Hydrologic Science and Indigenous Voices - Water Histories
May 25, 2022 / 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EDT
Venue/Location: Virtual
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Speaker
- Kenny Swift Bird
- Colorado School of Mines
In this series, indigenous leaders in water knowledge and hydrologic science explore how hydrological sciences are defined and who is included in that definition. Throughout the series, we explore how Native American people relate to water, what water issues are important for us to reflect on, how we can increase inclusivity in the hydrologic sciences community, and what challenges and opportunities we face as scientists and community members when finding resilient solutions to climate change.
Kenny Swift Bird is an Oglala Lakota Tribal member, a Gates Millennium Scholar (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), and a PhD student at Colorado School of Mines. His interest in hydrogeology, and geoscience more broadly, was sparked by water contamination and water scarcity issues on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, his Tribal home lands where most of his family still lives. His MS thesis work focused on delineating spatial and geochemical controls of arsenic and uranium in groundwater on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and he is currently involved with a water sampling campaign on the Navajo Nation though the AGU Thriving Earth Exchange. He is working to become an expert on metal(loid) fate and transport in streams and aquifer systems to address metal(loid) impacts on Tribal lands and within other marginalized communities.