Water Quality Internship Update by Deidre Wolfe

Benjamin White and I are currently in the initial planning stages of the internship.  The main goal of our internship is to relay information gathered during the “Great Lakes Land Grant Institutions Tribal Water Resource Summit” to the Great Lakes area surrounding tribes.  In addition, we will make sure the summit results are concurrent with water resource needs today.  These are the top ten water resource needs compiled during the water summit:

1.      Water resource management and education through the lens of the local tribal culture

2.      Engage tribal leaders in water issues, education, etc.

3.      Degree program for tribal colleges/colleges serving tribal communities related to tribal environmental management

4.      Youth leadership and involvement

5.      Wild rice protection and management

6.      Interpreting and translation water data for a broader audience data to information

7.      Safe drinking water

8.      Habitat degradation

9.      Climate change affects on water, ecosystems, communities, culture

1.   Increasing funding for tribal water resource work

During the last few weeks, I have been researching and getting familiar with the content and material to be covered.  I have been researching water issues from the “Great Lakes Tribal Volunteer Monitoring Inquiry” including: non-point source pollution, invasive species, safe drinking water, habitat for wildlife and nutritional vegetation, urban and agricultural runoff, chemicals, herbicides and pesticides, well drilling/hydro fracturing for oil and natural gas, bacteria and algae blooms, development along shoreline and agricultural tiling and channelization of streams.  I have also been learning new Native American perspectives on water resource management through watching Winona Laduke presentations, researching Native American environmental groups and reading various tribes culture stories pertaining to water from the Great Lakes area. 

            I currently am in the process of learning how to make presentations through http://prezi.com/.  This software allows for smoother transitions and a more dynamic way to present information.   This software will also allow a research poster to be up-loaded and then you can make a presentation focusing on main points of the poster.  We may use the Prezi software for our presentations and are brainstorming possibilities of making a short video to promote water resource needs awareness.

            In order to establish internship goals and get direction to develop a solid plan we had a conference call with the initiative collaborators of our internship grant: Patrick Robinson and Rebecca Powers.  The insights gained from the call were that we were in the right direction with the research, we have been doing and that we should research ways to introduce perspectives through a Native American cultural lens.  They also gave us a new task of reuniting the grant collaborators to form a Multistate Coordinating Committee with the grant collaborators.  Ben has been working to get this committee together and we are currently waiting on responses to plan a committee conference call.  I am excited and happy with how the internship is going and look forward to everything in the future.