 We are going to be getting started here with the final session in the assessment methods. And first off, we're gonna have Chase Christopherson. Chase is a PhD student in the Soil Science Department at NDSU. His primary research interests are in long-term recovery reclamation projects in range line ecosystems. He is particularly interested in determining ways to increase reclamation recovery success in soil environments and native vegetation communities based on site-specific planning. Additional work and research interests lie in the inclusion of traditional ecological knowledge in reclamation methodology and land planning initiatives. Chase received his master's from NDSU in natural resource management in 2022. During this time, he served as the intern on the Intertribal Forest Management Assessment Team as part of a nationwide project aimed at assessing current conditions of forests and forest management on tribal lands. Following the completion of his master's degree, he worked for a nonprofit as their natural resources and agricultural specialist focused on efforts on tribal land management, planning, and data sovereignty. So with that, I'm gonna pass it over to Chase and we're gonna learn more about traditional ecological knowledge assessments. Right on, before we get going here, just a little business for school and some research stuff, Erin is gonna pass around a QR code. It links to a survey I'm doing that's looking at trying to understand how people in West North Dakota interact with the land around them and sort of how that has changed in response to oil and gas activity out this way with the intention of figuring out how to maybe incorporate some local knowledges in reclamation, planning, and site selection. Now that that's out of the way, yeah. So like Erin said, I'm Chase Christophson. I'm a PhD student and graduate research assistant at North Dakota State University. And today I'll be talking about, as you can see, a conceptual look at traditional ecological knowledge and this application to reclamation planning. This is gonna be a very much so, a 10,000, 30,000, 100,000 foot of view of what traditional ecological knowledge is. We're not gonna get into the nitty gritty weeds of it. So let's get started. So terminology I think is an important place to start. I don't know if maybe just by a show of hands how many people are familiar with TK have heard the term. Okay, thank you. So it's gaining a lot of, I don't wanna say momentum, but it's building popularity in kind of the land management, reclamation, restoration field. But a lot of people don't fully know what that all encompasses. They just hear sort of, it's sort of become a buzzword, a buzz phrase. It looks good in a plan, it looks good in a project, but what does this mean? So terminology first and foremost is important. Here are some examples that you see people say pretty interchangeably. So we got the standard traditional ecological knowledge, indigenous traditional ecological knowledge, indigenous knowledge, place-based, local knowledge. TK, the top one there with the little asterisks by it, that's pretty much in the vernacular. That's in the zeitgeist if you wanna say, that's what everyone knows. It's the accepted term in academia and any kind of report you're doing. So if you say that, everyone is gonna know what you're talking about, generally speaking. And so it doesn't matter. Yes and no, without getting too far into terminology and breaking down the definition of words, it does matter. The bottom two here, I would not say are good substitutions or placeholders for TK, indigenous, traditionally ecological knowledge, indigenous knowledge. Any of those, just given the differences in definition of the words and sort of what TK encompasses. So here is just some, I'll let you read them. I'm not gonna go in depth on them. Just different definitions for what TK is. You'll see the top one here. This is the White House's stance on what TK is. They call it indigenous traditional knowledge so that no one gets confused about what they're talking about. And this, based off this here, you can see just this happened in the last two years around the time that Deb Haaland took over the position of Secretary of Interior. So this is really sort of gaining a momentum in the federal agencies a lot, especially. So there's that. And then this one right here is the one that I wanna draw probably your attention to if you're gonna take anything away from this slide. It's this one. It's the most cited. It's the most referenced in any sort of academic textbook or text or journal that's looking at this field. It's going to be this Burke's definition of TK. And so basically what it's saying at the very gist of all this is that it's a cumulative body of knowledge that's been passed down from generation to generation, not solely on ecology, but on sort of where people fit in their environment and sort of the role they play amongst everything else. It's more relational. It's talking about stewardship and not so much management. Again, I'm not gonna get too deep into it, but there's a difference between those two terms in terms of land management in this context. So we'll move on from that. What is it? So what are some examples of what TK could be? It's not going to simply be, over that way we, this plan grows. We would gather this plant, done it for hundreds of years. That's an example of it, but it's not simply that. It can come from stories and traditions that have been passed down through the generations. Stories, a lot of times they're filled with metaphor. They're filled with such sort of things that on the surface seem very much so difficult to believe. However, there's going to be some sort of, sort of cultural context, historical context that's passed down. It's meant to be a metaphor for, I guess, a lesson. You could call it a moral of the story, bless you. And so that's sort of an example of TK where you're trying to say, this is what happened. This is how we got through it, but it's gonna be cloaked in metaphor and simile and things like that. I have tribal members out there just because TK's thought of being sort of, you go talk to the wise elders, you talk to the elders, they're gonna know what's best. And that's, of course, they are gonna have more knowledge than most community members, but the youth are also gonna have knowledge that they've gotten because it's an intergenerational passing of knowledge over the years. And so little kids can tell you stories that they might hear from their grandparents all on up. And it's just sort of incorporated in a lot of the life for these indigenous communities in just, whether they are aware that that's exactly what they have or not. Cultural and traditional sites, so that's gonna be historic village sites. There is some observational knowledge out there that I've heard from around the country that the prevalence of medicinal, cultural, traditional plants and vegetation aren't gonna be found in higher percentages and in larger numbers around historic village sites. I don't know how accurate that is, but again, it would be something to look into further because I've heard it echoed around the country. But so that's also a ceremony sites, it's gathering sites, it's fishing sites. It's all these things that sort of go into, these places that hold meaning over the generations, it's not just a one-off, it's understanding sort of where we, as people fit into the environment and sort of the role we play as a, and not just our imposition of our will on it, but more so how we interact with everything in the environment. And then traditional location names. I was having a pretty tough time finding examples in North Dakota, South Dakota, that aren't just translated English names into say Lakota. So I went with some stuff from Minnesota. I didn't get into this in my background. I took several years of Dakota at the University of Minnesota during my undergrad, where we sort of learned about these traditional names and sort of what the context they hold for the culture. So Minnesota, just the state in itself in Dakota and what they referred to it as was Minishota Makoche. And what that means is the land where the water reflects the sky. So if you think about that in terms of the landscape, Minnesota has a lot of lakes. A lot of them are cloudy, they're not the clearest in the world. So they're going to reflect the clouds, they're gonna reflect the sky. You're gonna see these things. So another example, Minneapolis, that area in Dakota is called Bereota, which means many or a lot of lakes, Sobere, Lakes, Ota, many, a lot. And there's a lot of lakes there. St. Paul, Imanija scott, Imanija cliffs scott white. If you've been crossing from Minneapolis, I guess Bloomington into St. Paul over the Minnesota River Valley, you'll notice the cliffs kind of by the river there and they're sort of a whitish tan. And so that's what they're referring to. So these, there's other names, there's other locations. You start to notice it more kind of once you have it pointed out to yourself. Oh, there was probably some sort of historical context here. And what these do is they sort of describe ecological features historically that you would find in that location. So they're descriptive tellers that can be used as maybe historical reference for a reference site for you're doing reclamation or restoration work. And then ecological signs on the landscape. So it could be, knowing where certain things grow. It could be understanding that this area over there for some reason every, so often it sinks a little bit. It gets, it floods not every year, but every five years or after a rain this early, it's gonna flood. So just things like that in the landscape that maybe wouldn't be extremely obvious on the surface level that after having that information passed down is going to be fairly pertinent and prevalent in your planning. So TK and reclamation, I sort of touched on it a little bit on the last slide. So I think a big area that we can bring it in is site-specific planning and reclamation. So sort of using that knowledge of people who have been in the area for a long time, they've got all this knowledge passed down. They know the landscape, they know the, the highs and lows, the climate variability over hundreds of years, not simply decades, but they understand that there are gonna be hotter years, hotter periods, there's gonna be colder periods and sort of how to navigate the environment over those changes, as well as just sort of knowing what grows there, what works, what's not gonna work, external interactions with sites. So it's not just where you're gonna put the pipeline. It's not just where you're gonna put the well pad, but also how is that disturbance just in the activity level alone offsite going to impact some of these areas that might seem like they're sort of, you know, they're offsite, they should be okay, but you know, maybe dust is gonna settle on a, on some vegetation that's not gonna work or it's gonna drive out the migration of some sort of animal that is pretty prevalent to the ecosystem there because they just don't like the activity, things like that for site selection. I guess that kind of goes into the site determination. Cultural sites and traditional sites are probably something I'd like to highlight there just because they're not always going to be extremely obvious on the landscape, but cultural site could be just a place where people have gone to harvest maybe bitter root for generations. That's their harvesting spot, that's where they go. That's a cultural site, that's a traditional food, that's part of their food sovereignty and sustainability as a people. So things like that are important to consider and to kind of have some input on that as well as migratory corridors. So just how birds kind of fly through as well as, you know, just animals and mammals that might be on the ground in general, they might avoid areas that they historically were found in abundance that people hunted, you know, for a long time, they're just not seeing them anymore, they're getting pushed out by noise, activity, lack of vegetation and food, whatever it might be. Yeah, and then species preference. So when considering the reclamation work, you're going to do the seeding type, you're going to do the vegetation, kind of what you're planning on doing after the disturbance. There could be, you know, seed like species that you'd want to have in a seed mix that maybe is struggling in the area due to invasive species or, you know, they're being outcompeted by the seed mixes that are being applied right now that maybe we would like to see brought back into more prevalence, just things like this that again, I don't want to get too far into it and dive too deep, but just sort of on a base level, these are some areas that we could incorporate it. Why is this being talked about here? Why is this important? Why does it matter? Why did you come listen to me? I'll be asking that for days, but this is an excerpt from the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. It's really the first treaty that was signed by tribes in this kind of upper, upper Great Plains region. And it outlined, if you go through the whole document, it outlines all the tribal territory for all the tribes that were here. So you got the Lakota, you got the Kroi, you got the Cheyenne, all these tribes that outlines based off of geographical features where their territories are that the United States acknowledges. So this one right here pertains to, you know, the Mandan, the, I think it says Groban, but that's the Hadatsa and the Erykara. So it kind of is the basis for what has become the Fort Berthold Reservation. So this probably, most of it probably doesn't mean a whole lot. I'm sure you're not all, you know, topographic geographic maps in your head, able to just tell me exactly where this region is. So I helped you out. This is the map. This is what it's describing, this area in the dark here. So if you're looking to get some sort of historical context and reference for these sites and sort of, you know, gain some information on the ebbs and flows of the ecosystem out here, these tribes in these areas have, you know, not just from their point of view, longstanding histories, but also from the point of view of the United States as well in acknowledging that this is the territory that they're from, they have been on this land. They know what they're, of what they speak in this area. So why it matters, it's just, it's good information to have, you know, it doesn't hurt anything. So why continue? Like I said, longstanding history of interaction, knowledge of the land resiliency, I think we touched on that already. If you want to get super technical, tribes are always considered stakeholders. So anytime you do a restoration reclamation plan, anything that affects the ecosystem in general, they are going to be stakeholders that need to be contacted, consulted with before you do anything. You read an ecological textbook, this is one of the first things they say it. And then also, why not? What does it hurt? What does getting, you know, working with tribes, maybe acquiring some of this traditional knowledge that they've passed down that they might know about the area that might not be super obvious from just a site assessment. What does it hurt? A six minute phone call, six minute conversation can save you six months on the back end. So, you know, why not? That's kind of all I got. I'm open to questions. If we have time, I don't know what we're sitting at. We've got 10 minutes. Do you guys want me to riff a little bit more? Just kidding. Do we have any questions? Question. So if I were the reclamation planners that would be in the room, what is a good first step? I mean, as far as building that collaborative relationships with the folks that have the knowledge, it might be a stretch for each one of them to be able to acquire this themselves. And so just opportunities in your mind for building those bridges to help bring some of these things into the planning process. Yeah, that's a very good question. It's something that I spent a decent amount of time thinking about and this isn't something that can just be incorporated and changed and brought into the process overnight. This is gonna be a work in progress. There's gonna be mistakes. There's gonna be successes that maybe happen accidentally just by the grace of God it worked out. But you just, I think starting the dialogue and knowing, trying to just figure out who to reach out to if you're looking for tribes. So, you know, MHA Nation, they have a tribal historical preservation officer department. They'd be a good place to start. They have a cultural resource department. That'd be a good place to start. They have a natural resource department. These are all just people who are familiar with the land that are at least a good go between to maybe either they're gonna know or they're gonna know people that know. And quite frankly, you're never gonna get the information upfront. There is too much history to overcome for them to always be for tribes to just be always extremely open with their information to strangers. And so that's something that is just gonna sort of, if you're looking to incorporate this, it will have to be worked through over years. It's not gonna be tomorrow. It's not gonna be next week. Most likely it won't be next year, but slowly, but surely that trust will be built. I think the most difficult part is gonna be capacity on both sides, which I'm not an economist or anything like that. So I couldn't tell you how that works out, but I'm just talking hypothetically.