Many voices, One Health

Presentations

Abstract
	Interruptions and Renewals of Indigenous Fisheries as Relational Food Systems First Author: Gavenus , Erika Author(s): Gavenus , Erika - Indiana University Bloomington Indigenous peoples living along the eastern Pacific Coast hold longstanding and deep relationships with the fish who share their territorial waters. Relationships forged and maintained through practices of stewardship, harvest, and reciprocity guided by teachings, songs, stories, protocols, and Indigenous laws. Taken together these peoples, practices, waters, and guiding principles constitute relational food systems. In the case of Indigenous fisheries along the Pacific Coast, the processes of settler-colonialism stand as looming interruptions, sometimes intentionally, to these relationships. This presentation highlights ongoing interruptions to the relationships among people, fish, and water as food injustices. Concurrently, shifts in the political seascape that have been building since colonization as an undercurrent to the dominant fisheries governance regimes are beginning to break, with notable reassertions of Indigenous governance authority over their fisheries. This work considers reassertions of governance authority as renewals of interrupted relationships and examines the diverse forms they are taking.
	Runoff Responsibility: Rethinking Stewardship in Connected Systems First Author: Morgan , Ashley Author(s): Morgan , Ashley - University of Tennessee One Health Initiative This presentation examines ecotoxicological processes through a One Health lens, showing how contaminants like agricultural runoff, industrial pollutants, pharmaceuticals, and urban effluents move across landscapes and accumulate in aquatic systems. These pathways challenge the “pristine wilderness” fallacy, the mistaken belief that protected or remote areas remain untouched. In reality, hydrological connectivity ensures no ecosystem is isolated; contaminants cross political, geographic, and conceptual boundaries, linking upstream actions to downstream impacts. Framed by ethnobiology and One Health, this work expands stewardship to include non-human stakeholders. Aquatic organisms, riparian plants, and ecosystems serve as environmental health indicators, yet their signals are often excluded from decisions. Integrating ecotoxicological data with ecological and cultural perspectives advocates for recognizing these non-traditional stakeholders in conservation. Ultimately, this approaches calls for shifting from fragmented management to relational, systems-based stewardship that acknowledges interconnected health across species and environments, reinforcing the ethical and practical necessity of collective responsibility for ecosystem integrity and resilience.
	Sussing out the Stateside Fallout of a European “Green Fuel” First Author: Maxwell , Sara Author(s): Maxwell , Sara - University of Tennessee at Knoxville Responding to a European Union subsidy for wood pellets burned in the continent’s historically coal-fired power plants, North Carolina’s wood pellet industry in the last 16 years has grown into the world’s top supplier for this powerplant fuel. While the company that runs the factories touts “green energy,” the African American and Native American environmental justice communities around four giant factories on the state’s inner coastal plain complain of high rates of upper respiratory illnesses and other health and environmental disamenities. In keeping with the One Health philosophy of exploring environmental challenges from a holistic perspective that sees the entire planetary environment as one big οἶκος never immune from anthropogenic change, this paper foregrounds these communities’ ecological knowledge in the face of industry narratives that have consistently and historically sought to link the communities’ health problems to personal “lifestyle” choices.