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Aŋpétu Wašté' Mitákuyepi (Good Day Relatives), 

My name is Shelby Ross, my Lakota name is Wanahca Oblaye Ska Win (White Prairie Flower Woman). I’m currently a Ph.D. candidate within the Geography Department at the ��«����Ƶ. I am an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota. I am a former Gate’s Millennium Scholar (2009-2018), which I utilized to earn a B.S. in Natural Science with an emphasis in Conservation Biology from my local Tribal College Oglala Lakota College and a M.S. in Environmental Science and Engineering from the Institute of Environmental Health at the Oregon Health & Science University. After earning my master’s degree, I returned home and began working for the Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) Natural Resource

s Regulatory Agency in Pine Ridge, SD. It was during this time that I have observed the extreme weather events happening across my home reservation, which seemed to be occurring more often. In my position at the Natural Resources office, I had access to the OST Tribal climate adaptation plan and was asked to analyze the plan looking for gaps. During this time, I observed limited information about the potential impacts of climate change on the health disparities that persist within our reservation communities. Since this observation, I have been dedicated to becoming an expert around the topic of climate change and Native American health in efforts to help our leaders prepare our people and next generations for the projected impacts of climate change for the Northern Great Plains region not only on human health but also on environmental/ecological health, which are intricately related.

I am a member of the 2020 Tribal Climate Leaders Program inaugural cohort, funded by the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center in partnership with the Cooperative Institute of Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), ��«����Ƶ, and the Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance. My research interests include Traditional Ecological Knowledge or Indigenous Knowledge, climate change and health, and Native American health. I am currently at the stage of conducting data analysis and writing my dissertation. My dissertation, Climate change impacts on the Native American Health in the Northern Great Plains Region, was designed with a mixed methods approach to better understand how extreme weather events (EWE) induced by climate change are impacting Native American health in the Northern Great Plains region. I also aimed to investigate and assess the healthcare needs of the population of Native American individuals who have been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes during EWE. It was important to me to develop my dissertation research through an Indigenous Knowledge of Health or Indigenous Health lens, which includes understanding how climate change may be impacting the physical, mental, and spiritual/cultural health for Native Americans in the region. In early stages of my program, I conducted interviews of elders on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation with an aim to understand what changes they have experienced over their lifetime on the topics of EWEs, the availability in ecological resources like traditional plants and wildlife, and health impacts caused by EWEs. The analysis of these interviews will be one chapter of my dissertation. 

These interviews were then influential in designing my Extreme Weather impacts on Native American Health in the N. Great Plains survey. I distributed the survey to Native Americans (ages 18 and up) across the Northern Great Plains to investigate any variances in impacts felt (infrastructure, healthcare access, and cultural practices access) by Native Americans in this region due to EWEs. I am now analyzing the results from this survey with an eye towards evaluating how EWEs have affected infrastructure, healthcare access, and cultural practices access differentially by location, gender, age, education, employment status, health status (Type 2 Diabetes vs. non-Type 2 Diabetes), and reservation residency status.  

I chose this mixed method (interviews and surveys) approach because I believe it is the best option for conducting research with Native American communities. Interviews and surveys allow me to center Native American voices as the experts of their experiences and provide a space for them to express their climate concerns.

As I continue my career as a Native American researcher who is an expert in climate change and Native American Health, my goal is to begin to provide practical climate action projects that can help minimalize the felt impacts of climate change for my home Tribal community and possibly continuing to extend my efforts to all Tribal communities in the Northern Great Plains region. The projects I want to continue to pursue are more community involved projects, emergency response systems that are designed in alignment with the needs of Tribal members in the region and are inclusive to health-related issues, and alternative energy sourcing. I also have a goal to provide a space that builds capacity in Native American climate change research led by Native Americans by becoming a professor and to do my part in educating the next generations of Native Americans in climate change adaptation as much as possible.  

Description of the BIE scholarship (from the ):

“The purpose of the BIE Science Post Graduate Scholarship Fund program is to provide financial assistance to eligible American Indian and Alaska Native undergraduate, graduate, and professional students pursuing degrees full-time at an accredited institution in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields (i.e., Medical and Life Sciences; Engineering; Physical Sciences; Chemistry; Natural Resources/Conservation; Mathematics and Computational Sciences; Earth, Environmental, and Agriculture/Animal Sciences; Technology; Computer Sciences; Architectural Sciences; Public Health; Psychology; etc.). This opportunity is a need-based award.”