Tag: Poster 155

Climate Change’s Impacts on Indigenous Women, Responsibility, and Adaptability

Presenter(s): Simone Hally − Pre-PPPM, Spanish Literature And Culture

Faculty Mentor(s): Mark Carey

Poster 155

Research Area: Environmental And Social Studies

While climate change discourse increasingly recognizes the unique vulnerabilities of indigenous peoples, the experiences of indigenous women with respect to climate change continue to receive less attention, especially with respect to scientific and policy writing. In this paper, I aim to apply Kyle Whyte’s framework that binds “collective continuance” and systems of responsibility with regards to the relationship between climate change and indigenous women. I will apply his framework based on the relationship between the Anishinaabe women and water. I will then test it on the indigenous women in South Goulburn Island’s relationship and responsibility to marine resources, the Baka women’s relationships to the Nbwakha fish, and Indigenous Peruvian women’s responsibility to seed saving and harvesting. I will ultimately argue that Whyte’s lense effectively explains how ability to adapt to and carry out traditional responsibilities factors into climate change’s impact on indigenous women. In all these examples, the ecological effects caused by climate change disrupt the responsibilities of the indigenous women and enables them to adapt in order to fulfill their responsibilities, or create new ones altogether. This adaptation reveals the both oppressive and emancipatory nature of climate change’s effect on women’s responsibilities. Writing about indigenous women and climate change is important not only because of their wealth of experience and knowledge of the environments in which they live, but also because incorporating their voices perpetuates a balanced discourse surrounding indigenous women and climate change. Their perspectives are instrumental in global and regional climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Seeking InSite: What the U.S. Can Learn from Vancouver’s Supervised Injection Site and How Harm Reduction Affects the Lives of Intravenous Drug Users

Presenter(s): Bryanna Moore

Faculty Mentor(s): Dan Tichenor

Poster 155

Session: Social Sciences & Humanities

The focus of my Honors thesis is on supervised injection sites and the feasibility of harm reduction as a political framework in the United States. Though there has been much research on the success of harm reduction in places outside of the United States, no supervised injection sites currently exist in the U.S. Part of my research will comprise of a comparative analysis of U.S. and Canadian drug policy, including a sociohistorical analysis of shifting cultural values around the issue of healthcare and the eventual establishment of InSite, a supervised injection site in Vancouver, British Columbia. My primary research questions are: Could a facility like InSite operate in the United States? If so, how? If not, why not? What are the obstacles — social, political, economic, legal, or otherwise — that have prevented the successful establishment of a supervised injection site in the United States? My research will make a unique, distinct contribution to the academic discourse surrounding harm reduction because it will center personal narrative and accurately situate the lives of drug users and their communities as those most affected by drug policy. This research approach reflects the principles of the harm reduction movement itself, not focusing solely on abstract policy goals or legal history but instead contextualizing law and policy in relation to lived experiences. I expect to find that drug users themselves, while at the forefront of organizing for drug policy reform and public health approaches to the issue of drug use, are rarely included in conversations with actual law-makers and policy influencers. Little existing research takes a personal narrative approach to drug policy reform. I plan to address that gap by building a body of ethnographic research that can be used in the future to determine resource allocation and shift the sociopolitical conversation about drug use from its current punitive focus to a more humanistic, health-centered approach.