Introduction to Environmental Studies: Indigenous Natural Resource Management on the Pacific Rim

This program will take an interdisciplinary approach combining natural and social sciences to understand natural resource management, conservation, and protection, and to analyze effective Indigenous-centered solutions to problems in these fields. Although Indigenous peoples comprise about 5 percent of world population, their lands embody 80 percent of the planet’s remaining biodiversity.

The program will apply concepts from ecology and political-cultural geography to study plants and animals in the Pacific Rim region, particularly on the West Coast of North America, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and Hawai’i, and the various methods that Indigenous nations have developed to protect and sustainably care for natural wealth harvested for food and other cultural uses, in the past, present, and future.

Students will learn the foundations of natural resource management from the fields of ecology and population biology, and how organisms are affected by habitat loss, overharvesting, climate change, and other threats. The focus of this learning will be around a variety of freshwater, marine and terrestrial habitats including watersheds, nearshore marine habitats, prairies, and forests. We will examine responses led by Native nations to heal the harms of settler colonialism, such as habitat restoration, building climate resilience and food sovereignty, removing dams and dikes, recovering militarized lands, resisting mining and fossil fuel projects, and planning for sea-level rise and other climate-related disasters. The program will study Indigenous aspects of environmental/climate justice and resilience. The process of building partnerships between tribal and non-tribal governments, and developing “unlikely alliances” between tribal rightsholders and their neighbors, will be examined as essential elements in developing effective and sustainable resource management and protection plans.

Students will engage with the material through lectures, labs, seminars, guest speakers, films, workshops, field trips, written assignments, and a research project and presentation. Students will develop skills in writing, research, synthesizing information, and public speaking. The class will take day trips to visit the lands of South Salish Sea tribes, and a multi-day field trip to coastal Washington tribes.

This program is coordinated with Greener Foundations for first-year students. Greener Foundations is Evergreen’s in-person 2-quarter introductory student success course sequence, which provides first-year students with the skills and knowledge they need to thrive at Evergreen. Students expected to take Greener Foundations should use CRN 10172 to register for a 2-credit Greener Foundations course in addition to this 14-credit program. 

First-year students who are not expected to take Greener Foundations or have been granted an exemption should use CRN 10171 to register for this program. Find more details about who isn't expected to take Greener Foundations on the Greener Foundations website.

Anticipated Credit Equivalencies:

4: Native American and Indigenous Studies: Indigenous Environmental Justice and Resilience

3: Geography: Human-Environment Interactions

3: Natural History of the Pacific Rim

4: Introduction to Natural Resource Management