Margaret Redsteer’s Tanner Lectures, “Climate Futures and Structural Paradigms,” will draw on her experiences working with local Indigenous communities to adapt to a changing climate and will consider what has been left out of narratives about the challenges we faced.
This lecture will focus on how the historical implementation of policies led to significant failures and to current attitudes about reform of land use practices.
About the Speakers
Dr. Margaret Hiza Redsteer (Crow) teaches at the University of Washington Bothell and previously served as a Research Scientist for the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Geological Survey based in the Flagstaff Science Center, where she worked on water issues for the Navajo Nation. She examines interactions of different landscape processes, including erosion by wind and water and how changing vegetation communities and climate can influence these processes and exacerbate geologic hazards. In the Southwest, she has examined aspects of drought and increasing aridity that have not been well quantified, including seasonal changes to surficial processes and ecologic conditions. Incorporating Indigenous knowledge from tribal elders about the changes they have observed has aided her research in elucidating the effects of increasing temperatures in poorly monitored regions of the U.S. and communicates the relevance of ecosystem change to the livelihoods of those who are most vulnerable..
About the Series
In collaboration with the Office of the President of Harvard University, the Mahindra Humanities Center hosts annual Tanner Lectures on Human Values. The purpose of the Tanner Lectures is the advancement of scholarly and scientific learning in the field of human values. That purpose embraces the entire range of moral, artistic, intellectual, and spiritual values, both individual and social – the full register of values pertinent to the human condition, interest, behavior, and aspiration.
The Tanner Lectures on Human Values is a nonprofit corporation administered at the University of Utah. They are funded by an endowment and other gifts received by the University of Utah from Obert Clark Tanner and Grace Adams Tanner. More information: www.tannerlectures.utah.edu.
See also: Tanner Lectures, Public
Transition Studies 