Wind River Indian Reservation Research Articles

Growing intergenerational resilience for Indigenous food sovereignty through home gardening.

As a community-based participatory research project designed to promote health and wellbeing, Growing Resilience supports home gardens for 96 primarily Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho families in the Wind River Reservation, located in Wyoming. Through analysis of data from two years of qualitative fieldwork, including stories told by 53 gardeners and members of the project’s community advisory board in talking circles and through our novel sovereign storytelling method, we investigated if and how these participants employ relationships, knowledge, and practices across generations through home gardening. We find that participants describe home gardening within present, past, future, and cross-generational frames, rooted in family relationships and knowledge shared across generations. Our analysis of these themes suggests that gardening provides families a means to transmit resilience across generations or, as we call it here, intergenerational resilience. We conclude by discussing intergenerational resilience as a culturally specific mechanism of social-ecological community resilience that may be particularly relevant in Indigenous movements for food sovereignty.

The Work Arts and Crafts Do

This essay forms part of a suite of papers focused on work and belonging on the Wind River Reservation. This essay attempts to interrogate multiple meanings attached to work, by Native people and non-Indians, and across multiple work environments.

EXPLORING VALIDITY OF CULTURALLY-RELEVANT DEMENTIA EDUCATION MATERIALS FOR THE WIND RIVER RESERVATION

AbstractThe number of aging American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) individuals is increasing, and due to an increase in the longevity among AI/AN populations, an increase in the incidence of dementia can be expected. The Indian Health Service, as well as local stakeholders, have identified a need for culturally-relevant dementia education materials for AI/AN elders, family members, and caregivers. An iterative focus-group approach was initially used to inform the creation of such materials with representatives from the Wind River Reservation. Using data derived from the focus groups, the Ten Early Signs and Symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease were adapted for the people of the Wind River Reservation. To test the validity of the culturally-relevant dementia education materials, 40 AI/AN participants were asked to match the recently developed visual images and verbal messages with the original signs and symptoms. Results showed that participants were able to match the adapted and original verbal messages 44%-80% of the time, depending on the message. Participants matched the adapted image with the original verbal message correctly 6.66–68.9% of the time. These results provide important feedback regarding face validity of these new education materials. Images with low matching scores were reviewed and targeted for improvement. Images with high matching scores were examined for key elements contributing to high scores. These results and process are a unique contribution to an area of growing emphasis as culturally-relevant education materials could contribute to increased health knowledge in a rapidly aging, diverse population in the U.S. and abroad.

Developing a Toolkit to Improve Transportation Safety on Indian Reservations

Indian reservations hold the highest rate of crashes that lead to fatal and incapacitating injuries across the United States. Limited resources, absence of coordination across jurisdictions, and limited crash data make it difficult for tribes to reduce the number of these fatal and serious crashes. A safety toolkit was developed in this work to identify the high-risk crash locations and determine low-cost safety improvement countermeasures. The toolkit serves as a guideline and provides information, field examples, and resources in key topic areas to lead the effort to improve safety via the use of a five-step methodology. These five steps are, namely, compile data and crash data analysis, Level I field evaluation, combined ranking, Level II field evaluation to identify countermeasures, and benefit–cost analysis. The objective of the toolkit is to assist tribes to reduce the number of fatal and serious crashes, and provides flexibility for the tribes to utilize the methodology compatible with the onsite data, preferences of the tribes, and other factors to meet demands. The methodology described was successfully implemented on the Wind River Indian Reservation, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Tribe, and the Yankton Sioux Tribe and showed great success in identifying high-crash locations.

Entering into a Community-University Collaboration: Reflections from Blue Mountain Associates

First paragraphs: If I can do something to help my people, and to help other people understand Indian people better and to appreciate our culture, then I have done what my father asked me to do in 1969 when he asked me to come home to the reservation and help my people in whatever way I could. In the last 50 or 60 years of my life, with the assistance of other people, I have been able to make some changes. When my son, Jim Sutter, and I came back home to Wind River Indian Reservation, we knew our people needed health and human services, not just more clinical services. We thought we espe­cially needed to help people with food and nutri­tion. More generally, I thought that other people—researchers, academics, historians—need a better picture of what we Indians are all about in ways that neither glorify us nor demean us. Too often we are portrayed only on one side or the other.... See the press release for this article.

Developing the New Barrier Condition Index (BCI) to Unify the Barrier Assessments - A Case Study in Wind River Indian Reservation, Wyoming

Based on the statistics, roadsides include a considerable portion of the fatal crashes annually. Barrier systems are one of the important components of roadside that plays a key role in mitigating the severity of these crashes and save more lives. Despite the substantial role of barrier systems, unfortunately, there is no unified rating system in the barrier condition assessments to utilize for the optimization of the improvements. As the primary contribution in this study, a new Barrier Condition Index (BCI) was proposed to unify the barrier assessment studies to use the same reference for rating barrier systems. This fact makes the decision-makers able to establish a prioritized ranking for optimizing the barrier improvements. For this purpose, the research investigated a comprehensive list of damages in barrier systems. Then, appropriate coefficients were given to the damage types based on their effects on the performance of the system reviewing the previous works. To show the practicability of the new BCI as an example for the whole procedure of the assessment, six different barrier systems located in Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR), Wyoming, were also evaluated in the study. Based on the evaluation done, the BCI was used to rank the performance of the barriers. Three of the barrier segments at WRIR was introduced as the high-severity level which should be considered in the first priority of the improvement phase.

Anatomy of an interrupted irrigation season: Micro-drought at the Wind River Indian Reservation

Drought is a complex phenomenon manifested through interactions between biophysical and social factors. At the Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR) in west-central Wyoming, water shortages have become increasingly common since the turn of the 21st century. Here we discuss the 2015 water year as an exemplar year, which was characterized by wetter-than-normal conditions across the reservation and, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, remained drought-free throughout the year. Yet parts of the reservation experienced harmful water shortages, or “micro-drought” conditions, during the growing season in 2015. In this assessment of the 2015 water year at the WRIR we: (1) describe the hydroclimatic and social processes under way that contributed to the 2015 water year micro-drought in the Little Wind Basin; (2) compare water availability conditions within and between other basins at the WRIR to illustrate how micro-droughts can result from social and environmental features unique to local systems; and (3) describe how a collaborative project is supporting drought preparedness at the WRIR. We combine a social science assessment with an analysis of the hydroclimate to deconstruct how shortages manifest at the WRIR. We provide insights from this study to help guide drought assessments at local scales.

Sustainable Climate Change Adaptation in Indian Country

Abstract Much of the academic literature and policy discussions about sustainable development and climate change adaptation focus on poor and developing nations, yet many tribal communities inside the United States include marginalized peoples and developing nations who face structural barriers to effectively adapt to climate change. There is a need to critically examine diverse climate change risks for indigenous peoples in the United States and the many structural barriers that limit their ability to adapt to climate change. This paper uses a sustainable climate adaptation framework to outline the context and the relationships of power and authority, along with different ways of knowing and meaning, to illustrate the underpinnings of some tribes’ barriers to sustainable climate adaptation. The background of those structural barriers for tribes is traced, and then the case of water rights and management at the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming is used to illustrate the interplay of policy, culture, climate, justice, and limits to adaptation. Included is a discussion about how the rulings of the Big Horn general stream adjudication have hindered tribal climate change adaptation by limiting the quantity of tribal reserved water rights, tying those rights to the sole purposes of agriculture, which undermines social and cultural connections to the land and water, and failing to recognizing tribal rights to groundwater. Future climate projections suggest increasing temperatures, and changes in the amount and timing of snowpack, along with receding glaciers, all of which impact water availability downstream. Therefore, building capacity to take control of land and water resources and preparing for climate change and drought at Wind River Reservation is of critical importance.

Indigenous water histories II: water histories and the cultural politics of water for contemporary Indigenous groups

This is the second of two issues of Water History devoted to scholarship exploring water histories as experienced and understood by Indigenous peoples. The first special issue, published in December 2016, underscored the importance of oral histories, interpreted Indigenous perspectives, and, in doing so, revealed the complexity of waterscapes. Featured in the first special issue were water histories connected to: the Nuu Savi or Highland Mixtec peoples of Oaxaca, Mexico (Jimenez Osorio and Posselt Santoyo 2016); the Ojibwe around the Great Lakes of Michigan, U.S. (Gagnon 2016); Indigenous communities from the Harding, Ord, Roper, and Gilbert rivers areas of Western Australia, Northern Territory, and Queensland, Australia (Jackson and Barber 2016); Indigenous communities from the Baucau Viqueque zone of Timor Leste (Palmer 2016); and the northern Arapaho and eastern Shoshone peoples of the Wind River reservation in the inter-mountain West, U.S (Cavazos Cohn et al. 2016). This second special issue extends coverage to additional Indigenous groups and further examines water histories associated with: the Lumbee and Tuscarora Indians of North Carolina, U.S., as researched by William Maxwell; the Andean people of Tabacundo, Ecuador, as researched by Juan Pablo Hidalgo, Rutgerd Boelens, and Jeroen Vos; the Ngai Tahu (Maori) of the Waitaki River basin, South Island, New Zealand, as researched by Gail Tipa and Kyle Nelson; the Puyallup Tribe of the Pacific Northwest, U.S., as researched by Amory Ballantine; and the Yaqui people of Sonora, Mexico, as researched by Raquel Padilla Ramos and Jose Moctezuma Zamarron. While paying close attention to the significance of rivers, swamps, estuaries, irrigation, and other water systems for these Indigenous communities, each of the authors also stress the dynamics of settler colonialism within which conflicts over water arose and Indigenous resistance and re-appropriation took place. In other words, these articles examine the cultural politics of water from a historical perspective.

Factors associated with crash severity on rural roadways in Wyoming

Abstract The ability to identify risk factors associated with crashes is critical to determine appropriate countermeasures for improving roadway safety. Many studies have identified risk factors for urban systems and intersections, but few have addressed crashes on rural roadways, and none have analyzed crashes on Indian Reservations. This study analyzes crash severity for rural highway systems in Wyoming. These rural systems include interstates, state highways, rural county local roads, and the roadway system on the Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR). In alignment with the Wyoming strategic highway safety goal of reducing critical crashes (fatal and serious injury), crash severity was treated as a binary response in which crashes were classified as severe or not severe. Multiple logistic regression models were developed for each of the highway systems. Five effects were prevalent on all systems including animals, driver impairment, motorcycles, mean speed, and safety equipment use. With the exception of animal crashes, all of these effects increased the probability that a crash would be severe. Based upon these results, DOTs can pursue effective policies and targeted design decisions to reduce the severity of crashes on rural highways.

A cross-case analysis of three Native Science Field Centers

Native Science Field Centers (NSFCs) were created to engage youth and adults in environmental science activities through the integration of traditional Native ways of knowing (understanding about the natural world based on centuries of observation including philosophy, worldview, cosmology, and belief systems of Indigenous peoples), Native languages, and Western science concepts. This paper focuses on the Blackfeet Native Science Field Center, the Lakota Native Science Field Center, and the Wind River Native Science Field Center. One of the long-term, overarching goals of these NSFCs was to stimulate the interest of Native American students in ways that encouraged them to pursue academic and career paths in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. A great deal can be learned from the experiences of the NSFCs in terms of effective educational strategies, as well as advantages and challenges in blending Native ways of knowing and Western scientific knowledge in an informal science education setting. Hopa Mountain—a Bozeman, Montana-based nonprofit—partnered with the Blackfeet Community College on the Blackfeet Reservation, Fremont County School District #21 on the Wind River Reservation, and Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Reservation to cooperatively establish the Native Science Field Centers. This paper presents a profile of each NSFC and highlights their program components and accomplishments.

Road Safety Improvement Program on Indian Reservations in North Dakota and South Dakota

Tribal communities recognize the need to improve roadway safety. A five-step methodology was developed by the Wyoming Technology Transfer Center, Local Technical Assistance Program (WYT2/LTAP), to improve roadway safety on Indian reservations. This methodology was implemented initially on the Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR); the success of this implementation was the impetus for the Wyoming Department of Transportation, Cheyenne, to fund three systemwide, low-cost safety improvement projects. Given the success of the program on the WRIR, tribes across the country became interested in the program. WYT2/LTAP and the Northern Plains Tribal Technical Assistance Program (NPTTAP) assist tribes to implement this program on their reservations in the Great Plains region and developed criteria to identify tribes to participate. Reservations in North Dakota and South Dakota applied to NPTTAP, and three tribes were accepted to participate: the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (SRST), the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Tribe, and the Yankton Sioux Tribe. Although work had begun on all three reservations, this study focused on the implementation on the roadway safety program by the SRST. Members of the SRST were located in North Dakota and South Dakota, and crash data were collected from each state separately. Because the reporting and years of data differed, several analyses were performed to identify trends in crashes on the SRST. The South Dakota portion of the reservation was compared with statewide rural roads and with the WRIR because the two reservations were of similar size and character. Many challenges and differences were identified through the analysis, which demonstrated that a single procedure would not work for all reservations. Through extensive coordination and collaboration with the tribes and government agencies, WYT2/LTAP and the technical assistance program centers could provide the technical assistance that the tribes would need to develop their own road safety improvement programs.

Strategic Safety Management Plan for Wind River Indian Reservation

For years fatal and injury crashes have been documented as being higher for Native Americans than for any other groups across the United States. Studies have been performed to determine the trends and to identify ways to assist tribes in improving their traffic safety. Tribal transportation stakeholders recognize the many factors that contribute to this problem, including lack of resources, lack of crash data, and crash data accuracy. Tribal sovereignty presents a challenge in working across jurisdictional lines with state and local agencies. Strategic highway safety plans are required for states and also provide an opportunity for tribes to accomplish their goals in reducing fatal and serious-injury crashes. Communication and collaboration across jurisdictional lines are vital to the success of a strategic highway safety plan for a tribal government. The Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR) was selected for one of three pilot tribal transportation safety management plans, a program instituted by FHWA to assist tribes in developing their own strategic plan. The WRIR has had great success in establishing cooperation among stakeholders and, with the support of committed tribal leadership, is working toward the goal of reducing fatal and serious-injury crashes. Key to the success of the safety management plan is collaboration among safety stakeholders, namely, the state departments of transportation, tribal leadership, local technical assistance program, Tribal Technical Assistance Program, Bureau of Indian Affairs, local and tribal law enforcement, Indian Health Services, and others.

Implementation of Wyoming Rural Road Safety Program

Recent transportation legislation contains language indicating that state departments of transportation (DOTs) will be required to address safety on local and rural roads. It is important for state, county, and city officials to cooperate in developing a comprehensive plan to improve roadway safety. This legislation provides an opportunity to implement a more cohesive and comprehensive approach to local road safety in Wyoming. The Wyoming Technology Transfer Center–Local Technical Assistance Program coordinated an effort in cooperation with the Wyoming DOT, the Wyoming Division of FHWA, as well as Wyoming counties and cities to identify low-cost safety improvements on high-risk rural roads in the state. In the past few years, low-cost safety projects were implemented in several Wyoming counties. These projects included pavement markings, advance warning signs, guardrails, and shoulder widening. The Wyoming DOT approved the Wyoming Rural Road Safety Program (WRRSP) and recommended statewide implementation in 2008. In addition, the Wyoming DOT and the FHWA division office approved the WRRSP for eligibility to receive funding from the High Risk Rural Road Program. Implementation of the WRRSP has resulted in better cooperation between local governments, the Wyoming DOT, and FHWA to address safety on rural roadways in Wyoming. Before the WRRSP was approved, no counties in Wyoming were applying for safety funding. Now more than half of the counties have received road safety improvement money. The WRRSP has developed a step-by-step procedure to receive funding and expertise in roadway safety. The Wind River Indian Reservation has implemented a similar program, which has led to the funding of low-cost safety improvements on the Indian reservation road network.

Implementation of a Tribal Participatory Chronic Care Model (TP-CCM): Integrating Primary and Community-based Care to Coordinate Diabetes Management on Wind River Indian Reservation, Wyoming USA

The International Journal of Integrated Care (IJIC) is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes original articles in the field of integrated care on a continuous basis.IJIC has an Impact Factor of 5.120 (2020 JCR, received in June 2021)The IJIC 20th Anniversary Issue was published in 2021.

An American Indian community implements the chronic care model: evolution and lessons learned.

The chronic care model (CCM) has been initiated most frequently in clinical settings with outreach to the community to obtain involvement and guidance. Implementation of the CCM by communities that reach out to clinicians and develop linkages and coordination to improve care for community members with chronic conditions is less frequently observed. This commentary describes the implementation of the CCM by the Eastern Shoshone Tribe of the Wind River Indian Reservation. The design emphasized community-based leadership, with the Tribe having the primary role in developing and implementing culturally tailored community self-management supports, improving linkages with Indian Health Service (IHS) clinicians and cultural knowledge of providers, and developing a coalition of organizations with additional resources to create a more comprehensive system of diabetes care for Tribal members with diabetes. Results indicate that community-initiated implementation of the CCM can be an effective strategy for creating a comprehensive community-clinical system of care for community members with diabetes. Overall, by the fourth implementation year, approximately 25% of Tribal members with diabetes had participated in the program and 28% of people on the Diabetes Registry had HbA1c levels above 9.0 compared to 32% before the Wind River ARDD program. The success of the Wind River program suggests that community-driven approaches are a valuable strategy in our nation's efforts to eliminate health disparities and ensure equal and fair access to quality health care for all citizens.

Fracking in Indian Country: The Federal Trust Relationship, Tribal Sovereignty, and the Beneficial Use of Produced Water

This Article focuses on wastewater discharges generated by hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as “produced water,” onto Native American lands. Produced water discharges are a hazardous byproduct of hydraulic fracturing operations, and current federal laws do not require operators to disclose all contents of produced water, or any associated health and safety risks. This Article will explore the legal landscape that evolved to allow produced water discharges in Indian Country, using the Wind River Reservation’s history to explain how such a system develops. That system, today, includes a statutory and regulatory framework under two major environmental laws. First, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) ordinarily prohibits toxic waste discharges, but EPA’s regulations define compounds contained in produced water as a “special waste,” exempting them from the permitting requirements of the statute. Furthermore, despite their sovereign status, because Congress did not delegate regulatory authority under RCRA to tribes, courts have held that they therefore lack authority under RCRA to impose permitting standards of their own. Second, the Clean Water Act (CWA) prohibits water-based discharges of toxics contained in produced water, but EPA’s regulations allow produced water to be used “in agricultural and wildlife propagation” west of the 98th meridian, including in Indian Country. Theoretically, Congress has delegated authority to tribes to regulate water-based discharges under the Clean Water Act, but has imposed a series of standards that are financially burdensome and difficult for many tribes to meet, leaving many tribes, such as the Wind River tribes, unable to regulate because they lack this special status. Together, these statutory and regulatory exemptions under RCRA and the CWA form a “livestock loophole,” allowing untreated produced water disposal in Indian Country. In Part I, this Article describes the fracking process, how produced water is generated, and the toxins known to occur in produced water discharges. Part II will discuss the legal components of the livestock loophole, from RCRA, the CWA, and the regulations under each statute that allow produced water discharges on native lands and in native waters. Part III discusses the Wind River Tribes’ history, including various treaty negotiations with the federal government and the concurrent development of the federal trust responsibility to these tribes. Part IV will discuss the Federal Trust Doctrine and relevant provisions of RCRA and the CWA, as well as trade secrets laws, which serve to undermine the effective implementation of both statutes. Part V will discuss necessary changes to the RCRA and CWA regulatory structures to eliminate the livestock loophole and curb unregulated produced water discharges. Part VI concludes by encouraging federal officials at EPA to implement the suggestions from Part V to improve water quality, human health, the health of wildlife and domestic livestock throughout Indian Country.

Indian Reservation Safety Improvement Program

The need to reduce fatal and injury crashes on tribal lands has been recognized for years. The United States has realized a decline in fatal crashes over the past several years, but fatal crashes continue to increase on tribal lands. Little progress has been made in improving safety on tribal lands. Limited resources, lack of coordination across jurisdictions, the rural nature of many of the roadways, and lack of crash data have made it difficult for tribes to implement an effective safety improvement program. A methodology that can address these challenges is presented in this paper. The proposed methodology has been implemented successfully in the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Collaboration among safety stakeholders—state departments of transportation, tribal leadership, the Local Technical Assistance Program, the Tribal Technical Assistance Program, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and local and tribal law enforcement—is key to the success of such a process.

American Indian Breastfeeding Folklore from the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes

Over the years, much of the folklore of breastfeeding has been lost because women did not write history, they told stories. This article shares breastfeeding lore from stories told to the authors by American Indian women from the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes on the Wind River Reservation near Lander, Wyoming. These women related stories describing treatment for milk fever (mastitis), the white man’s influence on mother/baby separation and its outcome, elderly women inducing lactation, breastfeeding and birth control, and how women dressed for ease of breastfeeding in former times. It is with appreciation for other cultures that we add this information from American Indians to the archives of breastfeeding history.

Walking The Land: Inculturation And Footprints in the Western Desert of Australia

Father Carl Starkloffbegan teaching at Regis College in the Toronto School of Theology in 1981. He arrived with experience in teaching, as associate professor at Rockhurst College in Kansas City, and in cross-cultural ministry, having served in Wyoming at the Wind River Reservation and St Stephen's Mission, where he was Director from 1975-1981. These twin foci of academic work and hands-on experience continued during his time at Regis. Once each month, he would set out on the long drive to the Anishinabe Spiritual Centre in northern Ontario to spend the weekend with Native peoples who wished to engage in ongoing reflection on Gospel-Culture issues. During this time, he continued to build up an impressive bibliography of academic writings on issues of inculturation and missiology.l This dual concern for theory and praxis is captured in the title of a course he taught for many years, "Inculturation: Theory and Practice." Not, for him, a theoretical formulation with no bearing on actual cross-cultural experience. Nor, at the other extreme, was he interested in a praxis which failed to be critically reflective. Rather, Starkloff sensed that discussion of inculturation can too easily get caught up in motherhood statements with which no one could disagree but which say very little, and that the real questions arose when people sought to do inculturation. Thus, while he certainly brought to cross-cultural experience a wealth of theological knowledge and astute critical skill, he aimed to give flesh to theoretical reflections on inculturation by grounding them in experience-his own, that of the Native peoples with whom he maintained regular contact, and that of culturally-diverse groups of students.