We produce a variety of resources for use by the general public. They use different ways of knowing, learning about, and responding to the natural world to help people begin a process of reconnection to the land.

We believe it's important to make innovative ways of understanding the relationship between humans and the earth available to people who don't have the money, time, or opportunity to get to a place where they can experience the Land for themselves. So our resources are produced as media such as print or webcast. But personal experience is a crucial aspect of learning within Indigenous worldview: a person learns most powerfully of and from the land, rather than about the land. That means trying to make learning within Indigenous worldview highly accessible through media is a difficult balancing act, and some of our research explores ways to improve "distant learning" of and from the land.

Please use these resources, share them with friends, family, and colleagues, and contribute your own knowledge and experience to the ones that are community-based. We also need your financial help to continue to provide these resources and to do the research that helps us understand how to let the "experience of the land" transmit itself through media more effectively. Please make a donation to help these resources grow in both content and effectiveness.

The Digital Library of Indigenous Science Resources: The only digital library made up exclusively of Indigenous Science resources from and by Indigenous people worldwide. Funding for the pilot project was provided by the National Science Foundation, and we have major partnerships in the Indigenous community worldwide that will permit us to include their materials in the library. But the project is presently stalled because there are no funds to add resources now that the library is set up and the prototype is online.

Ways of Knowing about Tornadoes: This resource was originally developed in 1999 as a way of demonstrating the function of the Sacred Circle model of knowing, learning about, and responding to the natural world -- in this case, that aspect of the natural world that is tornadoes. The information in the resource is a little dated now, but it continues to be used in classrooms by public school teachers and even college faculty, and it's been cited extensively by the Washington Post (in a news story) and incorporated into museum exhibits.

Ways of Knowing about Wildfire: While the catastrophic wildfire of summer 2006 caused great upheaval and destruction in the lives of Nebraska's Pine Ridge, it also created a powerful opportunity for learning. We applied the ways of knowing we always use to learn new things about the natural world, and have put up webpages that share the results, as well as wildfire resources we used, with other people who've suddenly found themselves swept up in the fiery chaos of catastrophic wildfire. We are also preparing a book of the things we learned and the materials we produced in response.

Forestry Information: These pages document our efforts to apply what we learned about wildfire to the forested land that was our partner in the summer of 2006. They provide a practical example of how "regular people" can learn about, connect with, and respond to the Place they live.

Horse-Human Relationship Survey Results: These are published preliminary, base-level results of the horse-human relationship survey we conducted in spring 2007 as part of our Voice of the Horse Project. More in-depth analysis will be carried out during the course of the project, with a projected publication date of 2009-2010 for the finished results of the project as a whole.



Important Note: Please email us for permission to use any of the text, photographs, artwork, or research results for purposes other than personal ones. All information on this site is copyright protected. Information in the DLISR is additionally protected by copyright holders of the original documents, which are included in the DLISR by special arrangement.

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