A team led by Northwestern researchers recently received a $5 million grant over five years from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create strategies that will help mitigate the effects of climate change on the Great Lakes and its surrounding communities.
“This hub represents a significant investment by the NSF in seeding technology, practices and programs for Great Lakes climate resilience,” said Josiah Hester, the principal investigator of the grant, who is Native Hawaiian. “It is an acknowledgement that we urgently need to partner with Indigenous scientists, who can draw on their ancestors’ sustainability practices and knowledge in our efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change.”
The project will include researchers from different units across Northwestern, including the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR), the Center for Water Research, the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern, the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience and the Northwestern-Argonne Institute of Science and Engineering.
“This project began with relationship building and a willingness by Northwestern researchers to step back and invite our Indigenous partners to frame the research,” said Patty Loew (Mashkiiziibii-Bad River Ojibwe), an advisor who helped facilitate early conversations about the project, a professor of journalism at Northwestern and CNAIR’s founding director. “The result is a project that is both meaningful and respectful to our tribal collaborators.”
One of the co-principal investigators is Kimberly Marion Suiseeya, an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
Suiseeya works in the Department of Political Science and the Environmental Policy and Culture program. Trained as an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist, Suiseeya specializes in global environmental politics and political ecology.
Learn more in Northwestern Now’s article, “Northwestern partners with Indigenous scientists to conserve Great Lakes wetlands.”