IBS Speaker Series: Clint Carroll

Join in person or via Zoom, email ibs-contact@colorado.edu for the password.
*Light lunch served at 11:45, please RSVP.

Title: Indigenous Access, Conservation, and Land-Based Education in Oklahoma

Abstract:

Indigenous Nations face significant challenges when it comes to the interrelated processes of cultural knowledge revitalization and environmental adaptation. These challenges range from compromised local ecological health brought about by development and climate change, to limited access to land due to legal, social, and/or political barriers, and to obstacles to knowledge transmission caused by educational and economic forces. This talk views these challenges in the context of past and ongoing mutually constitutive structures of settler colonialism and capitalism, as well as through a framework of “relational continuity,” in which Indigenous peoples seek to maintain relational obligations to land and more-than-humans despite spatial and social change. Specifically, I discuss my long-term work with Cherokee people in Oklahoma on tribal environmental policy, land-based education, and comprehensive conservation strategies.

Bio:

Clint Carroll is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He received his doctorate from the University of California Berkeley in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona in Anthropology, with a minor in American Indian Studies. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, he works closely with Cherokee people in Oklahoma on issues of land conservation and the perpetuation of land-based knowledge and ways of life. His book, Roots of Our Renewal: Ethnobotany and Cherokee Environmental Governance (2015, University of Minnesota Press), explores how tribal natural resource managers navigate the material and structural conditions of settler colonialism, as well as how recent efforts in cultural revitalization are informing such practices through traditional forms of decision-making and local environmental knowledge.

Dr. Carroll has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Udall Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Science Foundation. He was also a 2014-2016 Fellow of the Native Investigator Development Program, funded by the National Institutes of Health. His work has been published in Ethnohistory, Geoforum, Environmental Research, EcoHealth, and numerous edited collections. He is an active member of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology. Dr. Carroll currently co-edits the Cambridge University Press series, Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research with Joy Porter (University of Hull) and Dina Gilio-Whitaker (California State University San Marcos). He also serves on the editorial boards for Cultural Anthropology and Environment and Society. He is a board member for Indigenous Education, Inc. (home of the Cobell Scholarship) and was recently elected to the Denver Botanic Gardens Board of Trustees (2022-2025).