There are over 15,000 hazardous waste sites on or next to tribal lands in the US. Tribal members, practicing their subsistence “tribal lifeways”, are therefore at an increased risk of exposure to toxics, especially those that are persistent and bioaccumulative. This has contributed to significant health disparities in Indian Country. The Native Environmental Health Research (NEHR) Network links tribes and tribal communities with research and human resources at tribal colleges (TCUs) and Native American-serving, non-tribal institutions (NASNTIs), in order to help address these pressing environmental health research needs. The NEHR Network can mobilize culturally-competent, Native undergraduate and graduate student researchers at participating institutions to help these tribal communities, while at the same time, developing student skills in environmental analytical chemistry and offering these students valuable, community-based research experiences that aids with their degree completion. Salish Kootenai College (SKC), a 4-year TCU in western Montana, has been successfully conducting such collaborative research projects directly with the Micmac tribal community in northern Maine (3,000 miles), helping them assess exposures to mercury from fish and arsenic from private wells. SKC students interact directly with the study community and analyze collected samples back in Montana as part of their degree research. We have extended this approach now to include two UP Michigan tribal communities. In this case, SKC students and faculty have been working with those communities through their 2-year TCU, sharing expertise and helping to build research capacity by hosting their students for summer internships at SKC. Their own students control the collection and handling of their samples and analyses (culturally-relevant fish), while SKC students act as near-peer mentors. Finally, NEHR is also funding research at Northern Arizona University (NASNTI) evaluating uranium exposures through consumption of traditional food, such as sheep, on the Navajo Nation. This project also includes students from a Navajo TCU, Dine’ College, on their project which broadens the collaboration and student impact.

Native environmental health research (NEHR) network: Developing collaborative service-oriented analytical research for Native American students

255th National Meeting (2018)

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