https://www.facebook.com/events/105849644726259/
As impacts of the global climate crisis compound, mitigation measures based on anthropocentric worldviews have proved inadequate. In this discussion, panelists assess the strengths and limitations of western sciences and the American legal system, and advocate for a shift to multiple evidence-based approaches built on Indigenous ways of knowing. In practice, panelists promote climate resilience through information gathering, free knowledge dissemination, legal advocacy, and climate justice activism.
The panel features Ruth Miller, Climate Justice Organizer for Native Movement; Heather Kendall-Miller, renowned Native American Rights Fund attorney; Dr. Clint Carroll, author, environmental and social scientist, and Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder; and Germaine White, Native American Engagement Director at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center at the University of Montana.
Access to Justice CLE pending
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Ruth Miller (Łchavaya K'isen) is a Dena'ina Athabaskan and Ashkenazi Russian Jewish woman, raised in Dgheyay Kaq (Anchorage), Alaska. She is a member of the Curyung Tribe from the Lake Clark region, and also has roots in Bristol Bay. Ruth is the Climate Justice Organizer for Native Movement, a matriarchal grassroots Indigenous organization that fights for the rights of Indigenous peoples, our lands and waters, and justice for our ancestors and descendants. She has worked many years towards climate justice and a regenerative economy for all on her lands and beyond, her work also includes international advocacy including attending the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the UN Youth Climate Summit, COP25 in Madrid, Spain, and the Continental Gathering of Indigenous Women of the Americas (ECMIA). She is a daughter, a granddaughter, and aunty, a language learner, a traditional beadworker, and a fisherwomxn.
Heather Kendall-Miller is Denaina Athabaskan and a tribal member of the Curyung Tribe of Dillingham, Alaska. She received her Bachelors degree from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks in 1988 and her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1991. After clerking with Chief Justice Rabinowitz of the Alaska Supreme Court, Heather received a two-year Skadden Fellowship to work for Alaska Legal Services and the Native American Rights Fund in the area of Alaska Native Rights. Heather became staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund in 1993. Her litigation experience is broad, having argued before the United States Supreme Court, the D.C. Court of Appeals, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals en banc.
Dr. Clint Carroll is Associate Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, he works at the intersections of Indigenous studies, anthropology, and political ecology, with an emphasis on Cherokee environmental governance and land-based resurgence. Currently, he is working on an integrated education and community-based research project funded by the National Science Foundation that investigates Cherokee access to wild plants in northeastern Oklahoma amid shifting climate conditions and land ownership patterns. Professor Carroll's research aims to inform advancements in community-based local ecosystem management and tribal land conservation strategies.
Germaine White is the Native American Engagement Director at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center and a Mansfield Fellow at the University of Montana. Formerly, she served as the Information and Education Program Manager for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Division of Fish, Wildlife, Recreation and Conservation as well as Cultural Resources Program Manager for the Salish-Pend d’Oreille Culture Committee. She also taught Native American Studies courses at Salish Kootenai College. Germaine received her Masters of Education from Montana State University and her Bachelors of Arts from University of Montana.