00:00.00 heritagevoices Welcome to heritage voices episode 80 I'm Jessica yu quinto and I'm your host and today we are talking about Lumby perspectives on environment culture and community before we begin I'd like to honor acknowledge that the lands I'm recording on today are part of the nooch or you people's treaty lands. The Dan Nata and the ancestral puebloan Homeland today we have Dr Ryan Emmanuel and Dr Seth grooms on the show. Dr Ryan Emanuel is an associate professor of hydrology in the nicholas school of the environment at Duke University sorry that was a little weird. Okay. Dr. Ryan E I don't need to put the sorry Dr Ryan Emmanuel is an associate professor of hydrology in the nicholas school of the environment at Duke University he studies the movement and status of water in the environment and he's also interested in historical and cultural aspects of water and watery places. Imanuels work pays special attention to indigenous peoples enduring relations. Sorry um, Emmanuel's work pays special attention to indigenous peoples enduring relationships with rivers wetlands and other waterscapes in Southeastern North america he partners with tribal nations and indigenous communities to identify and address threats to culturally important waters that stem from pollution climate change and unsustainable development Emmanuel holds a ph d in environmental sciences from the University Of Virginia and is an enrolled member of the lumbie tribe. Welcome Ryan. 01:29.35 Ryan Happy to be here Jessica thanks for having me. 01:34.41 heritagevoices Yeah, think yeah, sorry um, yeah, thanks for coming on and Dr Seth grooms is an anthropological archeologist who works primarily in the eastern woodlands of Northern North america Dr. Seth Grooms is an anthropological archeologist who works primarily in the eastern woodlands of North America in the broadest sense. His research is focused on crafting archaeological narratives of native histories that are as much as possible informed by native american perspectives he uses methods from Geo Archeology landscape archeology and chronological modeling and interprets the resulting data within a theoretical framework comprised of traditional anthropological theory as well as native American Philosophies and epistemologies developed by contemporary native intellectuals. Dr. Groom's latest work is in the southeast specifically Mississippi and Louisiana where he examines the role of landscape modification such as mound building in the poverty point. Phenomenon Seth is an enrolled member of the lumby tribe of North Carolina so welcome Seth. 02:41.18 Seth Ah, thanks for having us Jessica it's ah my pleasure to be here today. 02:45.67 heritagevoices Yeah I'm I'm so excited to have both of you on at the same time. This might actually nothing else is coming to me be the first episode where we've had both um somebody with a environmental sciences background and somebody with a cultural. Ah. You know, an anthropological background on the same episode. So I'm pretty excited about this? Yeah yeah, um, and ah ah Ryan did you want to mention anything about you know, natural resource background here or do you think that was. 03:03.87 Seth Yeah I think they can do well together. 03:04.50 Ryan All right? Yeah, definitely. 03:18.74 Ryan I Think that was sufficient. 03:19.86 heritagevoices Enough. Okay, cool all right? Um, yeah so I'm very excited to talk to both of you today? Um, and let's get started just keep it simple with um how did you get into this field. 03:38.29 Seth Ron would you like to take that first. 03:40.27 Ryan Yeah I'm happy to start off so Jessica I had a very conventional earth science and environmental science background. Um I studied geology as an undergraduate I was attracted early on to hydrology. Water science and that's what I really wanted to pursue in graduate school and so there are very few programs that actually offer hydrology degrees or at least there were twenty years ago so I enrolled in an interdisciplinary environmental sciences program at Virginia where I could focus on hydrology. And I did that for my masters my ph d and the first several years of my career I focus primarily on natural sciences specifically around the movement of water in natural environments maybe eight or ten years ago um I began to move into issues around environmental justice and cultural resources primarily in the context of nepa reviews and so that sent me down this path of thinking more about the cultural implications of water. And the policies and actions that um that that surround those um cultural resources. So that's that's what what? um, spurred the bifurcation in my work and it's where I've landed today. 05:14.20 heritagevoices Yeah, and I mean for me as ah as a cultural anthropologist. It's like well obviously you know water tears into culture. But you know a lot of people out there Obviously don't don't think about it that way. 05:20.87 Seth Um. 05:24.87 Ryan Right? You'd be. You'd be surprised. Hydrology is still taught in many contexts as a ah purely physical science in the absence of human impacts or cultural impacts or things like this. 05:26.32 heritagevoices E. 05:40.19 heritagevoices Yeah, and I definitely want to get more into that later in this episode. Um, but Ryan I mean shoot sorry Seth um, what about you? How did you? How did you get into this work. 05:54.80 Seth Ah, so I would say I was I've always been ah like a history buff about I was the kind of kid that probably liked documentaries a lot more than other kids my age that kind of stuff I was always interested in I Also always enjoyed being. Outdoors and so archaeology was a natural fit in that kind of way as far as your work setting and your the subject of your work but I didn't think too much of it as a career option seriously probably until um, yeah, my early twenty s. 06:28.93 Seth So and I enlisted in the Marine Corps right out of high school and um, deployed overseas in 2008 and so I just I found myself outside of the the country in Iraq as it just lumby kid who had never really left North Carolina and despite kind of all that kind of you know chaos around that sort of chapter in my life I just was really fascinated by the ah the history. You know that I saw overseas and so you know when I got out of the Marine Corps I used my gi ah bill to put myself through undergrad. And it didn't take long you know after I got going at the university of North Carolina Charlotte from honorgrad degree for me to realize that I wanted to become an archaeologist and um and then not long after that for me to realize you know more specifically that I wanted to get those credentials so I could hopefully come back home one day. And ah and help the tribe with their various you know heritage cultural heritage initiatives. So I'd say that you know by the time. Yeah I was finishing about my undergrad I knew that I wanted to get my ph d and that I wanted to work with my tribe and and other you know, indigenous communities. 07:28.90 heritagevoices E. 07:43.38 heritagevoices Um, okay so um I have all these questions coming to my brain but first um so Seth um, what why? Why did you feel like you needed. Um. 07:47.47 Seth I sleep. 07:57.66 heritagevoices They get a Ph D in order to do that like what about that? Um, called to you. 08:03.64 Seth Well I knew that um, you know though obviously there are a lot of folks out there with Master's degrees or back for juies doing a lot of great community engaged work in you know, various capacities so you know it's not like a Ph D is is a necessity for that. But. 08:08.70 heritagevoices I. 08:16.72 heritagevoices Yes. 08:19.30 Seth I felt that it would give me the best shot to to um, be competitive. You know on the job market for being you know like a college professor and things like that in anthropology and I just I knew pretty early on that that was the. 08:27.19 heritagevoices And you. 08:33.59 Seth That's what I needed to kind of punch my ticket in and have a chance that kind of jobs where I felt like I could make an impact teaching and also having you know University resources to conduct research with with with communities. So yeah. 08:46.90 heritagevoices Yeah, yeah I was just thinking about all the all the students out there listening but um, you know maybe are navigating those decisions right now. So I thought I'd ask more detailed about why you went that way. Um, but so. 08:56.77 Seth Um, absolutely yeah. 09:02.29 heritagevoices You had more of a like it seems like you you went in and you were like okay I see how this can have a direct impact on my community um, working in in archeology and on heritage projects. Um Ryan it. It seems like from what you were saying that was a little bit more of a process to figure out. 09:08.10 Seth And. 09:21.59 heritagevoices Um, what that could look like so can you talk about? Um, what that looked like for you ah going from like you said you know the straight hydrology that they were teaching to ah some of these more community engaged aspects. 09:34.97 Ryan Yeah, absolutely and Seth knows this already. But in the lumby community as in many indigenous communities and and even some non-indigenous communities. There's a strong message that young people hear during their upbringing. That's. Go and get all the education you can so that you can come back and help your people and so that was a message that I received as a young person. Um I didn't have any water science role models in the Lumby Community we had lots of physicians lots of attorneys and we had lots of educators but I didn't know any indigenous natural scientists at all and it was only later in graduate school. Maybe even during my early faculty career when I began to find other native environmental scientists. And so I spent the first few years of my career trying to figure out how hydrology enables me to give back in the way that my elders told me that I needed to and it took many different forms as an early career scientist for several years I was. An ambassador for stem education I would come out and represent my University At College fairs I would welcome high school groups from all over the southeast who came to my institution and wanted to do college tours from various tribes. Give them. 11:11.32 Ryan Some some perspective on what it was like being a native person on a predominantly white campus and so that was that was how I contributed to my community for many years ah over the course of those activities which eventually evolved into things like environmental field days with high school students back home in the lumby community I began to hear from students from their teachers and even from parents who came out to these activities. About some of the pressing environmental issues that they faced on a day-to-day basis and and the ways that those issues began to to pull at the threads that that tied them to this place that that we've called home since time I memorial and. That's when I realized that if I was going to to make an impact on things that had immediate immediate concerns on people's lives that I needed to broaden my lens a little bit and think more about the human and cultural dimensions of water. And around that same time the North Carolina commission of indian affairs invited me to join their newly formed environmental justice committee as an ex officio member a technical expert and through my work on that committee I began to see these. 12:36.96 Ryan Issues appear over and over again in tribal communities throughout North Carolina um and and through that that study and through that practice and through many conversations I began to settle into um, a rhythm of partnering with. Commission and partnering with individual tribal communities to think through some of these problems and some of the potential solutions. 13:08.50 heritagevoices Okay, so can you give us an example of maybe 1 of them that that you felt like really um I don't know was really successful or really stands out to you. 13:18.60 Ryan Yeah, so around late twenty sixteen Early 2017 the federal government released and and draft environmental impact statement for a very large interstate. Gas transmission pipeline to carry gas from fracking formations in the central appalachians down to urban areas on the eastern seaboard and when the Draft Environmental review was released. Um, the maps that were presented were jaw dropping because the the route of this pipeline cut with almost surgical precision through a number of tribal communities in Virginia but especially in North Carolina and when we looked at the demographics around the populations that were going to be impacted the the disparities of impacts to american indian populations were just astronomical. You know we make up about 1% 14:22.26 heritagevoices A. 14:26.97 Ryan Of North Carolina's population. Um yet american indians were set to be 13% of the people who would be directly impacted by this project and so. 14:35.60 heritagevoices He. 14:39.50 Ryan That information those disparities were not disclosed in the federal government's environmental impact statement but they could be readily computed from tables that that have been provided in the vast appendices for this environmental review and. Frankly, my skills as a hydrologist as a quantitative scientist allowed me to quickly eyeball those tables grab the important information that we needed and compute those disparities based on the population fractions that I that I just described to you and once we had those disparities. 15:17.50 heritagevoices Um. 15:19.37 Ryan Ah, we were able to make strong cases for enhanced tribal engagement in the decision-making process and for enhanced scrutiny of environmental Justice implications because Environmental Justice is concerned with disparities in the distribution of. 15:24.40 heritagevoices E. 15:38.60 Ryan Ah, harmful environmental impacts and so that conversation and that data analysis led to a number of engagements in which tribal leaders were able to submit comments tribal councils were able to draft resolutions and you know these these these were statements that were submitted into the record and in the end they they were part of ah of ah a large body of voices that spoke out against this project on a number of grounds. Everything from. Ah, climate change implications to land conservation to endangered species and to environmental justice and so it was one of the first times that tribes across the region had all stepped forward on the exact same issue. With a similar message and so that was part of the the body of evidence that eventually persuaded the energy companies behind this project to pull the plug and so it was a success from that perspective. But. 16:34.49 heritagevoices Um. 16:46.55 heritagevoices Um, he. 16:50.79 Ryan For me I see it as a larger success because tribal governments were able to actually articulate what they expected from State and federal governments when it came to engaging them in the environmental decision-making process and we now have this paper Trail. Of clearly articulated expectations that we can point to and hopefully develop lasting policies around at least at the state level before the next big project comes our way. 17:22.86 heritagevoices Um, Wow Yeah I mean and the the coming together and um, showing that you're a force to be reckoned with I'm sure very powerful as well. Yeah, awesome. Ok well. 17:31.27 Ryan Absolutely. 17:37.69 heritagevoices We're right at our first breakpoint but when we come back Seth I want to talk about? Um, you know some of your work and and what that looks like for you. Ah your community engaged work. So let's let's touch on that right? when we come back. 17:50.16 Seth Um, great.