- Using voice of organizations such as Geo-Science Alliance—becoming the “squeaky wheel”
- Legal: establishing law and policy
- Actions by Geoscience Alliance
- AGI
- become partners/members of AGU, GSA
- Create a native professional society
- AISES- trying to create a professional side
- AISES is a good model
- Broaden our networks
- Need to get more folks from NSF, NASA next year
- Tread carefully- educate funding agencies on what is appropriate in native culture
- How do we get NSF/funding agencies to care with respect to where the team is from
- Have a panel from the funding agencies and ask them how we can help them broaden participation
- Who sits “at the table” presently? Is there only one table for NIH, NSF, etc?
- The answer may be in unification of tribal people and the return to native or tribal specific values, customs, language, and social/educational structure
- Act on your passions
- Need to build knowledge and make friends
- Should the Geoscience Alliance become active in politics?
- Issue by issue concern
- Focus on education
- Too political to decide
- Clarify
- Yes, we need to be advocates for issues important to Native interests and the whole human race
- Foster an environment whereby people are emboldened to speak up
- Consensus
- Get to know who represent and speak for you/your community/your people
- Need to ask questions/think outside the box
- Do we need to lobby/influence/need to vote!
- Need native scientists
- We shouldn’t worry about consensus, but rather encourage participation and sharing of facts and information leading to individual action
- Problem: what if becoming a “leader” brings you far from home or distances you from your culture? How do you maintain your identity?
- The question of “how to define success” is relevant. It is money? power? Fame? Or family and community?
- Potential leaders must have a dream-a vision- an idea of what they want to accomplish. Be convinced that what you do is meaningful and valuable even if some in scientific community disagree.
- Students:
- Grow students to become our scientists
- Make native students visible as persons- their cultures, their life stories, their specific needs- look for established track record not the path used to get there
- Encourage and support the young students with leadership/job shadowing/ science camps
- Fund the whole context of the student’s life (sitting services, family support, transportation)
- Pay for school, living, funding for research
- For students: arrange campus visits, money for books, transportation, help with forms and paperwork, support groups
- Have incentive programs for geoscience students like there are for education and teachers
- Funding and programs are definitely important. Also mentorship/role models
- Networking is key for students
- Personal relationship vs institutional relationships
- Grad, Post-grad and Faculty:
– Get on NSF panels
- Academic politics
- Network of support for writing grants (at small colleges)
- Peer review journals to disseminate work
- Have mentors available for tenure process
- How to increase Native American professional leadership in academia? Start Early! Leaders of all types are prepared from youth: K-12 schools, ensure that such leaders retain knowledge and love for culture from which they started. Stay involved!! Keep the ties to home and community strong
- Professional leadership often requires a level of self-promotion that many conflict with Native world views?
- Often, Academia requires one to be self-interested if not selfish: how can this co-exist with community-based, mutually supportive native ways of learning and growing?
- Increase visibility of native educational institutions in geosciences community?
- Advocate for TCs, for native languages, for culturally relevant education
- Advocate for enhanced educational opportunities for Native Americans in geosciences and related fields.