Description: Through the lens of the Rising Voices, Changing Coasts coastal research project, this lecture highlights how traditional ecological knowledge and modern scientific approaches work together to promote resilience, sustainability, and community-driven solutions among diverse Indigenous coastal communities.
Speaker: Daniel R. Wildcat, Ph.D. (Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma), Haskell Indian Nations University
About the speaker: Daniel R. Wildcat is a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma and has dedicated 39 years to teaching and administration at Haskell Indian Nations University. Dr. Wildcat earned his interdisciplinary Ph.D. from the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
In 1994, he partnered with the Hazardous Substance Research Center at Kansas State University to establish the Haskell Environmental Research Studies (HERS) Center, and later launched the HERS summer undergraduate internship program in collaboration with KU professor Dr. Joane Nagel.
Dr. Wildcat is currently the principal investigator of a $20 million, five-year NSF-funded project to develop the Rising Voices, Changing Coasts Research Hub at Haskell. His publications include Power and Place: Indian Education in America (with Vine Deloria, Jr.), Destroying Dogma: Vine Deloria’s Legacy on Intellectual America (with Steve Pavlik), and Red Alert: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge, which emphasizes Indigenous ingenuity—“Indigenuity”—as essential to addressing environmental challenges in the Anthropocene. He also co-authored the Southern Great Plains chapter of the Fourth National Climate Assessment.
His most recent book, released in fall 2023, is “On Indigenuity: Learning the Lessons of Mother Earth.”