CAREER: The Science of Science Education: Resource Access, Conservation, and Cherokee Land-Based Education in Oklahoma

知识从一代人传承到下一代对于维持文化习俗和社区资源非常重要。 了解失去这些知识的原因对于解释文化如何世代相传地维持实践和信仰至关重要。 该奖项支持的研究重点是了解有关土地作用及其使用的传统文化知识的传播。 这项研究将调查这些知识交流的障碍，并试图了解语言的变化以及资源获取和可用性的减少如何代表切罗基人面临的重大社会和环境挑战。 切罗基人将如何应对这些挑战，制定文化复兴战略并改变传播文化知识的传统做法。 为了回答这些问题，科罗拉多大学博尔德分校的人类学家克林特·R·卡罗尔博士将调查美洲原住民如何在精神和身体上克服陆地文化知识和实践的障碍，这种应对社会和环境挑战的方法如何为更广泛的社会提供信息，以及传统和标准科学中的部落环境教育是否有助于当地文化和生态的恢复力。这项研究将在俄克拉荷马州的五个县进行，切罗基人是其中最大的少数民族。该项目分为三个阶段。首先，PI 将与部落生物学家和致力于保护传统生态知识的切罗基团体合作，为一个为期 3 年的特殊项目设计模块，重点教授以下内容： 西方和切罗基关于区域植物、动物和生态过程的知识；社会科学研究方法，包括民族志访谈、参与式制图和地理信息系统；切罗基语；和传统切罗基医学。然后，PI 和他的合作者将竞争性地选择学生来完成该计划并收集数据。研究人员和学生将调查农村家庭，进行深入的民族志访谈，并进行参与式测绘，以定位资源区域，记录有关这些区域的知识，并确定评估它们的障碍。该项目最后将对教育计划进行评估，最终确定资源地图，并分析数据以查明资源获取、知识保存、语言振兴和土地保护之间的联系。研究结果将记录并有助于文化复原力和适应环境变化以及气候变化带来的资源获取变化的社会科学理论。更广泛的影响包括培训下一代切罗基科学家、支持部落维护语言和传统生态知识的努力以及记录资源和语言。制作的所有材料将存放在切罗基民族、俄克拉荷马州档案馆和科罗拉多大学。

The transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next is important in maintaining cultural practices as well as community resources. Understanding the reasons for losing this knowledge is fundamental to explaining how cultures maintain practices and beliefs over generations. The research supported by this award focuses on understanding the transmission of traditional cultural knowledge about the role of land and its use. This research will investigate the barriers to the communication of this knowledge as well as seeking to understand how changes in language and decreasing access to and availability of resources represent substantial social and environmental challenges facing the Cherokee people. How will the Cherokee people address these challenges and develop strategies for cultural revitalization and modify traditional practices of communicating cultural knowledge. To answer these questions, anthropologist Dr. Clint R. Carroll of the University of Colorado-Boulder will investigate how Native American people mentally and physically navigate barriers to their land-based cultural knowledge and practices, how such approaches to social and environmental challenges may inform the broader society, and whether tribal environmental education in traditional and standard science can contribute to local cultural and ecological resiliency. The research will be carried out in five Oklahoma counties where Cherokees are the largest minority. The project has three phases. First, the PI will collaborate with the tribal biologist and a Cherokee group dedicated to the preservation of traditional ecological knowledge to devise modules for a special 3-year program focused on teaching the following: Western and Cherokee knowledge of regional plants, animals, and ecological processes; social science research methods, including ethnographic interviewing, participatory mapping, and GIS; Cherokee language; and traditional Cherokee medicine. The PI and his collaborators will then competitively select students to complete the program and gather data. The researcher and the students will survey rural households, conduct in-depth ethnographic interviews, and carry out participatory mapping to locate resource areas, record knowledge about those areas, and determine barriers to assessing them. The project will conclude with an assessment of the educational program, finalizing the resource maps, and analyzing the data to pinpoint the linkages between resource access, knowledge preservation, language revitalization, and land conservation. Findings from the research will document and contribute to social science theory of cultural resilience and adaptation to the environmental shifts and changing resource access accompanying climate change. Broader Impacts include training a future generation of Cherokee scientists, supporting tribal efforts to maintain language and traditional ecological knowledge, and documenting resources and language. All materials produced will be housed with the Cherokee Nation, in Oklahoma archives, and at the University of Colorado.