NAS Achievements

Kaitlin Reed

Native American Studies

Native American Studies faculty member, Dr. Kaitlin Reed's first book, Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California was chosen as the winner of the 16th Annual Labriola National American Indian Data Center National Book Award. 

Kaitlin Reed and Cutcha Risling Baldy

Native American Studies

Drs. Kaitlin Reed and Cutcha Risling Baldy received a grant to design and implement professional development opportunities for faculty and staff in the humanities that will provide a pathway for ethical integration of Indigenous knowledge into their teaching, research, and service. These opportunities will include faculty book circles, speaker series, and intensive syllabus workshops, and will lay the groundwork for Cal Poly Humboldt to become a place for faculty from other universities and institutions to look to for models on integrating Indigenous knowledge systems at a university-wide level. Funding comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy

Native American Studies

Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy, co-director of the Rou Dalgurr Food Sovereignty Lab and Associate Professor of Native American Studies will serve as co-PI on a California Sea Grant project led by the Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation. The recent decline of California’s ghvtlh-k’vsh (kelp) forests directly affects the cultural lifeways and thus health of the Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation. This project will train and certify up to ten Natural Resources Staff and Tribal Citizens of the Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation to conduct both kelp monitoring and restoration efforts, including establishing kelp nurseries and grow-out sites.

Karley Rojas; Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy

Native American Studies

Karley Rojas (they/elle) of the Environment and Community Graduate Program, and research associate of the Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab and Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute has been selected as an ARI-NEXTGEN Fellow (USDA NIFA NEXTGEN grant to the California State University Agricultural Research Institute) for the 'Place-Based Learning Practices Project’, with an award in the amount of $25,000. The project is under the mentorship of Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy of the Native American Studies Department, as the principal investigator. This joins funding from Save the Redwoods League, Humboldt Energy Independence Fund, and the Sustainability Department. 

Aaron Gregory, Karley Rojas, Aubrey Pongluelert

Native American Studies

Dr. Aaron Gregory (Native American Studies, Science & Technology Studies) assisted in the organization of the 4th Annual Post-Capitalism Conference and Decolonizing Economies Summit as a member of the Steering Committee, opening speaker, and co-organizer of a panel on Food & Seed Sovereignty highlighting the Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab (FSL) and Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute at Cal Poly Humboldt, with contributions from Karley Rojas (FSL) and global panelists including Rowen White (Sierra Seeds; Indigenous Seedkeepers Network) Jon Jandai (Seeds for the People; Thamurakit) Alejandro Argumendo (Swift Foundation), Alfie Pulumbarit (MASIPAG; Seeds of Resistance) and Aubrey Pongluelert (Fulbright Scholar). 

Cutcha Risling Baldy; Kaitlin Reed

Native American Studies

Last week, Save California Salmon and Cal Poly Humboldt’s Native American Studies Department hosted the Northern California LandBack Symposium. This first-of-its-kind free event featured Tribal and State leaders, university representatives, foundations, NGOs, land trusts, and lawyers who work to return land to Northern California Tribes and Tribal land trusts. SCS & NAS also worked with experts to create a draft California LandBack Red Paper to inform policy makers on the history of landback efforts along with current policy and funding needs to help make Tribal land return easier.

Draft Red Paper: https://www.californiasalmon.org/_files/ugd/d97ff6_76b85f1726cb4595871840c91bc9ece9.pdf 

Conference Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@SaveCaliforniaSalmon

Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy, Dr. Kaitlin Reed

Native American Studies

Drs. Cutcha Risling Baldy and Kaitlin Reed received a $50,000 grant from the S. H. Cowell Foundation for the Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab and Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute. Funding will support general operations, ongoing yearly programs, and temporary initiatives of the Lab, including funding for personnel, supplies, and community events and engagement.

Aaron Gregory

Native American Studies

Dr. Aaron Gregory presented at the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) in Cholula, Mexico (December, 2022). His panel, Abysmal Infrastructures: Energy communities in Maintenance, Repair and Abandonment, engaged with the problem of 'Indigenous Energy Sovereignty' as an infrastructural assemblage of technologies, materialities and modalities of governance drawn from non-Native, settler-state and private-sector actors. Dr. Gregory's presentation addressed the ways in which renewable energy projects developed in Native America often rely upon rare earth minerals and materials extracted from Indigenous lands in Africa and South America. Dr. Gregory's conference paper is scheduled for publication in a forthcoming edited book.

Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy, Dr. Kaitlin Reed

Native American Studies

Drs. Cutcha Risling Baldy and Kaitlin Reed received a $1 million grant from the Sierra Health Foundation to support the Food for Indigenous Futures project, an initiative of The Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab and Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute (FSL). The program aims to develop tribally informed, place-based, and culturally informed programming for mental health and substance abuse interventions amongst Native American youth. FSL Coordinator Marlene' Dusek will serve as project director. Funding will also support the creation of an Indigenous youth council to serve in an advisory capacity to the FSL, and support the Lab’s annual Indigenous Foods Festival.

Brandilynn Villarreal, Kimberly Vincent-Layton, Edelmira Reynoso, Kayla Begay and Kimberly N. White

Native American Studies

Despite having expertise, student voices have typically been left out of faculty professional development literature. The purpose of this study was to center college student voices around perceptions of equitable learning environments for use in faculty professional development programs.  Results revealed students and faculty had similar perceptions and both endorsed the importance of equitable classroom practices. Using content analysis to generate themes, students identified instructor responsibilities to promote learning environments that are: (1) caring and supportive, (2) safe and equitable, (3) individualized, (4) student-centered, and (5) active and collaborative.