[In process]
Background*
Part 1**

Part 2*** From a follow-up to the newslist discussion about anthropology and climate change–

Q. “So…what can we do to solve this problem? Can we think like engineers?”

Please, don’t. Not even anthropological engineers. For example, see this —

• American and Dutch Coastal Engineering: Differences in Risk Conception and Differences in Technological Culture Wiebe E. Bijker, Social Studies of Science, 2 2007; vol. 37: pp. 143 – 151. http://sss.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/37/1/143.pdf [pdf file]

Yes, a focus on problem solving is needed, but an integrated focus (biocultural anthropology, human ecology, human biology, archaeological anthropology, a.k.a. anthropology). Engineers as a whole do their work well, but often fall down precisely when it comes to defining the correct problem.

The University of Alaska must model the billions of extra dollars needed to replace existing infrastructure despite missing data sets. The study was completed recently and based upon the infrastructure definitions provided by the state’s FEMA equivalent (the division without a single social scientist).

How accurate are the infrastructure database? I have the notes from the communities themselves going back to 1995 when I first got to Alaska. There was then the overdue need to consider environmental change in building landfills or airports. I could glance at the landscape and tell what is going on because I took soils and geology courses and did fieldwork on changes in historical human terrains.

Since 1992 at least, the engineers have been in charge in Alaska (and northern NM) for solutions to rural / tribal “environmental health” and change. How many unsanitary dumps did we as tribal staff have to consider just within the northern NM Pueblos? I ask the Indian Health Service sanitarian and 10 days later I get a call from the Bureau of Indian Affairs hydrology engineer who wants to know how many dumps there are because they got an inquiry from IHS…. We in the Pueblos (with a planner from the engineering department in Albuquerque and a PE formerly with Singapore megaprojects) were forced to re-write the EPA/BIA’s integrated solid waste planning manual as an archaeology field manual.

I have the notes from 1993 when EPA said the money we needed for clean drinking water in the Pueblos had to go to Alaska for their more serious issues. In Alaska we were promised a “honey bucket museum” by the Governor and not a better honey bucket. I’ve seen where and how that money was spent (the same out-of-date technology they put in New Mexico, only at 5 times the cost). A million-dollar anuk house (compressed air pumped through an open tub of sewage) not only doesn’t reduce widespread strep and RSV and MRSA and hep but the building materials fall apart in the sea air inside of 10 months (just like the tribal council said).

I listen between the lines of what Alaska Natives say to the government men. I listen to what fellow G-men and women tell me when the communities aren’t around. I listen when my neighbors and friends and co-workers ask questions.

Without anthropological insights the USDA NRCS soils engineers cannot fathom the problem. The US Army Corps of Engineers cannot fathom the problem AND they can only do what they are told by Congress and Senator Stevens. The IHS and HUD engineers couldn’t even fathom the idea that 20 year old lagoon technology wasn’t appropriate in 1980 and isn’t today. The housing development engineers moving one house at a time couldn’t fathom the problem in Labrador and can’t in Newtok (the 2007 external coordination is USACE COE).

The problem today within Anthros as an organization is that it seems to think like engineers. That’s why the on-going disaster of Katrina and the Mississippi Delta is replicated in the Yukon and Kuskokwim and Kobuk and Nushagak Deltas (or maybe vice versa as my experience antedates Katrina.)

It isn’t rocket surgery to know what needs to be done. It is good old fashioned (natural science) [pdf file] four-field anthropology. There isn’t another technical field which has the capability of integrating what is known and needs to be known to plan the future. This is as true of 2007 AAA as it was in 1985 (or in 1976,* see William W. Kellogg and Margaret Mead)

At the Women and Anthropology Group (University of Auckland, 1987) we identified three reasons for including anthropology in national policy discussions:

we have resources and expertise to help develop the vocabulary and appropriate context for consideration of this topic by the public

we have specific information on how humans adapt or fail to cope, especially relevant to New Zealand (and the Pacific)

we should raise issues relevant to expertise from other disciplines which we feel are important (e.g., ethics of emigration and immigration policy)

… In general, discussions of [environmental disasters] have focussed on technical issues and narrow aspects of social systems, not comprehensively on people nor on issues of human relations. Policy has been planned with a bias towards rosy pictures of success. The anthropological input is needed to balance such images and to provide accurate information for informed decisions to be made.

Culture affects the technology and expertise which is applied to the problem. Culture affects how we as a people accept or reject environmental change and disasters.

Culture affects how we drive the conception of the assessment, preparation, and modelling of disasters (even those of post-9/11 and privacy)–

The American practice focuses on predicting disasters and mediating the effects once they have happened, in brief: on flood hazard mitigation. [Bijker]

This seems like the governmental use of the term mitigation in Alaska or Louisiana. It is unlike that of environmental assessment (National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA). In Environmental Impact Study / Assessment, one mitigates the probable impacts beforehand, by redesigning the project or by compensatory land purchases, etc. The FEMA folks seem to mitigate the damage only after the fact.

Why build a revetment for static communities when our communities should be dynamic constituents of nonlinear systems? That is, boreal living, human or beastie, requires a non-sedentary and continuously changing situation. Alaska humans have been “stuck” in place. The environment they subsist with does not.

We need an integrated human systems analysis.

The professor is at best ill-informed on the subject. His desire to strip away race and greed and other “secondary” issues in our understanding of the broken levees is horribly misguided. We need to understand all the elements of the problem, not just global warming, because, again, the floods of NOLA could have been prevented.

Rebuilding bad design, as you say, is not a great option. But the Dutch don’t have bad design. Why do we have to?
http://www.chinmusicpress.com/books/doyouknow/voices/news/ 2007/07/hartford_safe_in_ivory_tower_p.html

Therefore, don’t send engineers or engineered thinking. Send phone cards so at least one of us can speak with the engineers, with Governor Palin, and Uncle Ted.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Notes, citations, further reading

• http://sss.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/37/1/143.pdf [pdf file]
• http://iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Home/ResearchAreas/climatechange.htm
• An Alaskan Challenge: Native Village Sanitation (May 1994)
  http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk1/1994/9401_n.html
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/hlthenvt/232312089/in/set-72157594265830625/

http://www.canoe.ca/NationalTicker/CANOE-wire.Innu-Resettlement.html [retrieved 2002 via Wotanging Ikche and Native American News Copyright c. 1996-2002
"RE: Innu Relocation in Labrador botched Planning"
http://www.nanews.org/archive/2002/nanews10.049] and also available from http://cf.groups.yahoo.com/group/IlnuNetNews/message/1313

• http://www.chinmusicpress.com/books/doyouknow/voices/news/
  Voices of New Orleans
• http://www.aaanet.org/gad/history/062kroeber.pdf [pdf file]
  The Place of Anthropology in Universities

* And still raising Cain, see the silly “1975 ‘Endangered Atmosphere’ Conference: Where the Global Warming Hoax Was Born”
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/ 2007-23/pdf/50-55_723.pdf which begins “”Global Warming” is, and always was, a policy for genocidal reduction of the world’s population.”

• Kellogg, William W., and Margaret Mead 1977

  http://13c4.wordpress.com/2006/01/12/the-anthropology-of-human-survival/

http://13c4.wordpress.com/2006/02/20/new-zealand-after-nuclear-war/

(1987) Anthropologists see their role in the following ways:

1. We would like to facilitate discussion taking a more holistic approach to the problem of society after [environmental disaster]. So far, discussion on the aftermath … has centred primarily on discussing individual components of the system, such as transport, communication, etc. We would like to approach the subject by making human beings the centre of our arguments. Anthropologists are possibly the only members of the scientific community who regularly discuss issues from the viewpoint of general human adaptability and everything which acts upon it.

2. We would like to bring into the discussion subjects that relate specifically to our own field of expertise, such as adaptive strategies, cultural adaptation, transmission of culture, the demographic consequences of changing social structure, and archaeological evidence concerning constraints on societies reliant on low level technology.

3. We would like to facilitate discussion of some of the more difficult ethical problems such as migration and the possible racial consequences. We would like to look at the possible effects on interpersonal relationships

• Part 1**
  http://13c4.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/anthropology-climate-change-war-environment-1
• http://aprn.org/2007/08/07/talk-of-alaska-subsistence-management/
• http://www.chinmusicpress.com/books/doyouknow/voices/news/2007/07/hartford_safe_in_ivory_tower_p.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AAA Opposes U.S. Military’s Human Terrain System Project http://www.aaanet.org/blog/PR_110707.htm

AAA Executive Board Releases Ad Hoc Commission Report on Engagement of Anthropology in US Security/Intelligence Communities (CEAUSSIC) November 28th, 2007 http://www.aaanet.org/PM_112807.htm

Site Search Tags: anthropology, ISER, UAA, Ted+Stevens, NOLA, Katrina, sciencing, systems+analysis, analytical+anthropology, Palin, preparedness, erosion, APRN.org, ADN.com, Margaret+Mead, nuclear+winter, Unorganized+Borough, YKAlaska, disaster, Landrieu, Murkowski, Corps+of+Engineers, USDA, Congress, disaster, thimk

from NAEP Native Access to Engineering Programme First aboriginal food guide balances traditional, practical

and from CBC [read the entire story here]

• http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/04/12/food-guide.html

“Bannock, berries, wild game and canned milk are part of a new version of Canada’s Food Guide, created specifically for First Nations, Inuit and Métis.

“With this guide, First Nations, Inuit and Métis will have a tool to make more informed choices and nurture a healthy future by building on the traditions and values of a proud past and present,” Federal Health Minister Tony Clement said after unveiling the new food guide at a Yellowknife school Wednesday.

• What are the main differences between Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide and Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide – First Nations, Inuit and Métis?

  Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide – First Nations, Inuit and Métis reflects the importance of both traditional and store-bought foods for Aboriginal people living in Canada.
  http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/fnim-pnim/index_e.html

Some culturally specific examples of single servings include:

* Leafy vegetables and wild plants: 125 millilitres, cooked; 250 millilitres, raw.
* Berries: 125 millilitres.
* Bannock: 35 grams (a piece about five by five by 2.5 centimetres).
* Traditional meats and wild game: 75 grams, cooked.

• “We are pleased to see ‘country food’ being recognized in the Canada Food Guide as an essential element of a nutritious diet for Inuit,” commented Mary Simon, President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. “Country food for Inuit includes caribou, Arctic Char, seal, whale, walrus, muskox, ptarmigan, and many other plants, animals, and fish. This Food Guide will be a useful tool to educate Inuit youth across the Arctic and in the South.” http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/media/nr-cp/2007/2007_44_e.html

• Download the guide
  http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/pubs/fnim-pnim/index_e.html

Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide: First Nations, Inuit and Métis
Health Canada
HC Pub.: 3426
Cat.: H34-159/2007E-PDF
ISBN: 978-0-662-45521-9

Help on accessing alternative formats, such as PDF, MP3 and WAV files, can be obtained. This publication can be made available on request on diskette, large print, audio-cassette and braille (and in French). Contact Publications, Health Canada, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0K9
E-Mail: publications@hc-sc.gc.ca
Tel.: 1-866-225-0709
TTY: 1-800-267-1245
Fax: (613) 941-5366

Canada First Nations have done some extraordinary nutrition and dietary research.

• On-line nutrition course for Inuit communities
  http://ykalaska.wordpress.com/2006/12/02/online-nutrition-course/

The Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment (CINE) is an incredible idea. Harriet Kuhnlein, the first director, does excellent work with communities. CINE was one of the models for formulating an autonomous, community-based Center for Human Ecology, (northern Pueblos, New Mexico.)

See also

• http://tinyurl.com/2xjw2t

Add to Bookmarks:

Site Search Tags: Métis, Inuit, traditional, First+Nations, nutrition, diet, country+food, bush+food, CBC, NAEP, bannock, CINE, Kuhnlein, Aboriginal+people, Native+food

As part of the HazArt project | Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H) of Traditional Indian Artisans and Craftspeople Project (HazArt) | we tested the ambient air quality during a firing of black-on-black (reduced) pottery. This field project was a collaboration of Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc., Sandia National Laboratory, and Tewa Women United.

The project was recorded August 1993 by Catalina Reyes of KUNM for National Native News. Her story was broadcast that September.

Principals on the broadcast are

Field location was the pot firing shed (stable) of the late Maria and Julian Martinez, San Ildefonso Pueblo, great-grandparents to Ms Sanchez and Garcia. Read earlier post,
| Maria Martinez’s open-source earthenware |

This digitized audio file does not represent the quality of the original audiotape. The audio is copyright. I’m sorry the quality is not good. I’ll get it improved eventually. There are photos of the project, in deep storage. These too will one day be available.

The following picture shows the traditional firing. Please read the story and view the pictures at

• http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/48059.html

Social Bookmarks:

• Listening to Indian Country
  http://www.turtletrack.org/Issues02/Co01262002/ CO_01262002_Native_News.htm

Technorati Tags: Tewa+Women+United, black-on-black-pottery, Sandia+National+Laboratory, ENIPC, Eight+Northern+Indian+Pueblos, National+Native+News, occupational+health, radio, San+Ildefonso, health+effects, native+crafts, traditional+knowledge, audio, fieldwork, industrial+hygiene, human+biology, disease+ecology, grassroots+science, CBPR, community+based+research

Adverse birth outcomes associated with open dumpsites in Alaska Native Villages.
Gilbreath S, Kass PH
Am J Epidemiol. 2006 Sep 15; 164(6): 518-28

This retrospective cohort study evaluated adverse birth outcomes in infants whose birth records indicated maternal residence in villages containing dumpsites potentially hazardous to health and environment. Birth records from 1997 to 2001 identified 10,073 eligible infants born to mothers in 197 Alaska Native villages. Outcomes included low or very low birth weight, preterm birth, and intrauterine growth retardation. Infants from mothers in villages with intermediate (odds ratio (OR) = 1.73, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.06, 2.84) and high (OR = 2.06, 95% CI: 1.28, 3.32) hazard dumpsites had a higher proportion of low birth weight infants than did infants from mothers in the referent category. More infants born to mothers from intermediate (OR = 4.38, 95% CI: 2.20, 8.77) and high (OR = 3.98, 95% CI: 1.93, 8.21) hazard villages suffered from intrauterine growth retardation. On average, infants weighed 36 g less (95% CI: -71.2, -0.8) and 55.4 g less (95% CI: -95.3, -15.6) when born to highly exposed mothers than did infants in the intermediate and low exposure groups, respectively, an effect even larger in births to Alaska Native mothers only. No differences in incidence were detected across exposure levels for other outcomes. This is the first study to evaluate adverse pregnancy outcomes associated with open dumpsites in Alaska Native villages.

Read the full paper on-line

• http://tinyurl.com/yaawbo

or available as

• Full Text PDF)
  http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/ reprint/164/6/518?ijkey=820a0d0259407f55cd6b6130f08ca58f8a2919ab

I’m reading this now in more detail. Some of the important details to analyze are

Over 95 percent of Alaska Native villages use open dumpsites for solid waste disposal rather than landfills. An open dumpsite is a solid waste site that is not maintained, contains uncovered wastes, and has no boundaries. Open dumping can enable water and soil contamination, disease transmission, fire danger, and injury to site salvagers. In an attempt to reduce waste volume, dump fires are set, or nonseparated wastes are burned in metal containers in approximately 75 percent of villages, releasing potentially toxic fumes. Many Alaska Natives have subsistence diets, and there are concerns about contaminants getting into food and water supplies. Many villages lack waste management services and are responsible for disposing their own wastes, resulting in potential exposures to hazardous wastes and disposal methods. Approximately 45 percent of villages do not have running water to homes, and villagers must haul their own wastewater, often discarded at or near open dumps, increasing risks of exposure to pathogens when disposing of trash.

Negative birth outcomes were selected to evaluate potential environmental hazards posed by these dumpsites. The purpose of the study was to determine if women living in villages with open dumpsites ranked high hazard have a higher incidence of negative birth outcomes than do women living in villages with sites that have lower hazard rankings.

Some things to examine

• open dumps are ubiquitous in most rural US and Alaska communities
• not every rural/remote Alaska community is an Alaska Native ethnic population
• the data come from
  

  Birth records were obtained from the Alaska Bureau of Vital Statistics for all births to women living in federally recognized Alaska Native villages during 1997–2001.

• open dumps had to be rated to be included in the study
  

  the women had to reside in villages for which there existed an evaluation of the hazard potential of the community dumpsite(s)… The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium ranks dumpsites on the basis of waste contents, average rainfall, distance to drinking waster and domestic water source, site drainage, potential to create leachate at site, accessibility and exposure to the public and vectors, frequency of burning, and degree of public concern over the site

At the time of the study, the state and the federal (ANTHC) databases were not integrated. The inspections used different but somewhat similar criteria. Often the sites listed are not the same. I found the state data to be more comprehensive, but even then, as with New Mexico, there are dumps which are in one dataset but not in the other and many more dumpsites exist than are logged into the databases.

With the ADEC database, many older or “closed” dumps/landfills won’t show up in the database (they are in the old folders in the file cabinets) because they are listed as “closed” or as federal sites or otherwise inactive. One of the ironies of developing community-run solid waste programs (Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council) was that the information was too poor or non-existent from BIA, IHS, or other sources that we could use. I once asked for a list of dumps recorded by BIA (so we could compare to what we were discovering). A few days later I got a request, from IHS I believe, for a list of dump sites in our villages. The feds went to us in order to answer our question.

As the study authors note, the data and results are not very precise,

Future studies examining the potential health effects associated with open dumpsites in Alaska Native villages should include measurements that are more precise in nature. Misclassification errors are inherent in studies with crude exposure measurements.

One cannot say that open dump sites cause problems in pregnancy and birth. However there is a tendency for Alaska Native communities with the worse solid waste dumping to also have problems with pregnancy and births.

The most important aspect of this study is that it is the first to attempt to characterize the relation of these adverse pregnancy outcomes among residents of Alaska Native villages to open dumpsites.

This is true. But to understand whether there is any cause and effect we need to do more (could be only a relationship to tribal status or those places with less private cash or those dependent on federal health services???)

Mothers in villages with low hazard-ranked dumpsites tended to have had fewer short interpregnancy intervals and previous pregnancies, were more frequently Caucasian and between 20 and 39 years of age, completed more years of education, more often had access to acute care medical facilities, and were more likely to have households in their villages completely plumbed compared with mothers from villages with intermediate and higher hazard-ranked dumpsites.

What is needed is better study of actual community dump sites (location, number, age, contents, etc.), better integration of good quality data, more precise identification of behaviors in solid waste exposure (mothers), etc. This means each community must be the central arbiter or quality control for studies of its own local environment. Then, make sure that same quality of information can be shared with others to understand what is actually occurring and how to improve our living.

What do you all think, the ones who have to come up with integrated solid waste management plans for your own village?

Site Search Tags: dumps, health, inspections, SWMP, ADEC, ANTHC, class+III

I’m trying to assemble what I have used when working with rural communities on their solid waste. I hope these materials will be useful to others. These materials may be modified to suit others. Unless otherwise noted, this Rural SWMP work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License

Of course, if you would like direct help, please feel free to contact me. If enough people want to work together on solid waste, then we can set up a category over at
http://YKAlaska.wordpress.com

As the materials are posted, I’ll index them below for easier finding. Please add your comments or questions to the posts; this will help me improve the materials.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Manuals Available to Assist Communities with Solid Waste Planning and Education

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Menu to Midden: Human food system

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bumsted, M. Pamela (Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council), Karen S. Young (Northern Pueblos Institute), and Richard Chavez (University of New Mexico / NM Engineering Research Institute, NMERI) 1992 Tribal Solid Waste Management Planning (hands-on workshop course, later used by BIA)

When I locate my copy, I will post. These revisions to the BIA / EPA Manual were made to enable non-specialists —

• We felt there was a need for modular training, so that busy people could spend a minimum time away from their regular work.
• There was a need to be sure people got valid training and information because their time was valuable (not slacker stuff).
• There was a need to document the existing and newly earned expertise. The expertise could be shared amongst the small communities (originally, no one thought there were environmental people in the eight northern Pueblos, but eventually the office’s mailing list approached 100 people or offices.) In addition, too often training and education programs would not build on what people knew so it was difficult to enhance tribal scientific and technical capacity. For those wishing to pursue college-level education, their training should have credit towards their academic programs.
• The existing manuals did not provide worksheets (how are the data collected, calculated, and catalogued?)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Interim Solid Waste Management

In progress

Bienvenidos, Bula, Haeremai, Camai, Bepuwave

always in process…. ;)

• Capacity-building among tribal governments & rural communities
• Environment, health, information technology, natural resources, & science
• Community-based research & economic development & management
• Organizational culture nuclear weapons labs
• Complex systems
• Cultural resources & museums
• Strategic planning, public involvement
• Teaching, including community outreach and public interpretation

My basic philosophy in community–based research (a.k.a., grass–roots science) has always been—

that technical skills and expertise are to be developed within the communities in order for this knowledge base to be retained after a contract or grant period ends.

I believe that when communities ask their own questions, have their own data, and their own collation, analysis, and interpretation of others’ data they will

1. understand the disease and health trends of their communities;
2. be able to predict the health trends and prepare for appropriate action for the communities;
3. portray the total health and environment program requirements of the tribal communities to other communities, organizations, and Congress;
4. allocate scarce resources for their own protection in the most productive manner;
5. participate fully in the development of health information systems, useful to other rural communities, especially in areas of the release of hazardous materials and environmental threat;
6. enable tribal leadership to effectively communicate environmental and health concerns to their respective communities;
7. enable the communities to choose wisely among various outside offers of technical and scientific help; to control the quality of the data, research, analysis, and products from outside contractors, consultants, and agencies; and to oversee and coordinate the efforts of BIA and IHS executed on behalf of tribal communities.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There doesn’t seem to be any other way to show my profile, so here it is on this page.

My special areas—
* Capacity–building among tribal governments and rural communities in environment, health, information technology, natural resources, and science * Community–based research, economic development, & management * Organizational culture of nuclear weapons laboratories * Complex systems * Cultural resources & museums * Strategic planning, public involvement * Teaching, including community outreach and public interpretation

My previous projects include—

Credentials by themselves are not the best judge of reliability and validity, but they can be an important tool.

1. Ph.D., human biology and cultural adaptation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
2. Dip., Human Biology, University of Oxford (Wolfson College), equivalent to MS public health
3. B.A. cum laude, anthropology, natural sciences, Spanish, Beloit College (USA)

I’m a long-time member of
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS one of three of us in remote Alaska)
Sigma Xi, the scientific research society (evidently the only member in remote Alaska)

previously
professional member of American Indian Science & Engineering Society (AISES)
founding board member, Australasian Society for Human Biology

My Rèsumé is here

www DOT quicktopic DOT com/29/H/8Cr7kx7R3Jwv along with

Examples of publications
Professional training
Reviewer or referee for the following
Examples of funding and grants obtained

Skills Profile based derived from America’s Career InfoNet

Technorati Tags:
adaptation
Alaska
Aotearoa
biocultural
capacity building
community based research
culture
Cup’ik
elders
environment
Eskimo
human biology
indigenous
Los Alamos
New Mexico
overqualified
New Zealand
Pacific Rim
anthropology
rural development
sciencing
tradition
Yup’ik

I’m trying to assemble what I have used when working with rural communities on their solid waste. I hope these materials will be useful to others. These materials may be modified to suit others. Unless otherwise noted, this Rural SWMP work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License

Of course, if you would like direct help, please feel free to contact me. If enough people want to work together on solid waste, then we can set up a category over at http://YKAlaska.uniblogs.org

As the materials are posted, I’ll index them below for easier finding. Please add your comments or questions to the posts; this will help me improve the materials.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Manuals Available to Assist Communities with Solid Waste Planning and Education

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Menu to Midden: Human food system

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bumsted, M. Pamela (Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council), Karen S. Young (Northern Pueblos Institute), and Richard Chavez (University of New Mexico / NM Engineering Research Institute, NMERI) 1992 Tribal Solid Waste Management Planning (hands-on workshop course, later used by BIA)

When I locate my copy, I will post. These revisions to the BIA / EPA Manual were made to enable non-specialists —

• We felt there was a need for modular training, so that busy people could spend a minimum time away from their regular work.
• There was a need to be sure people got valid training and information because their time was valuable (not slacker stuff).
• There was a need to document the existing and newly earned expertise. The expertise could be shared amongst the small communities (originally, no one thought there were environmental people in the eight northern Pueblos, but eventually the office’s mailing list approached 100 people or offices.) In addition, too often training and education programs would not build on what people knew so it was difficult to enhance tribal scientific and technical capacity. For those wishing to pursue college-level education, their training should have credit towards their academic programs.
• The existing manuals did not provide worksheets (how are the data collected, calculated, and catalogued?)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Interim Solid Waste Management

In progress

[revised 2008july15, 2008july19]

“Friday morning people from various pueblos hustled in the hot sun to prepare for the weekend’s 35th Annual Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Arts & Crafts Show.”

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/46448.html This link no longer works.

A direct link to this year’s show is
2008-07-15

http://www.eightnorthernpueblos.com/

My apologies. There has not been a permanent link to ENIPC, Inc or to the show so I was pleased to find this one. However, evidently the link now belongs to a cyber squatter. This is too bad because more and more people rely on the world-wide web to start contacting people and organizations. [As readers coming here are aware] If anyone knows of the new webpage, please let me know.

The Santa Fé New Mexican website isn’t any help either, that I can find.

The Artisans and Craftsmen Show is held the third week in July. The permanent grounds are located in Okay-Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo) between Santa Fé and Taos.

The name has changed but it is still the best opportunity to see contemporary arts and crafts and to speak with the artisans and craftspeople.

from the state of NM visitor center–

The show is the weekend of July 19-20, 2008

Try this phone number 505-747-1593

The show venue lies 25 miles north of Santa Fé via US 84/285 and one mile north of Española on NM 68.

Have fun. Be sure to have the mutton sandwich.

Bepuwave, visitors, some 400 plus now. If I can provide better information for next year, please let me know in the comments. Please say hello to folks for me (I’m currently just 80 miles upstream from the Bering Sea).

Highway locations of the eight northern Indian Pueblos

related posts here

• ENIPC Visitors Guide “Environmental Concerns & Solutions”

• Take ugly butts home

• HazArt1 Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H) of Traditional Indian Artisans and Craftspeople

• Native Crafts Health Effects Project

• Biocultural Dimensions of Environment and Health

The pamphlet can be downloaded in Microsft Word format (click or right click to download) It is 6 pages with embedded graphics and available under a Creative Commons license.

When I figure out how to make a smaller (and updated) format of the original document, I will post that instead.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Pueblo Crafts & Healthy Lungs, 1994
pamphlet about lung protection for Environment, Safety, and Health of traditional Indian arts and crafts (HazArt), a collaborative, community-based project of the northern Indian Pueblos in New Mexico grassroots science.
M. Pamela Bumsted

While I directed the ES&H programs–
This label was attached to portable ashtrays which had been donated by Winston-Salem to the local college. We then distributed these to visitors at the big Eight Northern Indian Artisans and Craftsmen Show (1993). The labels were made to size in MS-Word (tables) then cut apart and slipped into the back of the foil lined pockets (which covered the tobacco ads).

Most people were grateful—to use themselves at the outdoor show or to give to friends and family who smoked.

We did get a few angry people, but I don’t think they understood the joke. Note that we put our contact info on the label (always, always on handouts. Otherwise, how can the public follow up with questions or understand what THEIR programs were doing?)

Site Search Tags: health, Pueblos, art, public+involvement

Survey of Environment, Safety, and Health Concerns of Traditional Indian Artisans and Craftspeople (Summer 1993)

The Environmental Office of Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council and the Northern Pueblos Institute of Northern New Mexico Community College are interested in knowing if artists and craftsmen are concerned about whether there are health, safety, or environmental risks to themselves or others in their occupation. Please take a few minutes to fill in this questionnaire. Depending on the interest of the community, we will use the questionnaire results to develop craft and hazard-specific information booklets and workshops for artisans; work with home-based artists and small businesses to modify processes cheaply and efficiently; and engineer new technology or tools or safety equipment appropriate to the tasks involved.


1) What crafts or arts do you practice?

2) Have you ever been concerned about whether there are negative health or safety or environmental risks from your chosen work to you, your family, co-workers, unborn children, others? 0 No 0 Yes.

If so, what kinds of concerns?

3) During which activities have you noticed trouble breathing, skin rashes, headaches, or other health problems? 0 Never

Do you use a disposable face mask? 0Yes 0 Never

Which activities have bothered others around you? What kind of symptoms? 0 Never

4) Have you ever noticed joint stiffness or pain? 0 No 0 Yes. During which activities?

5) Do you stand or sit for long periods of time? 0 No 0 Yes. How long at a time?

Please turn over

6) Please identify if any of the following are part of your craftmaking.

0 dung or manure kilns (pottery firing)

0 compressed gasses: 0 propane 0 oxygen 0 acetylene

0 silver

0 other metals

0 solder and soldering

0 bone, antler, horn, teeth (especially cutting, grinding, buffing)

0 lacquer, shellac, varnish

0 acrylic or plastic-based paints

0 oil-based paints

0 solvents for paint or wood coatings

0 commercial clays, slips, or muds

0 collected slips, clays, soils, muds, or minerals (Mother Earth materials)

0 commercial dyes and mordants

0 collected or natural dyes and mordants

0 vinegar, tannin, nitric acid, other acids or bleach (commercial or natural)

0 lye, lime, ammonia, or other bases

0 leather or animal skins (especially the use or preparation of split leathers)

0 7) Are you interested in the best way to prevent decay, fungus, mildew, or insects in organic materials, such as feathers and feathered headpieces?

0 8) Would you be interested in participating in training workshops on health and safety hazards and protection?

0 9) Would you be interested in participating further in our project? For example, could we observe you at your craft/art or discuss your skill with you further in order to assess possible hazards and develop solutions? Please print below your name, address, phone number where you can be reached:

Please return this questionnaire to the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council booth or mail it to: [contact info no longer valid]
M. Pamela Bumsted, Ph.D. Environmental Office, PO Box 969, San Juan Pueblo, NM 87566 or to Karen Young,ENIPC Northern Pueblos Institute, NNMCC, 1002 N. Oñate Street, Española, NM 87532

Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H) of Traditional Indian Artisans and Craftspeople Project

This is a project to identify any environmental, safety, or health hazards resulting from their occupation that may be of concern to American Indian artisans and craftspeople. While hazards of “western” art, industrial crafts, or fine arts have been examined (e.g., lead glazes, oil paints) almost no basic or applied research has been directed towards traditional arts, especially those practiced in Southwestern communities. Community members will work with us to identify hazards and to develop new, or to apply any existing, culturally appropriate processes, materials, protective clothing, equipment, information, or training to mitigate these hazards.

This project is a joint effort of the Environmental Office of Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc., Northern Pueblos Institute of Northern New Mexico Community College, the Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing Technology Transfer Training (ECMT³ I) project of the US Dept. of Energy and Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque (Organizations 6611, 7711, 7712), and the Hazardous Materials Management Program of Santa Fé Community College.

To be on our mailing list for further information, please return the bottom portion to the ENIPC booth or mail to:

M. Pamela Bumsted, Ph.D. or Karen Young

Environmental Office, ENIPC Northern Pueblos Institute, NNMCC

505-852-4265 505-747-2194

Please keep me informed of the Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H) of Traditional Indian Artisans and Craftspeople Project:

Name:
Address:
Phone (optional):

Project Sponsors:
Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc.
Environmental Office
M. Pamela Bumsted, Ph.D., Assoc. Director
PO Box 969
San Juan Pueblo, NM 87566-0969

Northern New Mexico Community College
Northern Pueblos Institute
Karen Young, Coordinator
1002 N. Oñate Street
Española, NM 87532

Santa Fé Community College
Hazardous Materials Management Program
Mary Ann Walz, Coordinator
PO Box 4187
Santa Fé, NM 87502

Sandia National Laboratories
Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing Technology Transfer Training Project
PO Box 5800
Albuquerque, NM 87185-5800
Robyn Steifeld, Organization 6611
Scott W. Stafford, Organization 7711
Patrick Herring, Organization 7711
Vicki Cibicki, Organization 7711

Santa Clara Health Center
Eusebio Toya, Health Educator
RR1, Box 446
Española, NM 87532

[please note contact info is out of date]
Press Release
For More Information, Call:

Karen Young, Coordinator, Northern Pueblos Institute, Northern New Mexico Community College, 505-747-2194 M. Pamela Bumsted, Ph.D., Assoc. Director, Environmental Office, Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, 505-852-4265

For Release October 4, 1994

Pueblo Crafts and Healthy Lungs Start of Press release The Environmental Office of Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc. and the Northern Pueblos Institute of Northern New Mexico Community College announce the availability of a technical pamphlet on lung protection for artisans and craftspeople: Pueblo Crafts and Healthy Lungs. The pamphlet is part of the Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H) of Traditional Indian Artisans and Craftspeople Project. This project is a joint effort of the Environmental Office of Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc., Northern Pueblos Institute of Northern New Mexico Community College, the Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing Technology Transfer Training Initiative (ECMT³ I) of the US Department of Energy and Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque (Organizations 6611, 7711, 7712), and the Hazardous Materials Management Program of Santa Fé Community College.


This is a project to identify any environmental, safety, or health hazards resulting from their occupations that may be of concern to American Indian artisans and craftspeople. While hazards of “western” or contemporary art, industrial crafts, or fine arts have been examined (e.g., lead glazes, oil paints, theatre and dance groups) almost no basic or applied research has been directed towards traditional arts, especially those practiced in Southwestern communities.

Community members will work with us to identify hazards and to develop new (or to apply any existing) culturally appropriate processes, materials, protective clothing, equipment, information, or training to mitigate these hazards. For example, we are looking to develop “vernacular ergonomics”, the use of everyday objects together with anthropometry (body measurements) and specially developed exercises to prevent muscle, joint, and eye strain. Artists will also help us understand how traditional processes, many with centuries of refinement, were and are able to promote healthy Pueblo ways of living. The results of this project will be available for artists and craftspeople in other communities to benefit from, in this and other countries.

Because we are interested in knowing if artists and craftsmen are concerned about whether there are health, safety, or environmental risks to themselves or others from their occupation we have developed a questionnaire to be distributed among Indian artists at regional arts shows and at the portal of the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fé. Depending on the interests of the community, we will use the questionnaire results to develop craft and hazard-specific information booklets and workshops for artisans; to work with home-based artists and small businesses to modify processes cheaply and efficiently; and to engineer new technology or tools or safety equipment appropriate to the tasks involved.

Our first efforts, reflected in the pamphlet, are directed towards understanding respiratory hazards associated with pottery making. This concern was raised at a Pueblo community cancer awareness workshop—if cigarette smoking causes cancer, what health effects might there be from dung-fired or fuel-fired kilns such as those used in making traditional black-on-black pottery? Commercial, dry, unmixed clays do pose a risk of lung injury from silicosis. Would sanding or other finishing treatments of fired pots pose similar risks?

Artists at the SWAIA (Southwestern Association for Indian Arts) Powwow in June and at the 21st Annual Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Artist and Craftsman Show in July suggested we examine

• skin rashes associated with the use of pickling agents in silversmithing
• lint and dust associated with fabrics, weaving, and needlecrafts
• allergy complications brought on by the nap of leathers
• eye strain and lighting when doing fine beadwork
• posture, exercises, and ergonomic design for muscle and ligament strains associated with nearly all arts, including cooking
• joint and skin complaints when working wet clay
• environmentally friendly ways to control insects and fungus in feathered and antlered ornaments, trimmings, costumes, organic materials
• protection from inhaling dust from shell or lapidary work

To obtain a copy of the Pueblo Crafts and Healthy Lungs pamphlet, or to request a questionnaire, please contact the Environmental Office, Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc., PO Box 969, San Juan Pueblo, NM 87566; Northern Pueblos Institute, Northern New Mexico Community College, 1002 N. Oñate Street, Española, NM 87532; the Hazardous Materials Management Program, Santa Fé Community College, PO Box 4187, Santa Fé, NM 87502; and the Santa Clara Health Center.

End of Press Release

FOR RELEASE ON 18 JULY 1993

The Environmental Office of Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc. and the Northern Pueblos Institute of Northern New Mexico Community College are interested in knowing if artists and craftsmen are concerned about whether there are health, safety, or environmental risks to themselves or others from their occupation. We have developed a questionnaire to be distributed at the21st Annual Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Artists and Craftsman Show, to be held at Santa Clara Pueblo on July 17 and 18.

Depending on the interests of the community, we will use the questionnaire results to develop craft and hazard-specific information booklets and workshops for artisans; to work with home-based artists and small businesses to modify processes cheaply and efficiently; and to engineer new technology or tools or safety equipment appropriate to the tasks involved.

The public is also invited to stop by the Pueblo Environment, Safety, and Health Booth for information on environmental issues and programs of interest to north central New Mexicans. This is a project to identify any environmental, safety, or health hazards resulting from their occupations that may be of concern to American Indian artisans and craftspeople.

While hazards of “western” or contemporary art, industrial crafts, or fine arts have been examined (e.g., lead glazes, oil paints, theatre and dance groups) almost no basic or applied research has been directed towards traditional arts, especially those practiced in Southwestern communities. Community members will work with us to identify hazards and to develop new (or to apply any existing) culturally appropriate processes, materials, protective clothing, equipment, information, or training to mitigate these hazards.

For example, we are looking to develop “vernacular ergonomics”, the use of everyday objects such, anthropometry, and specially developed exrecises to prevent muscle, joint, and eye strain. Artists will also help us understand how traditional processes, many with centuries of refinement, were and are able to promote healthy Pueblo ways of living. The results of this project will be available for artists and craftspeople in other communities to benefit from, in this and other countries.

This project is a joint effort of the Environmental Office of Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc., Northern Pueblos Institute of Northern New Mexico Community College, the Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing Technology Transfer Training Initiative (ECMT³ I) of the US Department of Energy and Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque (Organizations 6611, 7711, 7712), and the Hazardous Materials Management Program of Santa Fé Community College.

Our first efforts are directed towards understanding respiratory hazards associated with pottery making. This concern was raised at a Pueblo community cancer awareness workshop – if cigarette smoking causes cancer, what health effects might there be from dung-fired or fuel-fired kilns such as those used in making traditional black-on-black pottery? Commercial, dry, unmixed clays do pose a risk of lung injury from silicosis. Would sanding or other finishing treatments of fired pots pose similar risks?

Artists at the SWAIA (Southwestern Association for Indian Arts) Pow-Wow in June suggested we examine

• skin rashes associated with the use of pickling agents in silversmithing
• lint and dust associated with fabrics, weaving, and needlecrafts
• allergy complications brought on by the nap of leathers
• eye strain and lighting when doing fine beadwork
• posture, exercises, and ergonomic design for muscle and ligament strains associated with nearly all arts, including cooking
• joint and skin complaints when working wet clay
• environmentally friendly ways to control insects, and fungus in feathered and antlered ornaments, trimmings, costumes, organic materials
• protection from inhaling dust

For further information about this release, contact [note the contact info is no longer valid]
M. Pamela Bumsted, Ph.D.,
Associate Director Environmental Office, ENIPC PO Box 969 San Juan Pueblo, NM 87566 505-852-4265
Karen Young,
Coordinator Northern Pueblos Institute, NNMCC 1002 N. Oñate Street Española, NM 87532 505-747-2194

M. Pamela Bumsted, Julia T. Abeyta, and Karen S. Young

Beyond Boundaries—Developing Minority Community Capacity in Environmental Health & Hazardous Substances.

Minority communities need to develop a capacity in all aspects of environmental health, including administrative, scientific, educational, and governmental. Minority communities are nearly always viewed as supplicants or targets by outside agencies, individuals, or institutions. Heretofore, communities have not participated as autonomous institutions in collaborative studies nor been the ones to develop or run the agency’s public involvement. Our programs are designed to provide permanent information and expertise within the communities related to environmental health and hazardous substances, to enable them to make informed decisions about their future.

Principal— M. Pamela Bumsted, Ph.D.

Affiliations 1 & 3—Northern Pueblos Institute,
Northern New Mexico Community College 2—American Indian Affairs,
Northern New Mexico Community College

Paper given 30 March 1995
Society for Applied Anthropology, March–April 1995 Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Abstract published in annual meeting program, page 52.

Session—Chemicals, Culture, & Health (Lynette Benson, organizer, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)

Bumsted, M. Pamela, Karen S. Young, and Leon H. Tafoya 1994 Biocultural Dimensions of Health and Environment. In John S. Andrews, Howard Frumkin, Barry L. Johnson, Myron A. Mehlman, Charles Xintaras, and Jeanne A. Bucsela, eds. Hazardous Waste and Public Health: International Congress on the Health Effects of Hazardous Waste. pp. 245-252. Princeton: Princeton Scientific Publishing Co. Inc.

INTRODUCTION
Pueblo American Indians regard the environment holistically, not program-by-program, department-by-department, or listed- hazard-by-listed-hazard.

Figure 1. Holistic perspective of the environment (change with time).

Existing health and environment studies that construe science narrowly and have biomedical or regulatory bias are not capable of evaluating the totality of environmental challenges that confront the Pueblo people.

We need a new way of monitoring environmental change and health effects that realistically encompasses human modes of adaptation-biology and culture. We need to develop a system of health evaluation based on population, time, and alternative data sets (e.g., nonhuman biotic markers, oral histories). As scientists, we need to recognize that if equal involvement of the other experts, the community itself, is absent in all project phases, community health studies will, at best, be scientifically inadequate.

BACKGROUND

The Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc. (ENIPC) is a nonprofit consortium of eight independent tribes The Board of Governors of ENIPC consists of governors of the Pueblos of Nambé, Pojoaque, Picurís, San Ildefonso San Juan, Santa Clara, Taos, and Tesuque. ENIPC members share many traditions and a similar lifestyle but have individual histories. Two languages are spoken-Tewa (Nambé Pojoaque, San Ildefonso, San Juan, Santa Clara, and Tesuque) and Tiwa (Picurís and Taos). The enrolled population of tribal members registered as Pueblos varies from 132 to 2,466, in a total service population of about 12,000.

The eight Pueblo tribes involved in ENIPC are located from Tesuque (just north of Santa Fé in north-central New Mexico) to Taos, some 70 miles away, and from the volcanic Jemez Mountains and Pajarito Plateau, across the 30+ mile-wide Rio Grande rift valley to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Figure 2

Altogether, approximately 400 square miles of land lie within the borders containing ENIPC members. Included within these borders are “checkerboard” areas of non-tribal lands, including the entire, predominantly Hispano, municipality of Española.

Taos Pueblo has the oldest continuously inhabited building in North America, and it has just recently been listed as a World Heritage Site (one of very few in the United States). But expanding tourism and economic development, with their associated solid waste, water, and wastewater needs, are urgent problems. Pojoaque Pueblo has successfully commercialized its limited land base, but this means the Pueblo must prepare for emergency responses to incidents at paint stores, propane storage tanks, or gasoline and chemical trucks on highways that cut through the Pueblo.

San Ildefonso, home of the world-famous potter, the late Maria Martinez, lies at the base of the Pajarito Plateau. Bandelier National Monument on the Plateau was home to the ancestral Pueblo people for centuries. The Pajarito is also home to Los Alamos National Laboratory (immediately adjacent to and upstream of San Ildefonso) run by the University of California for 50 years as part of the United States nuclear weapons complex.

Santa Fé and the area adjacent to the Pueblo of Tesuque is the trendy home of Oprah Winfrey, Cher, Ted Danson, and Don Meredith. Tesuque itself is a traditional Pueblo and home to a project to develop traditional agriculture within a 21st-century market. San Juan Pueblo hosted the first European capital in what is now the United States, nearly a decade before Jamestown and 22 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. But in this area of increasing municipal and rural growth by descendants of Hispano and Pueblo residents of 400 years ago and increasing numbers of relatively late Anglo residents, safe sewage-wastewater disposal and good water quality are concerns of the San Juan and Santa Clara Pueblos. Illegal dumping by non-tribal people is flagrant and dangerous. The Pueblos of Picurís and Nambé have sacred watersheds and pristine streams in this high desert region, which may be harmed if ex-pansion takes place in an insensitive manner at adjacent world-class ski areas.

HOLISTIC (BIOCULTURAL) PERSPECTIVE
The Pueblos have a shared concept that ties them to the earth and water. They believe all are one, bound together to bring the riches of the earth to the people of their Pueblos.

To the traditional Pueblo Indian, life is interrelated, balanced and interdependent. Man is a partner with nature; the two bear a reciprocal relationship. Man performs rites and ceremonies and nature responds with the essentials of life, withholding the bad. Ceremonies must be performed joyfully and faithfully; nature will respond in kind. Man alone can disrupt universal equilibrium by thought, word, ordered. The consequences of imbalance are illness, disasters, drought–any misfortune. Rites and ceremonies properly performed keep the seasons moving, allow the sun to rise and set properly, bring rain and snow, quell the winds, and insure a well-ordered physical environment and society. (Dozier 1970:151)

Pueblo people consider the environment holistically; physical, biologic, and cultural environments interact continuously. But most federal programs consider the environment program-by-program or agency-by-agency (air, water, soil, disease). How can we realistically evaluate Pueblo environment and health?

A biocultural approach to health and the environment considers the adaptation of people within their environment. This holistic study of human change is necessarily cultural, social, biologic, historical, and ecologic. This contrasts with the usual biomedical or regulatory approach that focuses on treating individuals (or individual sites) that suffer from a single, simple proximate cause of illness. A biocultural model of human adaptation to environmental insult is more flexible; enables examination, understanding, and prediction of the disease and health processes; and can consequently enable effective action by individuals, groups, communities, and populations toward the ultimate cause of illness.

The model takes into account the actors and their choices and the constraints operating on both. Armelagos et al (1992) outline the following features:

• Conditions affecting host (susceptibility to insult) are as important as the nature, degree, and timing of insults;
• Insults are biologic, but nonbiologic insults are also important to consider in the disease process. (e.g., pathogens, toxins, physical forces, chemical pollutants);
• Technology, social system, and ideology are important components of the disease process;
• Social impact and social response to disease are involved;
• Ideological or religious systems affect susceptibility and adaptation (coping). Row society defines disease becomes important.
• Coping and adaptive behavior operates at macro and micro levels; health and disease are a continuum; political and economic factors are a consideration.

The cultural system is not only an important potential environmental insult but also a means of adapting to environmental change.

The cultural system buffers the population from insults that originate in the environment. However, cultural systems also may be the source of insults to the individual and segments of the population. The role of technology in the disease process has received the most intense interest from the medical ecologists. The production of insults such as water and air pollution, psychosocial stress, and even job-related trauma are frequently the result of technological processes. Transformation in technology can potentially produce new insults. (Armelagos et al. 1992:37)

A further important aspect of the model that ENIPC and the Northern Pueblos Institute (NPI) emphasize is variability in the disease process as a result of human biologic and cultural variability, and variability in insult(s).

Thus, multiple stressors and populations (or households in a community) must be considered, over time. This biocultural approach affords a unique opportunity to examine the evolution of environmental change and human adaptability. The goal of the biocultural perspective is to characterize the nature of environmental change and its meaning for people. We can then offer people a means and a strategy for directed change that fits with the Pueblo ideal of community (people) and emphasizes using the expertise of the community (i.e., community involvement and culturally appropriate technology transfer).

The implications for change are twofold 1) change emanates from collective action, and 2) when carrying out health programs, existing coping strategies need to be accounted for so as not to remove the power, control, and predictability that already rest within the populations affected. (Armelagos et al, 1992:43)

General Example: Adoption of Maize Agriculture
Adoption of horticulture implies a change in the human environment. The physical environment must be modified for successful cultivation. The cultural environment, whatever its of state of flux, is subsequently altered by the new regimes of seasonal activity, social organization and aggregation of labor, increased sedentism, and often a wider social interaction network with other peoples. (see Huss-Ashmore et al. 1989)
Maize Agriculture Effects

Environment
o Changes soil chemistry
o Clears fields (often with fire)
o Attracts deer to open edges
o Changes soil moisture
o Changes surrounding plant community
o Makes erosion, soil depletion possible

Culture
o Organized labor (stone mulch gardens, clearing fields, planting, harvesting, irrigating)
o Expanded kinship and political system (more relatives to call for help, more places to call if harvest is poor)
o Seasonal calendar important
o Year-round settlements possible, increased settlement density and settlement aggregation may increase social tension,
o Retaining historical knowledge important because climate varies from year to year

Biology, especially nutrition and disease
o Reliable food source, increased food means longer life span (elders live longer and know more, but what does community do with them?)
o More people
o Political and economic unions affect resource distribution (positive or negative)
o Cereals bind up iron (therefore ane-mia is problem if meat or other iron sources are scarce)
o Unbalanced diet decreases immune response, increased settlement density spreads infectious diseases
o Effect on growth and development may be positive or negative
o Corn is carbohydrate (sugar), therefore more tooth cavities possible
o Multiple stressors operate (e.g., soil depletion, caries, monotonous diet, reduced immune response, more social strife, infectious diseases.)

Contemporary Example:
University of California-Los Alamos National Laboratory (UC-LANL)

UC-LANL monitors its physical environment, but the Laboratory restricts where to look, when to look, who is to look, and what to look for.

o Within Laboratory boundaries only
o Specific hazardous materials and specific radionuclides only
o No pre-LANL conditions
o Time span of interest is 5-10 years of regulatory concern

Human pathway monitoring is limited to a few radionuclides in selected food items, circumscribed by Laboratory boundaries, and without an overall research design, not even to assess the scientific meaningfulness of the analyses. Pre-Laboratory (pre-1943) conditions have not been assessed to recognize and begin to understand subsequent changes. We know the fate of Pu or 3H in some pathways. We don’t know what other pathways or what other systemic changes have significance to Pueblo health.

Other state and federal agencies also do limited, particularistic study.

Environmental Effects
o U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
o New Mexico Environment Department (NMED)
o Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)

Health Effects
o Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR): Health Consultation (completed 1992); Health Assessment (in progress)
o New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) with the University of New Mexico Tumor Registry(NMTR): Cancer Rate Study of Los Alamos County (preliminary study completed, 1993)
o National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH): five studies of employee mortality (in progress)
o Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Dose reconstruction (proposed, not yet confirmed)

But, problems exist with these approaches as viewed from a Pueblo (biocultural) perspective. Each agency limits what to look for, when to look, who is examined, and who is to look. These limits are put into operation and are imposed, even though not consciously, by—

o Biomedical or ‘Western” model of health;
o Clinical expressions of disease levels;
o Specific causes of disease-etiologies (i.e., lead, radiation above background, listed hazardous materials) rather than multiple, interacting stressors;
o Individual characteristics (require cooperative, living patients or decent medical records) not community or ecosystem (but why not examine plants or animals in addition, as surrogates for people? oral records of environmental change, health, disease?);
o Limited span of interest– only 1 or 2 generations

Community of Concern
The community of concern is not just employees or those living in Los Alamos County. American Indian employees are only 1% of full-time UC-LANL employees. But they have a home community outside LANL boundaries that is also affected by LANL activities.

Multiple stressors operate on contemporary Pueblo populations. Examples of stressors operating on this community include

o Earthbound
o People tied to Pueblos culturally, spiritually, historically; familiar surroundings
o People tied to Pueblos legally (Spanish grants or reservations). Cannot move away from environmental degradation and still retain identity.


Another common and interesting phenomenon of the Tewa, but perhaps more widely distributed among the Pueblos, is the association of the ecological environment with the socioceremonial organization. Thus, each Tewa village has concentric ecological zones emanating outwards from the center of the pueblo to the peripheries of the Tewa world. Each zone has four shrines located in approximately the cardinal directions, but in prominent physical locations, mounds, hills, cliffs, and the like. First is a zone encircling the pueblo, second, a zone extending to the edge of the cultivated fields, third, a zone including the uncultivated plains and foothills, and finally a fourth zone of the encircling mountains. In the last zone are the directional mountains or peaks bounding the Tewa world, each containing a spring and a shrine. (Dozier 1970:208).

o Altitude: from 6,000 to 8,500 feet above sea level
o Natural radiation: geology as well as altitude
o Resource-limited
o Enclaved: surrounded by culturally different communities; bias in employment, development, and education
o History: population size and variability (biologic and cultural) greatly reduced with Spanish conquest and later American occupation.

Therefore, conducting holistic environmental and health studies is essential to understanding the true picture of effects. We need comprehensive identification and assessment of human pathways, relevant to Pueblo communities. American Indian communities are in continuous, not intermittent contact with their environment is it safe to live here? As one tribal leader explained, unlike other communities, Pueblo communities cannot move away from environmental degradation.

SUMMARY
Pueblo culture today is basically in the same form it has been since the first European settlers appeared in the early 1500s. The Pueblos have shared a concept that ties them to the earth and water, believing that they are one: bound together to bring the riches of the earth to the peoples of their Pueblos. This concept has (given the Indian people foresight to understand the uses and capabilities of what could be produced and created for generations to come. Although yearly the uses of water may have changed, the ideology remained the same, binding water and earth with the people who use them for the community’s survival.

In modernizing, the Pueblo people have always looked at alternative uses or actions so that water and land are neither abused nor taken for granted. Pueblo belief stresses that life is given back to the Indian people– through the use of waters, earth, and sowing the land– to be used and reused. Pueblo communities have a responsibility to use the environment wisely in return for nature’s bounty.

However, the coming of manufacturing processes, industry, and government weapons laboratories has caused or added to major impacts on Pueblo lifestyle. The land changed through resulting chemical and physical imbalances, changing the ways animals, birds, fish, and other wildlife used to survive in decades past. Even plants have responded with new composition and growth patterns. Some responses are good, others are not. These changes have caused a new increased awareness and therefore a renewed effort to bring the land, water, and community back into balance. Pueblo people have created new ideas, learned new technologies, and understood others’ thinking in an effort to promote a kinder environment. The new techno-political-economic structure also opens up a new avenue for Indian people to voice their concerns and to argue for better controls and systems to keep the lands and waters safe for human consumption and agricultural uses.

As scientists, we must recognize that community health studies at best are scientifically inadequate without equal involvement in all project phases of those other experts–the community itself. Community-based applied and basic research will incorporate and build on an empirical knowledge of the environment inherent in the Pueblo way of life. We are looking to develop new, appropriate standards of health, risk, and nutritional Status for northern Pueblos. Existing environmental, growth and development, and health standards are based on studies primarily of Anglo populations at low altitude. These studies used by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Energy, EPA, or the state are inappropriate to assess short- and long-term physiologic and health effects on Native American men, women, and children, especially Pueblo tribes who live above 5000 feet elevation, as minority, enclaved communities. Most studies consider effects over one or two generations, not the centuries of Pueblo concern.

We must work together. Only if all the community is involved can we produce better science. Pueblo people should be involved on an everyday basis — environment, health, education — for the sake of the next generations.

REFERENCES
Armelagos, GJ, Leatherman T, Ryan M, Sibley L. (1992). Biocultural synthesis in medical anthropology. Medical Anthropology 14:35-52.

Dozier EP. 1970. (1983). The Pueblo Indians of North America. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press.

Huss-Ashmore R, ed. with Curry JJ, Hitchcock RK. (1989). Coping with seasonal constraints. University of Pennsylvania: MASCA.

Sando JS. (1992). Pueblo Nations: Eight centuries of Pueblo Indian history. Santa Fé: Clear Light Publishers.

ADDITIONAL SUGGESTED REFERENCES

Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc. 1994. Eight Northern Indian Pueblos 1994 official visitors guide. San Juan Pueblo: ENIPC, Inc.

Ford RI. (1987). The New Pueblo Economy. In: Herman Agoyo and Linwood Brown, eds., When cultures meet: Remembering San Gabriel del Yunge Oweenge. pp. 73-91. Santa Fé: Sunstone Press.

Suzuki D, Knudtson P. (1992). Wisdom of the elders: Honoring sacred native visions of nature. New York: Bantam Books.

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Rural communities face classes of environmental challenges which can be outlined as I have done for the northern Pueblos. Various efforts by various means are or have been directed towards alleviating or “solving” these conditions.

But fundamental to these challenges is the intangible one of Who are we? Rural communities in New Mexico are uniquely identified by their land and their language. These provide a lifestyle, but not a living. Increasingly, individuals must leave the land for a livelihood while outsiders arrive wishing to add rural ambience to their own style. The clashes are enormous with the biotic, physical, and cultural environments all affected, usually negatively for the indigenous community. What is needed is a way for rural communities to evolve their place within a larger national and world order in such a way as to sustain their landed values, their identity as communities. As well, a way must be found to invigorate these values and to strengthen the ties between rural and urban members.

Newcomers usually have the means, skills, and confidence to influence majority institutions, such as government agencies, by “speaking” in the language those institutions understand. It is possible for rural communities to effect change similarly. To do that, however, rural communities must be able to get into “the system”, transcending the rural charm (inaccessibility) others would apply. There is a need to build community capacity in the basic and applied sciences-– particularly electronic communications, health, nutrition, and environment.

Community-based research incorporates and builds upon the empirical knowledge of the environment inherent in the rural way of life. Programs to be developed would provide permanent information and expertise within the communities related to environment and health. There would develop appropriate methods to involve community participation in the identification and prevention of negative impacts.

When the communities ask their own questions, have their own data, and their own collation, analysis, and interpretation of others’ data they will

• understand the disease and health trends of their communities
  be able to predict the health trends and prepare for appropriate action for the communities
• portray the total health and environment program requirements of their communities to other communities, organizations, the state, and Congress
• allocate scarce resources for their own protection in the most productive manner participate fully in the development of health information systems, useful to other rural communities, especially in areas of the release of hazardous materials and environmental threat
• enable community leadership to effectively communicate environmental and health concerns to their respective communities
• enable the communities to choose wisely among various outside offers of technical and scientific help; to control the quality of the data, research, analysis, and products from outside contractors, consultants, and agencies; and to oversee and coordinate the efforts of state, local, and federal agencies executed on their behalf.

(c) MP Bumsted August 1995

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Click to see larger version

Developed by the ES&H Office, published in the 1994 issue of the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Official Visitors Guide (page 11). This is a synopsis of the programs developed under my direction there. We in the environmental office thought it was important for visitors to be aware of the other cutting-edge accomplishments, besides arts and crafts.

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