Role of federal funding of environmental research in building capacity in indigenous communities

Tribal communities, as with many others, are faced with ongoing challenges that demand collaborative and sustained research and efforts. Federal funding of tribal community-based research is a critical infrastructure within which burdened communities have 1) reliable and flexible funding, 2 cadre of technical and academic tools to determine and prioritize problems to be explored; 3) are able to build and strengthen their capacity for addressing research and development needs; and have a 4) safe and supportive environment to collaborate on or initiate research projects, develop culturally relevant tools, risk modeling tools, and focused public health messaging. The added benefit of research conducted in these settings is the identification of critical data, methodologies, and recommendations that can be utilized for decisionmaking, and influencing policies and regulations on the tribal, local and state levels.

This essay will demonstrate one such mechanism of federal funding from the Environmental Protection Agency National Center of Environmental Research (NCER) Science To Achieve Results (STAR) Program in which tribal environmental health risks are addressed through the community based participatory research. Several case studies of grants funded by NCER's Tribal Environmental Health Research Program and other tribal research that have yielded data, tools, products, methods and knowledge that increased capacity for tribal communities to better define and reduce the health risks of tribal populations, protect natural resources essential to cultural and spiritual practices, and encourage the ecological knowledge and tribal practices of protecting and preserving the earth for future generations.