Articles and Reports

Community-Based Monitoring as the practice of Indigenous governance: A case study of Indigenous-led water quality monitoring in the Yukon River Basin

Indigenous peoples are increasingly developing Community-Based Monitoring programs to protect the waters and lands within their territories in response to multiple ecological and political stressors. Furthermore, CBM tends to focus on Indigenous peoples’ role as ‘knowledge holders.’ This paper explores CBM through a governance lens by understanding CBM as a strategy for the assertion of Indigenous sovereignty and jurisdiction.

Native Water Protection Flows Through Self-Determination: Understanding Tribal Water Quality Standards and “Treatment as a State.”

For Indigenous communities, protecting traditional lands and waters is of the utmost importance. In the U.S. context, scholars have documented an unfortunate neglect of water quality on tribal lands. Treatment as a State (TAS) provisions, adopted in the 1987 amendments to the Clean Water Act, and tribal Water Quality Standards (WQSs) programs are intended to address such problems.

Linking community-based monitoring to water policy: perceptions of citizen scientists

This paper examines the relationships between Community-Based Water Monitoring (CBM) and government-led water initiatives. Drawing on a cross-Canada survey of over one hundred organizations, we explore the reasons why communities undertake CBM, the monitoring protocols they follow, and the extent to which CBM program members feel their findings are incorporated into formal (i.e., government-led) decision-making processes.

Respecting water: Indigenous water governance, ontologies, and the politics of kinship on the ground

Indigenous peoples often view water as a living entity or a relative, to which they have a sacred responsibility. Such a perspective frequently conflicts with settler societies’ view of water as a “resource” that can be owned, managed, and exploited.

We have stories

This paper traces the changing relationship between family, water, and fish through the lives of five generations of Indigenous women. We reveal the ways that Indigenous women’s connections have transformed and persisted despite generations of omissions and erasures.

Resurging through Kishiichiwan

In this paper, I center Indigenous water governance at the nexus of extractive capitalist development, water contamination and dispossession, and Indigenous self-determination. I do so by focusing on colonial capitalist legacies and continuities that are unfolding on Mushkegowuk lands of what is otherwise known as the Treaty 9 territory in northern Ontario, Canada.

Data quality from a community-based, water quality monitoring project in the Yukon river basin

This paper examines the quality of data collected by the Indigenous Observation Network, a community-based water-quality project in the Yukon River Basin of Alaska and Canada. The Indigenous Observation Network relies on community technicians to collect surface-water samples from as many as fifty locations to achieve their goals of monitoring the quality of the Yukon River and major tributaries in the basin and maintaining a long-term record of baseline data against which future changes can be measured.

Native Water Protection Flows Through Self- Determination: Understanding Tribal Water Quality Standards and “Treatment as a State”

Indigenous communities, protecting traditional lands and waters is of the utmost importance. In the U.S. context, scholars have documented an unfortunate neglect of water quality on tribal lands.

Policy Briefs

Tamar Meshel – International Law Affecting Canada’s Jurisdiction Over Water

Shifting the Framework of Canadian Water Governance through Indigenous Research Methods

First Nations communities in Canada are disproportionately affected by poor water quality. As one example, many communities have been living under boil water advisories for decades, but government interventions to date have had limited impact.

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