PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
April 2018
179
SECTOR
INSIGHT:
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E
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By Cindy Schmidt, Ph.D., Jeannie Allen, SSAI, and
Caroline Montgomery, LAMPS
Key Considerations in Federal/Tribal Collaboration
N
ASA has a long history of working with tribal na-
tions and with tribal colleges and universities to
build workforce capacity in science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in ways
identified by tribes. The two primary NASA programs in-
volved are the Applied Science Capacity Building Program
(CBP)
) and the Minority
University Research and Education Program (MUREP) for
American Indian and Alaskan Native STEM Engagement
(MAIANSE;
. Both of
those programs welcome inquiries from PE&RS readership
about how to become involved in this work. (Contact the au-
thors, below.)
For spiritual, cultural, social, political and economic reasons,
tribal nations are closely tied to the land they live on. From
a purely practical stand-point, many Native American tribes
live within the boundaries of their federally or state recognized
reservations. This ties the tribe to a finite piece of land and the
natural resources within it. Many tribal communities depend
on those local natural resources to sustain their economies.
Tribal peoples express a deep responsibility to care for the
land, water, plants and animal populations, which play such
direct, important, and daily roles in their cultural and spiritu-
al practices. Changing climate conditions are impacting many
tribal communities and their lands, from coastal nations that
rely on ocean food sources, to tribal nations in the drought-
prone Southwest dependent on land-based agriculture.
NASA’s Applied Science CBP helps to enhance the capacity of
communities and organizations to utilize satellite Earth ob-
servations through in-person trainings, webinars and intern-
ships. The CBP aims to work with tribal governments and
other regional tribal organizations as well as non-tribal orga-
nizations that work with tribal nations. MAIANSE’s mission
is to enhance the research, academic and technology capabil-
ities of Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCU) through au-
thentic learning experiences related to NASA missions, thus
contributing to a diverse future STEM workforce and sustain-
able tribal nations. Through their experiences, the CBP and
MAIANSE present key considerations when working with
tribal nations followed by examples of the two programs.
Key Considerations
Engaging with tribal nations requires an understanding of
each nation’s culture and values, as well as an awareness of
the history of engagement between non-Tribal organizations
and Tribal nations. There are several key considerations
when working with tribal nations:
1.
Tribal nations are sovereign and distinct states and
need to be worked with as such. As of December 2015,
there were 567 federally-recognized tribal nations, some
with members living on reservations and ancestral
territories that reach far outside the boundaries of the
reservations. Tribal nations are fundamentally distinct
from one another in culture and geography. Even within
the same broader tribal group there may be differences
in the cultural practices of different communities.
2.
Tribal and “western” approaches to understanding the
world are fundamentally different. Tribal or native sci-
ence is based on faith, reliance on the past, and intuition;
it is about wholeness, spirituality, and relationships.
3.
Tribal members have developed extensive knowledge
built on a deep understanding of local environments
and complex ecological processes that have been passed
down through many generations. That knowledge is
based on living on the land, observing the interrela-
tionships among humans, plants, animals and their
surrounding environment.
4.
Tribal education tends to be based on personal experi-
ence and observation. It considers the whole of a stu-
dent and his/her learning rather than separate parts. It
is community-based, requiring an explanation how an
activity will contribute to the tribal community being
served. In the tribal colleges, students need to under-
stand how their academic subjects relate to one another,
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 84, No. 4, April 2018, pp. 179–180.
0099-1112/17/179–180
© 2018 American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.84.4.179
