People living in an oil boom have lots of questions: Like, what’s happening to air, water and soil?
So a couple of science teachers at the local college on the reservation, got together with the anthropologist from the University of Colorado and came up with an idea: Build citizen science kits teachers can use with kids to investigate things like air and water quality.
This idea came from the community, so it had to happen with the community. Here’s Jen Shannon, the anthropologist:
"Because of the approach that we’re taking, we can’t just make the kits and show up and say, “here ya go!”
They hatched a plan: First, listening workshops on reservation this fall. Then, the Colorado team makes prototype science kits. They’ll return in May to test them with teachers and students. Finally, the kits will be ready next fall.
The listening workshops took place in October - Two on a Friday at high schools, right after the last bell. And two at the local tribal college, on Saturday. A boys and girls club instructor named Prairie Rose Seminole brought a crock-pot full of chicken stew. In all, more than 30 local community members came.
"...a student here, trying to be a teacher…"
" ...I teach chemistry and anatomy and environmental science..."
"...I've been in New Town for one year, I teach third grade…"
That’s Shawna Eagle, Tom Abe and Elizabeth Pullman. They came to figure out what questions students could investigate about potential human and environmental impacts of the oil development happening all around them.
In a sunny second-floor college classroom, with a mural of a white buffalo, they asked questions. Here’s college teacher Vivian Hall:
"The apartment complexes. What’s going to happen when all the people are gone?"
And, at another meeting, Aaron Fisher, high school social studies teacher.
"With all the light pollution, you can’t really see the stars are anything...but if you live in the middle of it, are there any psychological effects to that?"
They also talked about gas flaring. And whether construction is driving deer away. These things weren’t a big surprise. But something else was:
"So just the sheer fact that so many different kind of teachers came, from so many different grades, was a real surprise to us. And we never would have known that if we didn’t go and listen first."
The Colorado team is working, right now, on the kits: They might track animal migration by collecting scat, or have a community health survey. And these science kits might actually be used in reading or math classes. Or be designed so younger and older kids can team up.
This project is emerging from the community’s needs.
"Really citizen science for citizens -- right, instead of citizen science for scientific research."
After the meetings, the local Boys and Girls Club instructor, Prairie Rose Seminole, took the group from Colorado to some spots where she forages for plants. She pointed out buffalo berries and sumpweed as a pump jack bobbed in the background, and where a massive dam on the Missouri River flooded Indian lands.
"We have to start healing that so our future generations can have that hope, that ownership of these lands -- and how we can have that sense of ownership that we didn’t have before."
Ownership of the science as well - to monitor what’s happening around them, but also, to encourage kids here to become teachers, engineers, nurses -- jobs that are often imported. Citizen science kits are a cool outcome of this process, but the real goal is helping kids learn to ask questions and investigate the answers themselves.
