**3. Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change**

Indigenous Peoples are close to the land and many still depend on it for their livelihood. Many still abide by a historical relationship to places based on their tribal relational worldview. Today, Indigenous Peoples find themselves increasingly vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change. Meeting for the past thirty years in the context of many associated conferences and forums, Indigenous people have been discussing and documenting climate change and its impact on them. Using traditional ecological knowledge and their experience, they have been describing the same drastic shifts scientist now recognize as occurring. The scale of change presents severe challenges for tribal culture and well-being.

Throughout North America, climate change has already drastically impacted Indigenous Peoples. As the crisis of climate change unfolds, Indigenous Peoples are being affected in pronounced ways. Coastal tribes are impacted by sea rise to the extent that some villages may have to be relocated. Climate change significantly affects cultural ways of life and place-based rights of many Indigenous tribes. Species and treaty boundaries are directly affected because they are based on place. There is loss of traditional knowledge due to the loss of key plants, animals, and the cultural contexts that formed the traditional foundation of relationship tribes once had with these entities.

These impacts can also include food and water insecurity in the face of crop failure due to drought, flood, insect infestations, or disease. They can include loss of fisheries or plants and animals that Indigenous Peoples have traditionally depended on due to habitat loss or human migration. They can include new health hazards such new virus strains (COVID-19, Ebola, SARS, HIV, etc.), antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and other harmful microbial agents due to loss of natural diversity and the continued encroachment of humans into natural environments. In some cases, this has precipitated the forced migration of Indigenous Peoples into urban settings many times leading to poverty and homelessness.

"[Many] small communities are suffering particular hardships, and indigenous cultures, traditions, and languages are facing major challenges to their existence [6]."

Historically, Indigenous Peoples have survived epidemics, extreme weather events, droughts, floods, wars, colonization, displacement, and religious conversion. In the face of these challenges, Indigenous Peoples remained highly adaptive and resilient. In addition, Indigenous Peoples share an ethic of mutual-reciprocal relationship and responsibility toward one another and the natural world. Therefore, plants, animals, and the natural world are not viewed as resources but as valued relatives that have the right to exist and be cared for responsibly [7]. It is these orientations that can provide a foundation for creating different kinds of educational, leadership, and social-economic activities that strengthen community while simultaneously mitigating the challenges of climate change for all.

#### **4. Indigenous Communities and Western Economic Development**

The term "economic development" connotes new language for old practices in the minds of many Indigenous Peoples. Paradoxically, the modern social concept of development and the value structure that goes with it both attract and exploit Indigenous people and communities. That is, Indigenous people are made to feel that they need development through the good graces of external agents to exist in modern society. This is a self-serving view on the part of governments and corporations, and it largely negates the possibilities for "creative" development initiatives that may emerge from within Indigenous cultures themselves. Nonetheless, many Indigenous people are enticed into thinking that the only way to progress is to adopt colonial ways to solve community problems [8].

Yet, when some Indigenous communities examine government or private sector economic development programs, they find little relevance to their real lives and community practices. They are suspicious of more external control and further disruption of their cultural or community life. They suspect that profit or benefit of these initiatives will flow to others outside the community. This is often exactly what happens [9]. Many community members become frustrated, apathetic, dependent on external agents, and resigned to surviving from day to day. All of this disempowers real community renewal and serves to perpetuate community apathy and various social ills such as poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, drug abuse, and exodus of many members from a community in search of a better life and livelihood [10].

Some Indigenous communities may apply conventional models of Western economic development out of sheer necessity to serve pressing needs of their community members. But they often face challenges which prevent them from utilizing these models to their full potential. These challenges can include the lack of the necessary administrative infrastructure, lack of skilled or adequately educated people to perform needed work, inadequate startup capital, political instability, and general absence of basic regulatory codes or jurisdictions. Often, when Indigenous communities and their economic development efforts are viewed by governmental or private funding agencies, they are viewed as poor or marginal risks at best and always in need of external co-signers or capital [11]. This scenario plays out in many contexts throughout the Indigenous world and reflects another legacy of colonization and the continued political, cultural, and economic disenfranchisement experienced by Indigenous communities.

For example, in the United States, even after years of heavy investment by government and private sector agents, American Indian communities remain the least economically developed of the population. This continued lack of economic development is many times the result of policies and approaches that have been applied based on conventional Western economic development approaches. At other times it is the result of poor governmental leadership or the absence of practical "self-rule". In addition, approaches such as the "entrepreneurial" model or "Chamber of Commerce" promotional models have had limited success and have not been sustainable in many Indigenous communities because they are predicated on largely unexamined assumptions of Western development and capital investment which have limited applicability in Indigenous communities [11].

This is not to say that there have not been successful applications of these models and other models in Indigenous communities. But on closer examination one sees that these successes are largely the result of close collaboration with and authentic involvement of Indigenous communities in respectful ways by all external agents involved. It is through such a spirit of authentic collaboration that an atmosphere of mutual trust evolves to form a foundation for the empowerment and efficacy of sustainable Indigenous community building.

However, the view of some Indigenous community leaders, that Western notions of development and its paradigm of "progress" with little regard for social, cultural, and ecological consequences is an extension of colonialism, has been gaining momentum. As is the view that the Western economic paradigm and its focus on material economic indicators as the sole measure of development perpetuates a distorted and dysfunctional vision of what is in fact a dynamic multi-dimensional, multi-contextual social, cultural, and spiritual process for Indigenous communities [11]. As a result of such views of negative manifestations of the application of Western economic development models, many Indigenous peoples have begun to actively search for alternatives and new paradigms of "development" which are sustainable and more in-line with their cultural and spiritual ethos [8].
