As California communities face new challenges including wildfires and ocean level change brought on by climate change, the state will incorporate Indigenous knowledge and experience in a report due out in December. In 2009 the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) released its first report, tracking environmental trends.

According to Capradio, this year’s report will include Tribes’ experience with climate change, which has been disregarded in the past due to a focus on Western science. But Tribal members have generations of family knowledge, often passed down in an oral tradition, about the way the environment has changed.

“The tribes have the deepest knowledge,” [Laurie] Monserrat said. “I don’t think that traditional Western science, looking at data from the past hundred years, for example, stands as strong without that perspective.”

Eight Tribes of the 30 OEHHA included in its report this year, wrote their own sections.

To read more about how Indigenous knowledge is contributing to climate change research, go here: https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/09/22/how-indigenous-knowledge-is-changing-the-way-california-tracks-the-effects-of-climate-change/?fbclid=IwAR2ebgmV8xh4E1-0_WkfeawjpBoBWGeFyAujhZTFYT-oDuOEQGtziWZXBmk