Tribes: Southwest

Southwest

Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals Academic Year Internship Program

The Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals (ITEP) and its internship program was developed in partnership with various programs under ITEP, and it is proud to have supported Young Leaders over the last 20 years. The academic year Indigenous Internship Program has been working to build climate resilience and capacity within Native communities by engaging Young Leaders based at Northern Arizona University (NAU) since 2023. Through the generous support from the Bay and Paul Foundations and Wells Fargo, ITEP is investing in our Young Leaders and honoring our Elders and community leaders who have continually voiced the need to prioritize youth engagement.

During the last two academic years (2023 - 2025), the program has hosted four interns who have worked on projects related to the environmental threats Tribes face, including curriculum adaptation and optimization with Indigenous ways of life and Traditional Ecological Knowledges. The 2023 - 2024 interns, Tynya Kee (Diné) and Brooke Damon (Diné), accomplished internship tasks while excelling in their academics. At the time, Brooke was a senior Environmental Science major with an emphasis in Biology and Chemistry. Tynya was a junior majoring in Forestry and minoring in Business Administration.

During the 2023 - 2024 academic year, Tynya and Brooke worked with a long-term partner, Coconino County-based environmental education organization, Willow Bend Center for Environmental Education. One of the many services and offerings that Willow Bend offers is to have their staff present climate change curriculum to Coconino County school classrooms across multiple grade levels, reaching over 200 students a year. The ITEP interns worked closely with Willow Bend staff to optimize the current middle school Climate Change curriculum, not only updating it to be engaging and innovative but also incorporating Traditional Ecological practices, local Tribal farming practices, and ongoing efforts to prioritize the preparedness of communities. This work was done in collaboration with many individuals and required significant research and conversations with Tribal members across Northern Arizona.

The interns continued their work with Willow Bend, indigenizing one of their field trip curricula. Willow Bend leads most third-grade classes from the Flagstaff Unified School District on a tour of Picture Canyon Natural and Cultural Preserve each year. Picture Canyon is within the Flagstaff city limits and its boundaries includes many archeological sites including pottery, pit houses, and petroglyphs from Indigenous ancestors who have inhabited this region since time immemorial. The interns attended the field trip with Willow Bend multiple times to fully understand the curriculum and presented their optimization change suggestions to the Willow Bend Staff for approval before presenting them to students during spring field trips. This updated curriculum included identifying the traditional uses of plants that are still harvested in the area, as well as information about how the ancestors who once lived in the canyon are still here today

On top of curriculum development, Brooke and Tynya were asked by Tribal co-authors and lead ITEP team to be contributing authors for the Young Leaders in Climate Action chapter of the Status of Tribes and Climate Change (STACC) report. This opportunity introduced them to the other young leaders authoring the chapter and the collaborative nature of this work. Additionally, Tynya was also asked to contribute to the EPA Region 8 Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers (TCTAC) work, which work required her to do extensive research on Tribes in that region and the work that is being done by Tribal-led organizations.

At the end of the spring 2024 semester, both interns attended the InterTribal Timber Council in North Carolina, where they had the opportunity to meet and network with tribal environmental professionals from around the country while learning in-depth about the important work the Council does.

The final culmination of the 2023 - 2024 academic year internship was for Brooke to attend the National Tribal and Indigenous Climate Conference (NTICC) in Anchorage, Alaska on a Young Leader scholarship. Brooke also presented at the Young Leader Panel, which was attended by over 500 virtual and in-person attendees.


Curriculum development is ever-changing and ongoing, and at the start of the 2024 - 2025 academic year, the new academic year intern, Mariah Williams (Diné), began the process of reviewing the updated Willow Bend Climate Change curriculum to adapt it from a middle school level to a high school level. Mariah is a second-year student at NAU, majoring in Forestry with a minor in Tribal Public Administration.

During her second month as an intern with ITEP, Mariah attended the AZ Tribal Fire and Climate Resilience Summit in San Carlos, Arizona with other Forestry students. Mariah used this opportunity to introduce herself to the program managers of the Wood for Life initiative to express her strong interest in the project. This has led to a deep involvement in the Wood for Life program; she attends the monthly meetings, attends workshops, and has made herself a part of that team.

Mariah has also been involved with other events hosted by Willow Bend. This includes working table events on composting at Science in the Park, teaching youth to run Solar Ovens at Willow Bend Science Saturdays, and participating in classroom visits as Willow Bend staff before students for the KidWind Challenge which is a national STEM competition focusing on clean energy exploration.

As a Forestry major and Indigenous woman, Mariah expressed interest in writing a Tribal Profile about the Karuk Tribe’s cultural burning practices. Mariah worked with our lead writer and research assistant, and 2022 - 2023 intern, Taryn Bell, to interview, transcribe, and write this profile. The profile, anticipated to be published in Spring 2025, will be featured on ITEP’s website and featured in the monthly newsletter.

The internship program is a wonderful opportunity for young, Indigenous Leaders to experience and take part in some of the important work that is being done toward resiliency efforts, by not only ITEP, but also local partners such as Willow Bend. The experiences gained through this program help our interns choose future internships and careers that are impactful to their success as young professionals and to the world.

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This profile was developed in 2025 by Kim Shaw, Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, Northern Arizona University. The profile is available on the Tribes & Climate Change website: www7.nau.edu/itep/main/tcc/Tribes. The tribal climate change profiles featured on the website are intended to be a pathway to increasing knowledge among tribal and non-tribal organizations interested in learning about climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Citation: Shaw, K. (March 2025). Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals Academic Year Internship Program, Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, Northern Arizona University.

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