Addressing food, energy, and water issues through a systems approach is essential for Native American communities, where climate change, natural disasters, and pandemics further strain access to these vital resources. Tribal communities experience a disproportionate impact from these global crises, which heightens and exposes existing vulnerabilities in their access to food, energy, and water. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the lack of access to clean water became an urgent public health threat, underscoring how deeply food, energy, water systems (FEWS) challenges are tied to health and well-being.

In developing solutions, academic institutions and much of the private sector have largely worked in isolated silos. Advances in renewable energy, agriculture, and clean water have progressed rapidly, yet this fragmented approach often overlooks significant segments of society. Indigenous perspectives, by contrast, rooted in deep ecological knowledge and an understanding of natural interdependencies, offer valuable insights into creating solutions that respect and integrate local ecosystems and resource limitations affecting access to food, energy, and water. As such, Indigenous thinking is uniquely suited to advancing a systems approach, fostering resilience and adaptability in a world facing complex and interconnected challenges.

Despite the growing need for FEWS solutions on Indigenous lands and the strength that Native peoples bring through their holistic cultural upbringing, there is still scarce representation of Indigenous science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) experts equipped with the necessary technical skills to develop FEWS solutions for their own tribal communities. This lack of representation creates a compounding effect: limited career pathways deter Native students from entering STEM fields, leaving FEWS challenges on tribal lands unaddressed. The result is a cycle where the absence of locally driven solutions exacerbates existing vulnerabilities.

Figure 1. The food, energy, water nexus

Noting the lack of representation of various groups in the sciences and its impact on the strength and resilience of these communities and society at large, the National Science Foundation (NSF) launched the INCLUDES (Inclusion Across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science) initiative in 2016 as part of its “Big Ideas” framework. INCLUDES aims to enhance U.S. leadership in STEM by broadening participation among underrepresented groups. As part of this initiative, the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Arizona have spearheaded the Native FEWS Alliance, a multi-institutional network addressing these intertwined challenges.

Now in the fourth year of a five-year NSF grant, the Native FEWS Alliance has established a robust network of partnerships involving more than 20 institutions to support Native students in pursuing careers in FEWS-related fields. Through these partnerships and the institutional changes they foster, students can more effectively navigate their career in FEWS, gaining the knowledge and skills needed to build a strong foundation for addressing FEWS challenges within their communities.

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Insufficient access to food, energy, and water is a pressing challenge faced by Indigenous peoples around the world and Native nations in the United States. The Navajo Nation, for instance, experiences the highest rate of food insecurity in the U.S. In a study from 2022, geographic information system (GIS) tools were used to analyze access to food in the Navajo Nation. This analysis showed significant areas of low food supply but high demand, creating food deserts. This condition is influenced by a combination of socioeconomic, political, cultural, spiritual, infrastructural, and ecosystemic factors. Considering the reliance on food and water for cultural and spiritual purposes in many tribes, the loss of access to these resources also results in a loss of cultural sovereignty. Climate change, natural disasters, and pandemics are exacerbating these FEWS challenges. The food-energy-water nexus on tribal lands is interconnected and interdependent (see Figure 1), and research supports the call for a system-level intervention to achieve a long-term decrease in food insecurity and improvement of health outcomes. The World Resource Institute calls the nexus of insecurities “the triple threat.” Developing technical solutions to the triple threat in tribal communities requires an understanding of Indigenous societies, governance, land, and culture, and the ability to work effectively in these contexts. Hence, Indigenous people have much potential to address Indigenous FEWS challenges.

The growing need for FEWS solutions on tribal lands brings to the forefront a critical gap: the underrepresentation of Indigenous experts in STEM professions. Mainstream STEM programs often fall short in preparing Native students for specific challenges within their community. The conventional educational system struggles to engage tribal communities meaningfully, leading to social alienation and professional marginalization of Native youth.

FEWS, however, opens opportunities for an integrated, holistic approach that aligns closely with Indigenous values and traditional practices, emphasizing interconnectedness and community-based knowledge. By adopting systems thinking and centering the learning around FEWS, STEM education can resonate more deeply with Indigenous ways of learning, promoting a more holistic and relevant approach to problem-solving.

Furthermore, because food, energy, and water systems are central to daily life and are deeply rooted in Native culture, FEWS education has the potential to bridge the gap between academic STEM learning and community practices at home. This alignment not only helps to overcome feelings of disconnect but also strengthens the relevance of STEM learning in Indigenous contexts.

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To transform the science education experience, it is crucial for educators to work closely with FEWS professionals and with Native organizations and local stakeholders, ensuring that the skills and knowledge are used to improve access to FEWS. By creating networks, sharing curricula and resources, and discussing solutions, they can collectively work to build career pathways for Native students, fostering a generation of professionals equipped to support and strengthen their communities. Tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) are uniquely positioned to lay the foundation for this transformative education. Deeply embedded within the Native communities they serve, TCUs are well-equipped with dedicated educators who can offer students a holistic STEM education tailored to address the specific challenges their communities face. This localized approach not only bridges the gap between academic learning and community needs but also empowers students to apply their knowledge directly to the issues that impact their own lives and environments. John Phillips, chief of staff for AIHEC, affirms this insight: “AIHEC has been a leading partner in the Native FEWS Alliance because we recognize the importance of preparing tribal college students to build careers related to food, energy, and water systems. The nexus of food, energy, and water represents an exciting field of research and scientific discovery that greatly benefits from incorporating Indigenous perspectives and knowledge.”

The Native FEWS Alliance, led by Indigenous faculty, researchers, and partners, fuses place-based approaches to teaching and diversity with applied research in food, energy, and water systems and Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing. The dual vision of the alliance is to build a highly skilled Native American STEM workforce at the nexus of food, energy, and water and to co-innovate and deploy Indigenous place-based FEWS education and community partnerships.

Figure 2. The four goals of the Native FEWS Alliance

The NSF INCLUDES program provides funding to support regional or local collective impact efforts aimed at improving access to STEM education and career pathways and making the field more open to underserved populations. To achieve systems change in STEM education and career pathways, the INCLUDES program supports collaboration across institutions. It recommends a backbone support infrastructure, which fosters cross-sector communication, alignment, and collaboration—all of which are essential for driving lasting change. By design, backbones should be tailored to the specific population that the collective impact effort seeks to serve, ensuring a targeted and effective approach to overcoming barriers in STEM fields.

As the backbone for the Native FEWS Alliance, AIHEC ensures the cohesive and interdependent partnership with over 20 partners. The alliance builds on AIHEC’s connections with Indigenous communities and college outreach programs, and it leverages the AIHEC network of industry partners and career support organizations. AIHEC brings its existing network of TCUs and programs that assist Native students in the transition to four-year colleges and graduate programs. In acting as the backbone, AIHEC provides a central hub, an annual convening, and web-based dissemination of wise practices with the Native FEWS website, weekly newsletters, and social media communication.

The Native FEWS Alliance works closely with its Indigenous evaluation team, led by Shelly Valdez of Native Pathways LLC and Jill Stein of the Reimagine Research Group, both of whom are seasoned evaluation professionals who have worked with and within Indigenous communities on projects supported by NSF and other funders. They are experts in the use of Indigenous evaluation and base their work on AIHEC’s Indigenous evaluation model, which invites tribes to take ownership of evaluation in Indian Country to help build an evaluation framework that is relevant to the community and responsive to traditional values and culture. The Indigenous evaluation team also defines the success measures for each project. The evaluation model is a spiral, circling through an iterative process, moving the alliance activities forward while simultaneously looking back, assuming values are in place.

The innovative work of the alliance’s two principal investigator (PI) institutions set the foundation for the alliance’s development and implementation. The University of Arizona PI, environmental science associate professor Karletta Chief, builds upon the foundation developed in her five-year NSF National Research Traineeship grant: Indigenous Food, Energy, and Water Security and Sovereignty (Indige-FEWSS). The project includes innovative approaches to integrating FEWS disciplines with Indigenous knowledge and working collaboratively with tribal communities using a coupled natural human systems approach in the design of culturally appropriate FEWS technology. It emphasized recruitment of first generation and minority students, as well as service to low-resource communities.

Karletta Chief, a professor of environmental science at the University of Arizona and a partner in AIHEC’s FEWS Alliance, oversaw an NSF traineeship grant project that developed innovative approaches to integrating FEWS disciplines with Indigenous knowledge.

At the University of California, Berkeley, PI Alice Agogino, a professor of mechanical engineering and founder of the development engineering programs, built on the prior work of Innovations in Food, Energy, Water Systems (InFEWS) funded by an NSF Research Traineeship grant that focuses on research and translation to practice. This graduate program in development engineering requires collaborative and immersive interdisciplinary training to apply field-specific knowledge rooted in social, cultural, and political contexts with technical skills and knowledge to solve global challenges at the nexus of FEWS.

The Native FEWS Alliance strives to become a transformative force in education across the lifespan, initiating innovative training programs that engage local communities and are based on Indigenous ways of living and learning. In this effort, the alliance builds on tribal colleges’ experience in food, energy, or water within their institutions coupled with AIHEC’s goals of broadening Native peoples’ access to and participation in STEM careers. Diné College, for example, founded the Water is Life (Tó éí ííná át’é) Center in 2021, in efforts to enhance water security and transform research capacity at the institution. Expanding this capacity to more tribal colleges will support resiliency and sustainability across Native nations and communities. “Through participating in the Native FEWS Alliance programs, our students will be well-prepared to help their tribal communities meet the natural resource challenges of a changing climate,” says Phillips. “Serving as the backbone organization, AIHEC helps coordination and communication among alliance members, as well as ensuring that tribal college faculty and students are fully engaged in the alliance’s activities.”

Salish Kootenai College and Tohono O’odham Community College are taking leadership in curriculum design with a project called Indigi-GLOBE, aimed at the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) worldwide science and education program supported by NASA. The project will produce a guidebook for the use of GLOBE earth systems science curriculum at TCUs. As the guidebook recommendations are applied, those working on this project hope to further the development of curriculum specific to TCU contexts and communities. This is one of the 10 foundational projects from the Native FEWS Alliance, all contributing to the alliance’s mission and goals (see Figure 2).

Another of the alliance projects, the Ilíiaitchik: Indigenous Correspondents Program (ICP) supports 10 Native students through a year-long professional development, communication skill-building, and community-building program led by Indigenous mentors in a range of fields, including environmental journalism, science, photography, and music production. The program aims to support greater participation and leadership by Indigenous students in environmental communication spaces and to center Native perspectives, ingenuity, and solutions in media.

Two TCU students are in the current cohort. Taliyah Medicine Horse (M’oxéšéh’aé/Mint Woman) grew up along the Tongue River (Vétanovéoé’e) in Ashland, Montana (Totoemanâheno), and is a member of the Northern Cheyenne (Tsétsėhéstȧhese) and Crow (Apsálooke) Nations. Currently attending Chief Dull Knife College on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, Medicine Horse is an aspiring ethnobotanist majoring in horticulture, focusing on the traditional uses of medicinal and edible plants. Her growing love for preserving traditional knowledge of plants and food sovereignty comes from respected Northern Cheyenne elders.

S. Claire Neel is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation whose passion for the natural world and her people has manifested through her rich poetics. She is currently pursuing a degree in creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her poetry often features the land that raised her and the people of her communities. Neel grew up on a cattle ranch in rural Oklahoma where she was able to spend most of her time outdoors exploring nature and “getting into trouble.” As she shared recently, she has had to receive several emergency tetanus shots.

With the goal of transforming institutions of higher education to better serve Indigenous students, the Native FEWS Alliance recently launched the inaugural student leadership team, the Native FEWS Student Ambassadors. These students are involved in leadership initiatives and assist in high-level decision making for the alliance. Charles Wells is a student at Tohono O’odham Community College and is studying climate change and zebra mussels in the Flathead Watershed in Montana. Charles’ study investigates how the possible invasion of zebra mussels, an exotic species, would impact the watershed, an environment already affected by climate change. It will also explore the impact on the tribal people of the Flathead reservation. The Flathead Watershed is considered sacred to the Salish, Kootenai, and Pond d’Oreilles tribes and is an important food and water resource. Climate has impacted the Flathead Watershed due to changes in the environment and human behavior.

Gayla Gould just graduated from Northwest Indian College and studies climate resilience and the impact of invasive terrestrial species on the Indigenous cultural experience. Invasive species in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon are impacting traditional foods and land-locking usual and accustomed gathering sites. Gould uses traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), knowing that her research is Indigenous research and the data is Indigenous data. The analytical methods used in her study are mostly personal communications within Indigenous familial and social networks.

Lisa Vandever, the AIHEC TCU engagement manager for the alliance, commented on working with the Native FEWS student ambassadors. “Charles and Gayla, as well as other TCU students, opened up a variety of solutions that different tribal communities face,” Vandever related. “It was amazing seeing the research and hard work each put into the projects they did this summer. Over 12 weeks they provided great results and a good start to continuing efforts in each area of FEWS.” As ambassadors, these students can build on their experience to guide colleges and universities to establish programs that directly serve the needs of Native students in FEWS careers.

The alliance has committed to mentor and support Native students at any stage of their educational journey. This commitment includes an increased understanding of Indigenous research methods. Native communities and organizations can represent themselves as they develop the research protocol they need to enhance self-determination, which can include identifying their research priorities and establishing the methodologies for conducting the research. One of the alliance’s early leaders is Valerie Shirley (Diné), an associate professor of Indigenous education in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies at the University of Arizona. She is also a co-founding director of the Indigenous Teacher Education Program (ITEP), which prepares Native teachers to critically examine Western schooling structures and to be intentional in infusing Indigenous knowledges, philosophies, and languages into learning spaces. As a Diné woman and scholar, Dr. Shirley has worked to center Navajo principles and practices within every aspect of her personal and professional roles and responsibilities. The alliance recently completed a two-month book club journey where regular meetings were held looking at the Shawn Wilson book Research as Ceremony. Wilson taught the book club about relational accountability. Researchers are answering to all their relations when they are conducting research.

The Native FEWS Alliance is currently developing its sustainability plan, including how to support and build on the foundational projects and wise practices developed over the past four years. One offering, in its pilot stage, is the Native FEWS certificate, which provides skills and knowledge useful to current and future tribal liaisons working within FEWS and environmental fields. As a non-credit, remote certificate, the Native FEWS certificate invites place-based participation by individuals at all educational levels who are interested in working on behalf of Native and Indigenous communities toward the protection of natural resources and sustainable livelihoods.

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The Native FEWS Alliance creates meaningful opportunities and career pathways in FEWS by building on successful multi-year research, training, and evaluation initiatives in Indigenous education and careers. The alliance co-develops place-based curricula and career pathways that honor Indigenous ways of learning, actively engaging tribal communities to increase the number of Native American STEM graduates.

As the backbone for the Native FEWS Alliance, AIHEC is illuminating this important nexus, establishing and supporting educational and career FEWS pathways across the many tribal colleges and universities it serves.

Yael Perez, PhD, is the director of the Development Engineering Program at the University of California, Berkeley; Kathy Isaacson, PhD, is the director of the Native FEWS Alliance.