Indigenous Environments

Indigenous communities want to collaborate with each other around a shared narrative of local observations and beliefs related to environmental pollution, environmental degradation, and the spiritual use of sacraments. Communities need a shared framework of documenting their historical and current grassroots research for communicating with the rest of the world. A common motive among unrelated tribes is to use their collaborative research to challenge current industry beliefs.

Proposal: Set up a shared framework of documenting their historical and current grassroots research.

• Environment:

  Data needed: Environmental monitoring water quality, air quality, soil erosion/soil quality, cyanomonitoring/algal blooms

• Sacraments:
  Develop framework for how plant medicines have been traditionally used. Current laboratory studies do not examine traditional practices, and how community engagement is critical missing factor.

Existing model: Citizen science tooling: citsci, scistarter, cybertracker, inaturalist.

Where + how to share: A new website for this.
Look for local + collective mapmaking websites, esp. around pollution.

Audience: Separate tribes plagued with similar problems. Also activists, scientists, and funding agencies that are aligned with their cause. See also the Oceancleanup project.

Specifically:
+ Rastafari, at upcoming meeting?
+ Members of roundtable discussions.
+ Indigenous design center, Australia [via Beth]
+ Joburg project: doctors working w/ corporations to solve medical needs [via Siranush]