SUSTAINABLE GARDENING. IAIA students collaborate with the nonprofit Earthworks to build a shade structure at the tribal college’s Haouzous sustainability garden. From left: Tyler Peyron, Trey Garnanez, Nataani Mirabal, and Warren Bointy (who passed away last year). In the background is Robert Sheridan with Earthworks. Photo by Annie Haven McDonnell

Tribal colleges have addressed sustainability and climate change in various ways. In March 2007, College of Menominee Nation (CMN, Keshena, WI) President S. Verna Fowler, Ph.D. (Menominee/ Stockbridge-Munsee), was one of the first signatories to the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). As part of that commitment, the college conducted a comprehensive greenhouse emissions inventory, appointed a sustainability coordinator, Beau Mitchell, and took many initiatives to reduce causes of greenhouse gases. (See TCJ, Vol. 20, No. 2 for details.) Now Mitchell (Chippewa Cree of Rocky Boy) also serves as the sustainability fellow for the American Indian Higher Education Consortium.

As of April 2011, a total of 87 Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and Hispanic Serving Institutions have signed the ACUPCC.

Last year, Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA, Santa Fe, NM) President Dr. Robert Martin (Cherokee) also signed the commitment. IAIA is proud to be a part of the movement, says Annie Haven McDonnell, because the presidents’ commitment is designed to tally, limit, and eventually prohibit the greenhouse gas emissions on every college campus.

In addition to CMN and IAIA, two other tribal colleges — Salish Kootenai College (Pablo, MT) and United Tribes Technical College (Bismarck, ND) — have also signed the commitment.

For her part, McDonnell is a faculty member in the Essential Studies Department and is the chair of the Campus Climate Committee. She works on IAIA campus sustainability commitments through the ACUPCC.

At IAIA, the Essential Studies Department has begun to integrate the theme of sustainability in different ways across the tribal college’s core curriculum. During the 2011-2012 school year, faculty and students in Essential Studies are developing a required General Education course that directly addresses ecological and climate literacy, global issues, and Indigenous perspectives, says McDonnell.

“We’ve been collaborating with a local nonprofit, Earthworks, to implement our first greenhouse gas inventory of the campus,” she says. The inventory is required under the Presidents’ Climate Commitment. “In the past couple of years, we’ve worked with students and with Earthworks on many student-led sustainability activities.” These include a student art and sustainability garden with ongoing projects including cob benches, a pond with a solar-powered pump, fruit trees, edible and medicinal plants, and sustainability-themed art.

“With students, we’ve also constructed a campus nature trail, built shade structures with water catchment, worked on campus recycling and composting,” she says, “and created a traditional basketry garden and medicinal garden.” These projects all represent ways that traditional knowledge can address the issue of climate change.

“We are building additional collaborations with the Center of Lifelong Education at IAIA to work on our campus USDA projects, including a terraced garden for growing campus food, and beginning a worm composting system for cafeteria waste,” she says. “IAIA is also in the process of researching funding and feasibility for renewable energy sources on campus. During this next year, we will begin strategic planning for creating a carbon action plan for our sustainability campus vision.”

Not only that, during the spring of 2011 IAIA started a student sustainability leadership conference with a corps of seven students who met weekly and worked on independent sustainability projects for five hours of work-study per week. A Native Youth Leadership and Climate Justice grant of $15,000 from the American Indian and Alaska Native Climate Change Working Group will allow the tribal college to deepen its work with student sustainability leaders through spring 2012. Students, she says, will help plan and facilitate an intergenerational conference on Indigenous peoples and climate change in April 2012 on the IAIA campus.

The intent is to invite local elders from Native communities to come and speak to the changes they have witnessed in the land and their traditional practices due to climate change, she says. “Our student leaders will be working on research on how climate change is affecting Indigenous peoples locally and globally, and they will present some of this research at the conference. Student leaders will dialogue with elders and talk with Native climate justice activists about ways to organize and respond.”