October 31st, 2024, 2:00 pm - October 31st, 2024, 3:00 pm CDT
Host: STEM Learning and Research Center (STELAR)
Join STELAR as they host DEIA Advisor Dr. Chris Meyer and colleague Dr. Julie Poynsenby of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe Department of Education. Discussion will focus on colonialism and how it is deeply embedded in social, political, economic, and environmental structures. Despite the importance of natural resources and environmental careers to tribes, less than 20% of Native Americans graduating from college do so with STEM degrees, with numbers decreasing in the past five years. The Coeur d’Alene Tribe faces daunting environmental challenges that threaten its ability to maintain and restore its culture, language and landscape.
Participants will learn how this NSF EDU Racial Equity project Addressing historic and systemic racial inequities: Coeur d’Alene land-based STEM education (Award # 2200838) immerses students in land-based learning to deepen their relationship with their homeland while understanding how legal and political conflicts impact environmental and community health. This Tribally-led project will inform researchers how participation in a summer internship designed using critical Indigenous pedagogies of place impacts youth identities as Native STEM learners, and how intergenerational mentoring and exposure to Indigenous research and scholarship impacts critical consciousness.