Sloan Indigenous Graduate Program Fellow SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry North Thetford, Vermont, United States
Assessing the ongoing and anticipated impacts of climate change on culturally important plants among the Potawatomi has largely been done by individual Nations, focusing on local to regional conditions. However, as a collective of 11 Nations headquartered from Oklahoma to Ontario with a common ancestral relationship to the southern Lake Michigan region, there is a unique opportunity to address the impacts of climate change on our cultural plants (and by extension, our lands, animals, and waters) on an international scale as well. This study lays the groundwork for future efforts of the newly formed Potawatomi Plant ProtectionNetwork by providing a compilation of Potawatomi climate change adaptation and mitigation plans resulting in a preliminary database of cultural plants of concern, as well as a comparative study of the historical, current, and modeled future distributions of the most culturally significant species. Despite the model predictions of near total loss of cultural species in the Great Lakes Region due to climate change under both RCP 4. 5 and 8.5, there are still opportunities to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change on cultural species through biocultural restoration, continued cultural revitalization, and tribal member engagement in innovative approaches to plant protection.
