Ecocultural Relationality and Creative Collaboration
Ecocultural Relationality and Creative Collaboration
Session Type:
Oral
Session Date and Time:
Thursday, 21 May, 2026 - 13:40 to 16:00
Presentations
Abstract
13:40
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
Many ethnobiologists, indigenous community members, and communities of poor, dispossessed and disenfranchised peoples are facing multifaceted challenges that seek to undermine their knowledges, their rights, and their personhood. Together these challenges can be…exhausting. And while formal protests, rallies and participation in the democratic processes are important, they can situate resistance as oppositional to joy. In this talk I draw upon resistances in Puerto Rico, the American Midwest and Upstate New York to show how joy can be used as a restorative form of resistance. Acts of joy such as being in community, singing, dancing, and planting of gardens can serve to restore interconnection between siloed groups, facilitating intercultural advocacy for the rights of human and more-than-human kin.
14:00
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
This presentation draws from my doctoral research examining black bear populations in the Chuska Mountains on the Navajo Nation. The project combines noninvasive ecological methods to estimate population size and distribution with ongoing conversations with community members about their experiences, teachings, and relationships with bears. I examine how Diné values shape research design, interpretation, and engagement. In this context, bears are not only wildlife; they are connected to protection, healing, and ceremony. As a result, research requires careful attention to cultural boundaries, trust, and the protection of sensitive knowledge. Field observations and population data are interpreted alongside stories shared by elders and families about living alongside bears. These narratives deepen understanding of ecological change, conflict, and coexistence on the land. Rather than treating science and community knowledge as separate systems, this work approaches them as interwoven ways of understanding that strengthen one another when carried with respect.
14:20
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
The fact of ubiquitous and constant environmental change ushers place-attached peoples into alien ecological conditions whether they've migrated or not. Ethnobiology has made progress in understanding the dynamic plant knowledge and ecological adaptation of peoples in diaspora, refugee and otherwise migrated communities. Adapting these advances to in-situ diaspora communities can serve to mitigate their cascading socio-ecological challenges such as rural exodus, slumsprawl, the authoritarian turn in rural politics, and the growing odds of ecological disasters like wildfires. In this talk, I present key outcomes from a 2025 workshop, "Shifting ground, shifting plants: An In-Place Diaspora Methods Bazaar," integrated with preliminary findings from the "Homeland No More" empirical field investigation in Turkey and Morocco. Findings so far stress the need for systematic observation of fluctuations in precipitation regimes, weed pressure, agriculture intensification, pests, and diseases. Additionally, I offer a preliminary systematics of place detachment attuned to gendered, generational, and identity-linked experiences.
14:40
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
For nearly a century, underwater work has been an important productive activity for the fishing communities of Baja California. The economic context in which these diver-fishermen live, the pace at which they work, and the technology they use cause health problems, many of them severe, for a large percentage of the population (in a sample of 39 divers—active and retired—only two reported never having suffered from any diving-related illness). Based on eight months of participant observation and using a health anthropology approach, this text describes the practical conditions of commercial diving and how the fishermen conceptualize barotrauma, one of the occupational illnesses associated with diving. The study, highlights the human factor in marine research and the life experiences of diver-fishermen, and concludes that the market context has contributed to the precariousness of fishermen's work and high accident rates, leading to health problems and a growing scarcity of seafood.
15:20
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
This presentation introduces a wastewater pollinator garden designed to demonstrate how treated greywater can sustain critically and culturally important pollinator habitats, such as those supporting the monarch butterfly, while promoting seed banking of native plant species significant to tribal communities. The system integrates ecological engineering with Indigenous knowledge to create living seed banks where water reuse, habitat restoration, and cultural preservation intersect. By combining constructed wetlands, native forb plantings, and pollinator-focused design, this work provides a model for tribal nations seeking to restore biodiversity, strengthen food sovereignty, and conserve the species and stories tied to their homelands.
15:40
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
The concept of Ecosystem Services–the environmental products and processes that benefit humans– has been a major organizing component of conservation and a framework for understanding ethnobiological relationships among peoples and nature. Ecosystem services have environmental, cultural, and health components that are interrelated in an ecological web. Looking at colonialism as a key player in the truncation of fundamental to realized niche allows us to view declines in ecosystem service space from both biological (ie. biodiversity) and social (ie. economics, culture) viewpoints. This paper first defines “Ecosystem Service Space (ESS)” as an n-dimensional hypervolume consisting of variables that facilitate relationships among humans and their non-human kin through an ethnobiological lens. I then discuss how historical and ongoing colonialism truncates realized ecosystem service space, and finally, showcase ESS as a distinct, interdisciplinary tool for anti-colonial science to illuminate the reciprocal relationship between peoples and nature as an extension of themselves.
Presentations
| Abstract | |
|---|---|
| 13:40 |
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
Many ethnobiologists, indigenous community members, and communities of poor, dispossessed and disenfranchised peoples are facing multifaceted challenges that seek to undermine their knowledges, their rights, and their personhood. Together these challenges can be…exhausting. And while formal protests, rallies and participation in the democratic processes are important, they can situate resistance as oppositional to joy. In this talk I draw upon resistances in Puerto Rico, the American Midwest and Upstate New York to show how joy can be used as a restorative form of resistance. Acts of joy such as being in community, singing, dancing, and planting of gardens can serve to restore interconnection between siloed groups, facilitating intercultural advocacy for the rights of human and more-than-human kin. |
| 14:00 |
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
This presentation draws from my doctoral research examining black bear populations in the Chuska Mountains on the Navajo Nation. The project combines noninvasive ecological methods to estimate population size and distribution with ongoing conversations with community members about their experiences, teachings, and relationships with bears. I examine how Diné values shape research design, interpretation, and engagement. In this context, bears are not only wildlife; they are connected to protection, healing, and ceremony. As a result, research requires careful attention to cultural boundaries, trust, and the protection of sensitive knowledge. Field observations and population data are interpreted alongside stories shared by elders and families about living alongside bears. These narratives deepen understanding of ecological change, conflict, and coexistence on the land. Rather than treating science and community knowledge as separate systems, this work approaches them as interwoven ways of understanding that strengthen one another when carried with respect. |
| 14:20 |
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
The fact of ubiquitous and constant environmental change ushers place-attached peoples into alien ecological conditions whether they've migrated or not. Ethnobiology has made progress in understanding the dynamic plant knowledge and ecological adaptation of peoples in diaspora, refugee and otherwise migrated communities. Adapting these advances to in-situ diaspora communities can serve to mitigate their cascading socio-ecological challenges such as rural exodus, slumsprawl, the authoritarian turn in rural politics, and the growing odds of ecological disasters like wildfires. In this talk, I present key outcomes from a 2025 workshop, "Shifting ground, shifting plants: An In-Place Diaspora Methods Bazaar," integrated with preliminary findings from the "Homeland No More" empirical field investigation in Turkey and Morocco. Findings so far stress the need for systematic observation of fluctuations in precipitation regimes, weed pressure, agriculture intensification, pests, and diseases. Additionally, I offer a preliminary systematics of place detachment attuned to gendered, generational, and identity-linked experiences. |
| 14:40 |
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
For nearly a century, underwater work has been an important productive activity for the fishing communities of Baja California. The economic context in which these diver-fishermen live, the pace at which they work, and the technology they use cause health problems, many of them severe, for a large percentage of the population (in a sample of 39 divers—active and retired—only two reported never having suffered from any diving-related illness). Based on eight months of participant observation and using a health anthropology approach, this text describes the practical conditions of commercial diving and how the fishermen conceptualize barotrauma, one of the occupational illnesses associated with diving. The study, highlights the human factor in marine research and the life experiences of diver-fishermen, and concludes that the market context has contributed to the precariousness of fishermen's work and high accident rates, leading to health problems and a growing scarcity of seafood. |
| 15:20 |
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
This presentation introduces a wastewater pollinator garden designed to demonstrate how treated greywater can sustain critically and culturally important pollinator habitats, such as those supporting the monarch butterfly, while promoting seed banking of native plant species significant to tribal communities. The system integrates ecological engineering with Indigenous knowledge to create living seed banks where water reuse, habitat restoration, and cultural preservation intersect. By combining constructed wetlands, native forb plantings, and pollinator-focused design, this work provides a model for tribal nations seeking to restore biodiversity, strengthen food sovereignty, and conserve the species and stories tied to their homelands. |
| 15:40 |
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
The concept of Ecosystem Services–the environmental products and processes that benefit humans– has been a major organizing component of conservation and a framework for understanding ethnobiological relationships among peoples and nature. Ecosystem services have environmental, cultural, and health components that are interrelated in an ecological web. Looking at colonialism as a key player in the truncation of fundamental to realized niche allows us to view declines in ecosystem service space from both biological (ie. biodiversity) and social (ie. economics, culture) viewpoints. This paper first defines “Ecosystem Service Space (ESS)” as an n-dimensional hypervolume consisting of variables that facilitate relationships among humans and their non-human kin through an ethnobiological lens. I then discuss how historical and ongoing colonialism truncates realized ecosystem service space, and finally, showcase ESS as a distinct, interdisciplinary tool for anti-colonial science to illuminate the reciprocal relationship between peoples and nature as an extension of themselves. |