Announcements from the RVCC Hub
2025 RVCC Summer Internship
You can submit your application to the 2025 Summer Internship through this link.
This internship trains participants how to explore climate changes through the multiple lenses of research instructed by Native scholars. It will center Indigenous Knowledges/sciences and compliment Western Science as it explores the many ways to do climate science work. Each year the internship will travel to one of four research sites of the NSF CoPe RVCC grant #2103843: Hawaii, Alaska, Louisiana, and Puerto Rico, to meet with the scientists, community members and the land itself to be introduced to how we can learn from and care for places.
Interns will spend four plus weeks in Lawrence Kansas at Haskell Indian Nations University studying about research, writing, the site culture, etiquette and protocols, science communication, TEK, Indigenous science and Western science, and science communication. Week five will take students to Louisiana southern coastal regions to visit some research sites, scientists doing research, and Native Americans from the communities to learn about the multiple ways climate is observed, adapted to, and expressed across disciplines to inform other scientists and community members.
Meeting Native and Non-Native scientists doing the research in place will allow participants the opportunity to explore how they might consider their own interests and skills to advocate and care for their own homelands with education and research. Participants will be taught how to develop a research question and research to answer their question and communicate their findings in multiple ways which includes mixed media. At the end of the sixth week, interns will return home to finish their summer research project working with faculty on-line to complete their summer research project. Faculty mentors, scientists, and community knowledge holders will be available to help students to independently complete their summer research project.
For more information contact;
Dr. Paulette Blanchard (Absentee Shawnee Citizen) at pblanchard@haskellfoundation.org
First Annual Children’s Health and Climate Change Symposium
Children’s Health and Climate Change Symposium Agenda:
9AM - KEYNOTE || Dr. Kyle X. Hill, University of Minnesota, School of Public health
10AM - PRESENTATION || Dr. Dee Ann DeRoin, University of Missouri, Kansas City
10:45AM - PRESENTATION || Erin Myers Madeira, Collaborative for Right Relations
11:45AM - PRESENTATION || Dr. Daniel Wildcat & Alex Kimball Williams,with Shannon Lowe of the Indian Health Service
1PM - STUDENT PANEL || Courtney King, Star Her Many Horses, Cameron Quick, Carolyn Rodriguez, moderated by Dr. Debra Bolton
2PM - PANEL DISCUSSION || “What Are We Doing Now?” - Robert Hicks, Dr. Jenniffer Santos-Hernández, Dr. Melinda Adams, Jamie Hofling, Connie Fitzpatrick
3:15PM - PANEL DISCUSSION || Water is life - Dr. Jennifer Jay, Dr. Bridgett Chapin, Dr. Tim Schneider
Keynote presentations by:
Dr. Kyle X. Hill
Featured Speakers
Dr. Kyle X. Hill, University of Minnesota, School of Public Health
Kyle X. Hill, PhD, MPH is Ojibwe (Turtle Mountain Band; Enrolled Citizen), Dakota (Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe), Lakota (Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe). Dr. Hill is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, School of Public Health, Division of Environmental Health Sciences and adjunct faculty at the University of North Dakota, Department of Indigenous Health. He is active in community-based participatory research with American Indian and First Nations communities in the U.S. and Canada on research projects across social, behavioral, and environmental health. Specifically, Dr. Hill’s primary line of research considers the social, political, and ecological determinants of Indigenous health, as well as the intersection of climate justice and Land-based healing within Indigenous communities. Dr. Hill is also developing research exploring how Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledges can function as foundations of climate adaptation and mitigation programs. Dr. Hill has co-authored several manuscripts and book chapters on the impacts of climate change to Indigenous health, particularly on the impacts to community mental health. He currently lives on his Dakota and Anishinaabe traditional homelands in St. Paul, MN with his family.
Erin Myers Madeira, Collaborative for Right Relations
Erin Myers Madeira helps diverse partners build the commitment, enabling conditions and collaborations to advance community-led environmental conservation and sustainable development. She has worked in the field of environmental conservation and social transformation for 20 years, leading work to bring together western science and Indigenous land care practices. Erin’s career in supporting community-led conservation has led her from the literal end-of-the-road in Indonesian Borneo to international climate negotiations to many conversations around the fire with some of the wisest, most dedicated stewards of the land. She founded and directed The Nature Conservancy’s Global and North America Programs for Conservation in Partnership with Indigenous Peoples before starting the Collaborative for Right Relations.
Dr. Dee Ann DeRoin, Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska
Dr. DeRoin, MD MPH, is a family physician (retired) and community health consultant working with tribes, Native organizations, states and non-profit organizations to improve the health status and the quality of health care in American Indian and Alaska Native communities. Her areas of special interest and expertise include cancer education and prevention; diabetes education and prevention; and family medicine. She has retired from reservation-based clinical medicine, but continues her community health work with the University of Missouri School of Medicine campuses in Kansas City and St. Joseph, Missouri. Her work focuses on identifying and recruiting young Native students to consider a career in medicine.
Dr. DeRoin graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine and received her MPH from the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. DeRoin is a member of the Association of American Indian Physicians and the American Academy of Family Physicians.
The First Annual TCU Symposium of Climate Change and Children’s Health will bring together tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) and larger public and private universities to share research, education programs and work on the most pressing environmental issue facing our Mother Earth—global climate change. Held in conjunction with this symposium, The Health and Medicine Career Fair will connect TCU students with R1 research universities—such as UCLA, Harvard and Kansas University—so they may learn about each other and find creative ways of working together.
On Thursday Nov. 14, 2024, Haskell Indian Nations University’s Rising Voices Changing Coast Convergence Science Hub will convene the first TCU Symposium on Climate Change and Children’s Health in the historic Haskell auditorium. The Symposium will bring together researchers, faculty, and students from R1 institutions and TCUs to share their work in children’s health and climate change. Through this convening, we hope to foster a new level of respect between R1 institutions and TCUs and advance a better understanding of how critical interdisciplinary approaches are to successfully addressing global climate change.
On Nov. 13th from 10 am to 2pm in the Stidham Student Union, Haskell will host a Health and Medicine Career Fair. This event will bring tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) and larger public and private universities together to share research, education programs, and explore opportunities for TCU students to work on the most pressing environmental issue facing our Mother Earth – global climate change. Invited medical schools, public health programs, and related environmental health programs will share education and career opportunities.
Invited universities include UCLA, Harvard, Kansas University, University of Oklahoma, Creighton, University of New Mexico, University of Washington, University of Minnesota, North Dakota University and a host of schools with a demonstrated commitment to serving American Indian and Alaska Native students and their Nations.
Follow this link to register for the First Annual Children’s Health and Climate Change Symposium.
Click here to apply for a travel stipend
Please email any questions to admin@rvcchub.org.