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Marginalized communities, including Indigenous populations, experience climate change at a more extreme rate given where they live, despite their knowledge of and connection to the land. Due to this interconnection, there have been many negative impacts on cultural identities in correlation with climate change. For example, Indigenous communities that continue growing food, hunting and foraging on traditional lands now face increasingly limited resources due to changes in the land itself. To better understand Tribal experiences with our changing climate, this qualitative research study involved talking circles with Tribal members in the Colorado Plateau region of the United States. Specifically, our diverse research team aimed to identify and highlight Tribal perceptions of climate change, community, and education within the Colorado Plateau. This region, also known as the Four Corners, includes parts of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. The land is home to many Tribes with regional ancestral ties, including, but not limited to, Hopi, Navajo (Diné), Havasupai, Hualapai, White Mountain Apache, Ute Mountain, Southern Ute, and Kaibab. We hosted four Tribal talking circles in this region to better understand Indigenous perspectives of climate change, local solutions, and lessons learned from collaborating with Indigenous communities. We partnered with the Nature Conservancy’s Native American Tribes Upholding Restoration and Education (NATURE) program based out of Bears Ears National Monument to conduct this research. Results were used to guide curriculum development for the NATURE program and can provide invaluable insight for those wishing to collaborate with Tribal members on climate resilience.
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Plant species richness at archaeological sites suggests ecological legacy of Indigenous subsistence on the Colorado Plateau
Humans have both intentional and unintentional impacts on their environment, yet identifying the enduring ecological legacies of past small-scale societies remains difficult, and as such, evidence is sparse. The present study found evidence of an ecological legacy that persists today within an semiarid ecosystem of western North America. Specifically, the richness of ethnographically important plant species is strongly associated with archaeological complexity and ecological diversity at Puebloan sites in a region known as Bears Ears on the Colorado Plateau. A multivariate model including both environmental and archaeological predictors explains 88% of the variation in ethnographic species richness (ESR), with growing degree days and archaeological site complexity having the strongest effects. At least 31 plant species important to five tribal groups (Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, and Apache), including the Four Corners potato ( Solanum jamesii ), goosefoot ( Chenopodium sp.), wolfberry ( Lycium pallidum ), and sumac ( Rhus trilobata ), occurred at archaeological sites, despite being uncommon across the wider landscape. Our results reveal a clear ecological legacy of past human behavior: even when holding environmental variables constant, ESR increases significantly as a function of past investment in habitation and subsistence. Consequently, we suggest that propagules of some species were transported and cultivated, intentionally or not, establishing populations that persist to this day. Ensuring persistence will require tribal input for conserving and restoring archaeo-ecosystems containing “high-priority” plant species, especially those held sacred as lifeway medicines. This transdisciplinary approach has important implications for resource management planning, especially in areas such as Bears Ears that will experience greater visitation and associated impacts in the near future.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1714972
- PAR ID:
- 10297926
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Volume:
- 118
- Issue:
- 21
- ISSN:
- 0027-8424
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- e2025047118
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2025047118
