For thousands of years, the salish, pend d'oreille, and kootenai people have inhabited a vast territory that includes much of the northern rockies. To have flourished for millennia, the tribes had…

For thousands of years, the salish, pend d'oreille, and kootenai people have inhabited a vast territory that includes much of the northern rockies. To have flourished for millennia, the tribes had to develop a profound understanding of their homeland and the population dynamics of its plants and animals across seasons and the longer cycles of decades and centuries. The project will: (1) develop two climate change related college courses. One would be a remote sensing class that would use NASA data sets and imagery within the context of climate change analysis. The second is a college introductory-level climate change course with a lab component for undergraduate students by utilizing and building on the work of previous climate change education awardees. The course will cover climate change science and examine how climate change has affected traditional and contemporary tribal land uses on the reservation (from hunting, fishing, and plant harvesting to traditional burning practices and modern forest management). In the lab students will work in teams, utilizing NASA data analysis, modeling, remote sensing and visualization tools to anticipate future impacts on tribal resources and cultural life. As part of the lab, students will present the results of their modeling and visualization exercises to reservation high school science classes and discuss with those students the implications of the changes on their local and regional environment and on their tribe's natural resources and cultural life. The course, developed at salish kootenai college, will be offered there and made available through outreach and e-learning to other tribal colleges and students across the nation. The tribal cultural portion of the course will be adaptable to other reservations and tribal communities. (2) develop an extensive web-based, interactive learning unit for reservation high school teachers that will draw upon nasadeveloped curriculum and learning tools and information and placing these within the context of the tribal perspective by integrating oral histories, stories, and elder interviews as well as contemporary observations and information on how climate change has affected traditional and contemporary tribal land uses on the reservation. (3) develop as a companion to this unit a "social media" site for high school science classes that would allow students to network with schools on other reservations and tribal groups from alaska to arizona. The network of schools would be created by building on the work of previous climate change education awardees. On the site, students would: (a) profile climate information for the area surrounding their school; (b) post observed climate-related events (especially those with cultural significance) on a perpetual natural history calendar, comparing the timing of those events with their occurrences in the past based on accounts from elders, oral histories, and other resources; (c) post the modeling and visualization results for their area materials developed by the college students in the lab course described above; (d) compare those visualization results with those from other schools in other areas and participate in an online discussions about the differences and similarities and the cultural implications of the changes; and (e) post culturally relevant, climate-themed art, writing, singing, and story telling, thereby integrating climate change more widely throughout the curriculum. The platform would also include a robust forum for teachers so they can exchange climate change information and curriculum ideas.