP intern for the summer 2024 who will support this effort by working directly with our research team, including staff from USGS, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), and Oklahoma State University (OSU).

National Tribes and Indigenous Climate Change Conference Intern

Anchorage, AK or other Alaska-based location

This internship is hosted by ITEP’s Tribes and Climate Change Program to support the planning efforts for the upcoming National Tribal and Indigenous Climate Conference (NTICC) in Anchorage, Alaska in September 2024. This internship provides the opportunity to learn first-hand how to convene a national conference, to network and collaborate with Tribal environmental professionals on a national level, and with support from the NTICC planning team, to develop the youth component of the conference. This internship will run for 400 hours and will begin in April to begin outreach to youth before the summer break and will conclude at the end of September. The focus of the internship would be to convene a group of Native Young Leaders to attend NTICC and engage in a service project at the conference; organize a youth panel and/or session track related to Alaska, as well as support other NTICC planning efforts, such as session planning, organizing and co-leading a field trip, securing donations for a raffle, and organizing a “fun” or “cultural” event.

Camp Colten 

Flagstaff, Arizona

The overall goal of this project is to update and improve the Camp Colton 6th grade program to be more culturally relevant and to include from Traditional Ecological Knowledge, specifically as it relates to climate change and the Hart Prairie ecosystem. This project will involve several phases, starting with an audit of the existing 6th grade pre-Camp lessons, lessons at Camp, and post-Camp lessons. This will include time at Camp interacting with students and teachers and observing lessons in action. Together, the intern and Camp staff will choose to focus on a specific part of the curriculum. This might be the pre-Camp lessons, post-Camp lessons, a specific learning expedition at Camp Colton, the creation of a new learning expedition, or adding significant components to some subset of the existing curriculum. This internship will end with the changes to the curriculum being put into practice, either in the classroom or up at Camp. We anticipate that this project will involve significant collaboration and consultation with community experts and partners, teachers, students, and Camp staff.