Tribal Collaborations in Developing Place-Based Pedagogies for Public-Facing Student Projects

At The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, public-facing student projects have supported tribal goals in environmental justice and climate resilience, as “solidarity practices” with Native nations (De Leeuw and Hunt Citation2018). The collaborative projects use place-based pedagogies to develop publications educating non-Native communities about settler colonialism and Indigenous decolonization. In a process of “Power Back,” Washington Native nations are extending powers outside their reservations into treaty territories, to restore species habitat, comanage fisheries, remove dams, halt fossil fuel shipping, access militarized lands, and heal other settler-colonial harms. Related student publications include the books Asserting Native Resilience: Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations Face the Climate Crisis (Grossman and Parker Citation2012) and Removing Barriers: Restoring Salmon Watersheds through Tribal Alliances (Online 2021), Web sites on fossil fuels and military bases, and the Olympia’s Hidden Histories self-guided walking tours (2022–2023). The ArcGIS StoryMaps tours examine the historic displacement of the Squaxin Island Tribe and immigrant communities from downtown Olympia, and of oysters and salmon from the Deschutes Estuary, as well as resistance to Port of Olympia shipments of timber, military, and oil-equipment cargo. These student projects reveal “places built upon stolen land” (Smiles Citation2021) to develop “place-based solidarities” (Snelgrove, Dhamoon, and Corntassel Citation2014).