Short Title:  Observing Unci Maka

Co-Project Leaders: Joni Tobacco (Salish Kootenai College), Shannon Boldt (Northwest Indian College), Elisha Yellow Thunder (Oglala Lakota College), Darryl Reano (Arizona State University)

This working group brings together Tribal members, scientists, students and NASA remote- sensing researchers to formulate new methods of using existing earth observation data to identify, monitor, and address environmental impacts in Tribal communities. These methods will be co-developed utilizing culturally-specific data synthesis techniques, which will include leveraging existing resources and hosting community workshops on the Hopi and Pine Ridge Reservations, where members of the working group are from. Both of these Tribal lands are impacted by current and legacy uranium mining, which has lasting effects on the air, water, soils, and health of these communities. During these visits the working group will discuss how to effectively synthesize available datasets to prioritize new measurements and gaps in resources for addressing and identifying environmental impacts. This will be done through developing new software to identify sources of environmental impacts, degradation, and risk using data from various satellites and surface monitoring networks. Additionally, advancing data sovereignty is a shared goal of this working group and there will be community building, planning, and discussions for how this environmental data and future collections can be aligned to Indigenous frameworks. Historically, very limited research into the historical impacts of mining has been conducted using remote sensing techniques to address these types of environmental impacts nor have past research efforts been led by the communities impacted, which makes this working group novel and essential.