Project Summary
Recently the Yurok Tribe has reacquired 30,000 acres of land that was forcibly removed from Yurok stewardship. The Tribe is actively working to maintain Indigenous management practices in relation with non-human relatives (plants, animals, forest lands, and river systems). These interconnected relationships are integral to Yurok health and wellbeing. The project team is developing and testing methods to evaluate how Yurok Indigenous stewardship practices affect Yurok health and wellbeing. All work is led by Yurok staff and tribal members and founded in community engagement.
Research Questions/Aims
- Develop a set of Indigenous Health Indicators (IHIs) specific to the Yurok world view;
- Define what it means to have an effective Yurok cultural burn (controlled burns are an ancient Indigenous land stewardship practice); and
- Pilot the IHIs by evaluating whether the IHIs accurately reflect how cultural burns are connected to Yurok health and wellbeing.
Actionability
- Spur systems-level changes in all of Yurok territories’ forests based on how Indigenous land stewardship practices influence health and wellbeing; and
- Provide entities, such as external government agencies, with information that could improve external understanding of Yurok health and wellbeing and the importance of cultural burning.
Outcomes
Health: Yurok community/environmental health and wellbeing
Other: Indigenous stewardship practices, land restoration, food sovereignty, ecosystems’ health
Methodology
The project team is creating a set of Indigenous Health Indicators (IHIs) by conducting a review of Tribal documents, records, and archives for information and stories that will help define Yurok Indigenous health as well as the connections to and importance of cultural burning. The IHIs are founded on an Indigenous community's specific worldviews of health and wellbeing, including otherwise “intangible” aspects of health that are often left out of most health constructs, such as “feeding the spirit” and “time spent with ancestors.” Both the indicator development and evaluation steps are community driven through interviews and workshops with Elders, knowledge holders, and other community members chosen based on the norms of the community. The process will continue circling back via review and approval to ensure that what is being developed reflects the community intent and is portrayed appropriately.
