Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** the osage nation is a federally…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** the osage nation is a federally recognized sovereign tribal nation working to build a sustainable sovereign food supply for their people. A new kind of environmental contaminant called forever chemicals fundamentally undermines the sovereignty of the osage nation's food production systems by threatening the health and wellbeing of the osage citizens. Forever chemicals otherwise known as PFAS or per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances may persist up to a thousand years enter the human food-web and cause damage to the human reproductive system and other undiscovered illnesses. Despite the urgency of the situation little is known about how PFAS contaminates the food-web. We hypothesize that understanding the pathway of PFAS transmission during different modes of agricultural production will help to devise a hazard monitoring prediction and prevention system. To test this hypothesis researchers at texas tech university will work alongside osage nation scientists to establish a sophisticated PFAS analytical facility at the osage nation harvest land facility employ and train full-time tribal employees to collect and process agricultural samples as well as educate the osage citizens and agricultural workforce to use the PFAS decision making tool. Graduate students from texas tech university will conduct integrated research at the osage nation and will be instrumental in collecting environmental plant and animal tissue samples quantifying different pfass and identifying the critical nodes of contamination via water soil agricultural inputs cultural practices (e.g. fire suppressants used in controlled burning) and other external sources (e.g. fire stations open oil wells etc.). Stakeholder input (i.e. the osage citizens) will be collected throughout the project's lifecycle such that the research techniques and outcomes can be sustained long after the work is completed in support of osage nation food and nutrition security initiatives. The outcomes of this project will have broader impacts outside of the osage nation when used to eliminate the threat of PFAS from various food production systems.