Next Steps
Navigating ethical and responsible co-authorship
We received funding from the National Science Foundation’s Ethical and Responsible Research (NSF-ER2) program to support a partnership project with Piikani Lodge. Piikani Lodge is a Blackfeet non-profit that supports the health and well-being of the Blackfeet or Amskapi Piikani People through diverse programming, student support, and research. We will work together to advance understanding of the foundations of ethical and responsible co-authorship across Tribal and non-Indigenous partners. We will do this by co-authoring articles and other projects, including a Blackfoot specific project, on buffalo restoration. This allows our team to continue supporting buffalo restoration and – by working together and reflecting on what works and what doesn’t – to generate general insights on what enables ethical and responsible co-authorship.
We plan to translate these findings into articles, reports, presentations, a website, and institutional review board (IRB) guidelines. We will work together with our ILER Blackfoot advisors as partners, and bring several students onto the project, both Blackfoot and non-Tribal.
Restoring human-wildlife coexistence in working landscapes
We also received funding from the National Science Foundation’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) program to carry out a project focused on re-learning to live with buffalo in working landscapes. Building on the lessons from the ILER project, this project will zoom out to ask related questions about human-wildlife coexistence across working landscapes in Montana. The goal is to better understand: 1) how are rural and Tribal communities in Montana navigating an expanding human-bison interface in working landscapes; and 2) what strategies could effectively advance coexistence between wild bison and people to support resilient rural food systems and Tribal sovereignty?
To do this, we will spend time learning on the land with livestock producers and other land stewards, conduct interviews, and hold coexistence workshops to help develop strategies for re-learning to live with bison and other wildlife. This project will be led by Madison (Maddi) Stevens at Montana State University. Learn more about the project here.
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Please cite this website as: Lunstrum, E., M. Stevens and S. Pearce (2024). “Indigenous-Led Ecological Restoration (ILER) Project Website.” https://iler-project.com/.
Indigenous Led Ecological Restoration 