 Good morning. Good morning. Oh, see, I'm the scholar to Siem's, and it's not Marco Hatch. Good morning, friends and relatives. My name is Marco Hatch. As mentioned, I'm a faculty at Western Washington University and a member of the Samish Indian Nation. And I want to begin with this picture to show you a little bit about where I'm from as we sit in this windowless room, a little image of the Sailor Shee, and we'll hear more about that from some later talks. This is taken on the west side of San Juan Island. On a day we were doing some science and culture camps with some Lummi youth. My talk today is about the integration of traditional ecological knowledge with big data and recruitment and retention of indigenous students. And I'll be talking about three NSF programs that have supported this work, both an NSF Includes project, a NSF Geo Gold, which is kind of similar to an Includes, but is funded by the Geo Science Division, and also a project called PAGE, which is a partnership in Geo Sciences between the NSF Geo Science Division and the T-CUP program, Tribal College and University's program. And I'll acknowledge those funding sources as we move through, but just be aware that there's many different sections of NSF that have supported this work over the years. Our NSF project was called, our pilot project was called the NSF Includes project. And to try to describe our project in one slide, you could think of, in the Coastal Almanac project we were focused on three types of communities. Ethnographic communities, primarily indigenous communities, fishing communities, and geographic communities, small coastal communities. And the idea is that people have observed change over time, but we in the broader kind of mainstream science have often lacked those observations. There are changes happening that we're not seeing, but people that have lived in that area for multiple generations are observing those changes. And they have a better pulse on the environment than we do in the Geo Science field. One example I give of that is, I study clams, my doctorate's in clams. I study clams for years and years and years. And if I wanted to go do a clam project, and I went out and I started measuring the density of clams on a beach next to a reserve or next to an indigenous population, and I go out and measure density on clams, I walk out the beach, I throw my quad out around, I measure density. Then I take those data and I use it for management decisions. If I use it for, well, I went out and I didn't measure any clams, so we're going to close down harvest. That would cause some ill will with that group, right? I went out and measured a bunch of things, and I didn't do it in the right spot, because I didn't ask them where the clams are. I just went out and randomly, because I had to fit to my science, I randomly selected points on the beach, and I might have missed those really dense patches of clams. When you go out and you stand on a mud flat and you look out, it kind of all looks the same, right? You stand out, you're like, it's a beach, right? It's like all the same, but if you know that beach really well, if you dug clams on that beach for your entire life, if your parents dug clams on that beach, for your grandparents, for time immemorial, if your people have been digging clams on that beach, you know that it all looks the same, but it's not, right? That there's nuance out there. There's little pockets that have high densities of clams, and if your experience with science is people going out and asking the wrong question in the wrong spot, you might not have a lot of faith in that system, right? Whereas what I would do and have done is if there's a project the community wants me to work on, the first thing I do is go in and have coffee and say, who's your best clam digger? I go to that person, have coffee, and hire him for a couple of days, then we go out and talk about clams on the beach, and in that one day, you'll get more information than you can from years and years and years of throwing quadrats in the wrong spot, right? And so that was kind of the basis of this close almanac, is that if your experience with science has been people asking the wrong question in the wrong spot and then shutting down your harvest, you might not have a very high opinion of it. So can we work with local communities, with a community advisor, somebody that goes between a liaison between our subject advisors, geoscientists, environmental scientists, and the community, this person that lays on's back and forth, brings up community-based questions, works with kind of a select few scientists that are well-behaved, and starts to look at some of these changes people have seen, and then work with communities to record and understand those observations. And so most of our pilot projects were spent on how you would do that. What's the framework required for that sort of project? And going around to a bunch of different COSES communities was really interesting because we started to see, just in the pilot phase, we started to see some patterns that in particular there was a few traditional plants, a few medicines that every community we talked to had said, oh, we've seen a decline in that plant. They're not talking to one another, right? They're not sharing that observation, and then through these conversations we start to see there's a regional decrease in this plant that's really quite important, but in the mainstream it's not a plant that people are out looking at. It's not a western red cedar that people can see as this big iconic tree. But the indigenous, the COSES people are seeing this decline, and it's not being seen anywhere else. It's not being acknowledged or recorded anywhere else. And so the idea is to have a number of communities and then have a network of those communities to look at regional scale changes. So I'll share a little bit about the framework of this project and how talking to a bunch of different folks, how we've decided or think that these projects could be structured. And the quote Thomas King, the truth about stories is that's all that we are. So I'd like to begin with a story that I think exemplifies some of our goals and some of our approaches. Long ago, if a family needed a new canoe, they would meet with their community carver and talk about what's this canoe for? Is it an ocean going canoe? Is it a river canoe? Is it for fishing? Is it for long trips or short trips? What is the purpose of this canoe? They'd have a conversation back and forth and then when they decided on what sort of canoe was needed, the carver would go out in the woods and go out and look for the perfect red cedar, the perfect cedar tree for this canoe. And once that tree was found, it wasn't simply cut down. There's a conversation with the tree, the carver would tell the tree what a great family was that needed a canoe, what the canoe would be used for, how it would be honored as a canoe. And these conversations may take days or weeks. And if the tree agreed, it would be cut down and then have a new life as a canoe. But now we no longer have those large cedar trees. And so now when we make a canoe, we often need to use two trees. And the process is still the same. We still go out and pray to the tree and respect the tree, but now it takes two trees to make one canoe. And these two trees have to meld together. They have to maintain their individual identities as separate trees, but they have to form a relationship. They have to form a bond. If one tree thinks it's better than the other tree, if one tree disparages the other tree, it'll cause cracks in the canoe. And those cracks will lead that canoe to fall apart and break and the people inside might drown. And so it's really important that these trees do two things, maintain their identity, but at least form some understanding, form some bond, respect one another. And you can think of these two trees as traditional ecological knowledge and Western science, that they have separate identities. And you can think of the canoe as our environment and us as the inhabitants of that environment. And so if you want to promote and protect our environment to the best possible way, we need to incorporate all forms of knowing. And we need to respect all forms of knowing. And so the question becomes, how can we bring these two trees together? So obviously not a picture of trees, it's a picture of the Grand Canyon, but nonetheless there's a large divide between these two areas. And how can we bring them together? How can we bridge this divide? How can we have respect for community knowledge and science at the same time? And Boundary Spanner is one way of doing that. And I want to acknowledge that the Boundary Spanner term has been used at the organizational level by some good work by Safford et al. 2007. And in this paper they looked at Boundary Spanners, again as organizations, you can think about land grant institutions and their cooperative extension programs, C grant that has a vision for thriving coastal ecosystems and communities that are supported by an engaged public and informed decision makers. That organizations can have this mission and vision to bridge communities and science. But when we, through this project, when we started looking at all of the different projects that we really love, when we go out and look at these, like this Clamgard Restoration Project, we look at these projects where you're like, that's a good project, right? Like that project is what we want. That's like the apex of science engagement, community engagement, youth engagement. You think, what did that? Did an organization do that? Or did an individual do that? And so we tend to think about, and I'll talk about Boundary Spanners on the individual level. And James, I really liked your Boundary Warriors. I gotta kick out, I appreciate that. And so we've heard of Boundary Spanners yesterday. So we'll expand upon that a little bit today. I do like the idea of a Boundary Warrior. And so in our project, we've looked at Boundary Spanners both as an individual or a small team of individuals. And one of the communities we work in, the Swinomish community, the Boundary Spanners are a team. Larry Campbell is a Swinomish elder, and Jamie Donowatu, who's non-native, but we've been working for Swinomish for 20 plus years as a PhD, and she talks to the science side. Larry talks to the community side, and together they are able to translate science and community speak, community concerns, and scientific questions back and forth. Boundary Spanners can be a community member. One of the Boundary Spanners we work with is a Stimulus woman who's pursuing a PhD in marine ecology. And they really act as this fulcrum of partnership that everything's moving back and forth through this individual. So it can be a very taxing position, but it's very important. And we believe one of the foundations to these good partnership projects. As I'm a bit sciency, I have to graph this. Here with our x-axis, the axis of science. The axis of science goes from discovery to solutions, from discovery of a new factoid that might not matter in people's daily lives to a real world solution. My drinking water's not safe to drink, right? So we can think of the axis of science along this spectrum. And then the axis of the individual. What's driving your daily motivations? What's your primary concern throughout the day? I probably should have flipped this because it presents a hierarchy, which I apologize for. But curiosity or wonder is at one end of the spectrum and worry our concerns at the other one. Curiosity about some little factoid of science or worry your concern again about a very real concern in your daily life. Loss of a species that's impacting your inherent right to go out and harvest and collect. Contaminate drinking water, air pollution, things like that. Established geoscience tends to hang out in the upper left corner here. Going from questions about interesting factoids to creating these interesting factoids. Creations of new facts, right? Underrepresented, underserved, and disenfranchised communities tend to be in the other corner where the concerns are very real. Sam and I didn't return this year. We're losing our important medicines. Our water's not safe to drink. They tend to be in separate spaces. And so how can we start to bridge that gap? And that's often where a boundary spanner comes in is can, in the geoscience realm, to get funding, you often have to have some new kind of sexy hypothesis, right? Which isn't necessarily what the community's concerned about, but is there a way that we can bridge that? Is there a way we can bring resources in from established geoscience that are addressing real world concerns and also work with communities to open up new discovery spaces? There's lots we don't know. And without using all forms of information, we're not doing the best science possible. So the boundary spanner is really important in kind of bridging that gap. And I think many people in this room are boundary spanners and I hope that the idea of boundary spanner resonates. I'm gonna ask you to take a few minutes and just think about the people you know that exemplify this idea of a boundary spanner. And then what qualities do you think they exhibit? When you think of your list of boundary spanners, what are one or two words you would use to describe them? I ask you to take a couple of minutes or two to think about that and then talk about it with your neighbor and then we'll share out a little bit. So who, when you close your eyes, think, who's a boundary spanner? And if you had to describe them in two words, what two words would you use? Okay. Okay, oh this bring y'all back now I won't ask you to name names but if somebody want to call out a quality and I'll repeat it for the for the webcast here that they think identifies yes sir Frans later yeah that's a big one yeah attention to detail very interpreter yep listener passionate compassionate okay thank you compassionate tenacious or stubborn about getting with our community needs a real advocate yeah with the strong code of ethics yeah yes non-judgmental insistency open overthinking wow good communicator okay one more yes that's a great one and actually don't have it on my list thick-skinned thick-skinned you get corrected by an elder you just gotta take it right and sometimes you like come out you're like man I gotta open it you know and then a little bit later you reflect on it and you're like okay it was with good intention but you get corrected and you guys show back up at that table if you don't show back up at that table well obviously you're done but it's sometimes it's a test right to come back to that table so that's a that's an excellent one thank you to help get this idea we the Coastal Almanac made a list of our six or eight favorite boundary spanners people that were really respected in the Kosia's community and we brought them together and asked a number of questions about their position as boundary spanners how can we uplift and support them because frequently this bounder span boundary spanner function isn't fully acknowledged one of our boundary spanners was told by their boss that well anybody can do this project that you replaceable you know yeah exactly what like no this is a really specialized very important person that when you pull them out of this project your years of work is going to come crumbling down now there's other people that could come fill in that role but not just anybody that these are really important functions and so through our conversations we came up with a number of characteristics ability to listen a reflector or a mirror and so when you're in a community meeting folks are talking don't jump in and interject let the conversation be under and go and eventually they'll wind up where it should and then at the end reflect back say this is what I heard write it down have them read it and approve it make sure that you're reflecting back on what you heard so you don't misunderstand it many of our bound boundary spanners are reluctant gatekeepers meaning that they didn't feel it was their position to function as a gatekeeper that it wasn't their role within within the community to do that but if they thought you're going to cause harm they would they would be a gatekeeper they understand the community protocol and another key function is they have credit or credibility in both the communities and in stem and so they could walk in with a bunch of scientists and say flash their their badge and have their credibility and then the same within community as well that they have to have credibility in both those spaces they often feel that their roles in educator a translator which we heard translating science speak to community language and and vice versa to facilitate to advocate for direct funding and so one of the things that boundary spanners reported is they get a well-meaning scientist knocking on their door hey I want to do this project I want to extract knowledge from your elders but I don't have any money kind of a non-starter for a number of reasons but really protecting the community from inequitable projects and so really creating to me and a grant proposal the most important thing is your budget and your budget justification so really starting these partnerships well before anything's written before things are allocated then we asked these boundary spanners one we asked about bad partnerships and a whole list of that but I want to focus on the question of the boundary spanners if you could envision your ideal partnership what would that look like and they talked about long-term commitment that from their perspective don't show up at their door with the grant due in two days and you want a letter of support that come in talk get to know one another start to build those relationships and then down the road if something makes sense then we can work on that together well in advance of the deadline but these relationships take a very long time and they wanted people are willing to experiment and do things differently instead of question status quo and I know in the work that I do they're basically every rule that our accounting office has I have to break you can't buy gifts on a grant turns out you can you have to call it a physical honorarium oh there's NSF people here physical honorarium are apparently allowed gifts or not when I've got somebody coming in and I want to wrap them I gotta figure out how to get a blanket have to figure out how to put cash in people's hands like there are things that are difficult provide honorarium on on site not three months later hire community members to cook it's there's all these things that we have to break your first responses always know we can't do that and you have to figure out well how like that's not that knows not the answer I want or that I'll accept and also you have to be willing to put your ego in the back seat that your questions might not be the most important questions and so you have to be willing to do an experiment in a different space than you normally would which is in my vision the point they often mention that having folks that do a lot of the institutional paperwork and reporting things is beneficial and I underlined the last one so I want to talk about that a bit more is determine in the beginning what is needed for all participants to fill valued and honored and I think that's where coming from agency or academia we often maybe don't understand what that would look like at the community level and so one idea we've been working on is the virtuous exchange and the idea of the virtuous exchange is that currencies are different in different spaces in the academic world we kind of hopefully have a clear understanding of our currencies teaching service and research and that if I'm engaged in community projects I can talk about that my service I can have papers that generate from that for my research I could bring folks I'm working with and I could bring the experiences into my classroom to enrich my teaching experiences so that the currencies are pretty clear from the academic side but the community currencies are often totally different and we can't assume what they are we have to know our community and ask what you know what is of value to you and what would be of value to you out of this project so I'm gonna do another quick discussion with your neighbor based on the communities you work with what would be considered a community currency what are folks seeking out of this relationship both tangible and intangible benefits okay we'll bring it back here I know this one's a bit stickier which is why I asked it any did anybody come up with a currency that from the communities that they're working with validity and acknowledgement yeah that's what I hear a lot too is you know you're here from some fancy university how are you going to help in K-12 programs pride internships for students pride pathways for sure yeah yeah not to repeat that for the microphone so respect and cherish and honor what is shared yeah yeah okay good community integrity for the community and then one from the side move on yeah yeah so so he said land access for public buy-in which is for sure for sure true so this work was supported by a geogold project just want to quickly acknowledge that and we're gonna pivot a bit to working with students in our last few minutes together so my lab the coastal communities and ecology lab we really focus on on three things a student success science that matters and partnership and outreach and in those three components are really key to one another that a lot of the partnership and outreach we do is really facilitated by having a bunch of students from diverse backgrounds having a friend of indigenous students in our lab those students are engaged by the work that we do because it's work that matters it's work that's in concert with communities and so through the use of place-based research and and particularly place-based research with some intention I've been able to recruit and retain a fair number of undergrads and graduates to my lab and one thing we do is celebrate so the picture in the upper left actually didn't realize it's her birthday today but a sunny tad lock and then when students win awards when they go to a conference and present a poster they get a scholarship we often celebrate with pie it's a relatively simple thing but food brings people together and uplifting and acknowledging those times is really really important do a fair amount in the work field and we do a fair amount of outreach with with various youth groups and the upper rights from Northwest Indian College we've helped graduate a fair number of students I've had a fair number of students go on and do well at conferences and when you look at the awards that they've won and the science that we do really we count things there's nothing high-tech in my lab we count baby clams grains of sand big clams little clams things like that critters on the beach we count things it's not that hard but when the students go out and present they're so passionate about the projects they're so passionate about the intent of the work in the way that it's done that it's infectious and so when folks come around they just fall in love with the students and their projects and it's really that passion that's that's driving that that the science is not the most high-intensity science but it's important work and they carry that with them which I think is is great and then we have another project which is a page project which is a partnership between Geosciences and the TECA program tribal colleges and universities program the intention of this project is to help facilitate more native students getting a graduate degree so this is a four plus two model students that graduate from Northwest Indian College with a bachelor's of native environmental science are eligible for a fully funded master's degree fellowship at Western Washington University so as part of this project we're helping students to get graduate school ready at Northwest Indian College they've increased their course offerings to meet the pre-rex of most graduate schools increasing the quantitative content doing GRE support paying for the GRE tests helping students apply for graduate programs at Western and Northwest Indian College we're trying to create more shared opportunities to get students together with faculty to get to know one another and we're trying to create a more inclusive and supportive environment at Western Washington University and so it's really getting kind of over that hump of having right now we've got two students from Northwest Indian College in the master's program but starting to create a community we're a predominantly white institution and one of the least diverse disciplines at that institution and so having more students of color in my lab having more indigenous students at the undergrad and graduate level has been really key to this success of this project as well as having the master's students go back and mentor Northwest Indian College undergrads for their summer research this is in a year four of a five-year project and we've learned a fair amount I'm gonna end with a quick story this this story was shared with me and I share it with you with permission from Sky Augustine a stimulus woman I've worked with closely for a number of years and like many great stories it starts in the kitchen but there are two groups of people that traditionally didn't get long they've had differences over the years and they decide let's get together in the kitchen and make something food unites us food brings us together to make something we can share a meal should we grow something cook it on the oven or in the stove they decide let's bake something let's bake something and let's go home to our home communities and bring some ingredients that really mean something to us and bring them back the next day and we'll bake something together great so the first group goes back to their home community they're all excited that we're gonna do this great partnership project it's gonna start us off in a good way and a new way and they talk with our community and they collect a whole bunch of ingredients that really mean something to them and they come back the next day and the next day the second group of people walk in with all of these cookies just beautiful symmetrical cookies they all look delicious they're just the piles and piles of these amazing looking cookies and they say hey we brought cookies can you decorate them for us and the other group says well we wanted to make bread with that hush good thank you