Indigenous communities in the Gulf Coast and the Southern Plains of Texas are working to build a system and resource to house information related to cultural, community, and general public needs. As climate impacts continue to cause damage to infrastructure and communities, this project aims to identify geographic locations less susceptible to ecological vulnerability, and develop potential sites for climate mitigation.
This project will create a fundamental, secure GIS database centering the community’s needs, traditions, cultural understandings, and visual modalities. The datasets will provide meaningful and essential geographic data for intertribal communities, while including partners throughout Texas. Map layers produced will include elements such as topography, watershed, ecoregions, climate, environmental, social, economic, and cultural interaction on the landscape.
Assessing the cumulative landscape for which there exists little data and creating a geographic communal space for intertribal communities will benefit the community in numerous ways. The GIS database will embody community protection and culturally relevant information including mapping climate-related data for the Gulf Coast and Southern Plains region of Texas. The GIS database will house information and resources which will benefit and be utilized by Ties to La Tierra, its partners, and communities throughout Texas.
The project will create the ability to access the poignant information that the community needs to produce reports, educate, and enact action on specifics of the region through the Indigenous lens. This work will also help educate future generations on geographic mapping and land uses/ land tenure within our specific regional Indigenous communities, in order to create resiliency in perpetuity.
The community is vastly intertribal and shares a regional connection to the Gulf Coast and Southern Plains of Texas. They are land stewards. The groups represented on the project are all people who are being affected by ecological collapse, which is the major cause of climate destruction. Ties To La Tierra, an ecological justice and Indigenous Futures organization, is leading this TEX effort in partnership with the Traditional Center for Indigenous Healing and Knowledge. The project team represents the communities they come from and are majority women and two-spirit-led groups.
The community will work with a scientist/expert to create a data storage system that will house a GIS database and promote intertribal community protection, while protecting data sovereignty. The project team will also transfer GIS building skills to our community to be able to self sustain and maintain the continuance of the data accumulation.
The project involves trusted intertribal representatives from the communities represented within the Gulf Coast and Southern Plains of Texas. Specifically, this project is co-created with community and professional experts including GIS scientists, tribal liaison(s), intertribal peoples from the Gulf Coast and Southern Plains, and an academic institution. The primary audience for this work is the local community, and the secondary audience is the general public.
The primary output of this project is to establish a secure database for GIS projects. The project team will use available local climate data to deliver regionally relevant maps to the general public.
When completed, the community will acquire transferable GIS and mapmaking skills to self-produce maps that will further protect and inform Indigenous communities within the state of Texas, and beyond. Indigenous communities historically and currently do not have much experience with just, ethical, and respectable research practices and the good natured researchers behind them. This project moves to change that. The community acknowledges the critical need for ethical research interventions that prioritize the protection of cherished Indigenous communities and their invaluable knowledge.
This project’s team and resource production will result in our intertribal Gulf Coastal and Southern Plains communities holding the skills to compile and produce data reports and visualizations to further protect our communities and The Peoples’ Traditional Ecological Knowledge and cultural ways. This ensures that the local community has access to information to better support community security and protect our sacred lands from further destruction, preventing further climate desecration.
May 2024: Maria Carrillo is assigned as TEX/AGU Community Science Fellow to Ties to la Tierra
October 2024: Project gets fully underway with the addition of the partner Traditional Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Healing and GIS Specialist Haven Townsend.
November 2024: Project Team also contacts partners at Kansas State University to learn about data storage options, etc.
December 2024: Selecting a Platform for GIS analysis. Select a platform for communications and document sharing
January 2025: Select platform for data storage and encryption
Mid-February 2025: Consider potential geographic locations for data collection and interpolation. Project Team familiarized with analysis and visualization platform.
Beginning of March 2025: Collect Data Sets
April 2025: Identify any additional partners who may wish to contribute to the project
May 2025: Potential site visit; Training non-profit partners and local community members on use of selected platform.
June/July 2025: Consolidate existing data sets and create a functional data platform with the potential to house at Kansas State University based on storage capacity
August 2025: Go live with a platform for any contributors.
September 2025: Development of ground tools and shareable visualization tools
October 2025: Troubleshoot existing issues.
November/December 2025: Determine future scope of project and all required geographic areas for data collection. Finalize work flows, templates, and guides.
December 2025: Determine any long term needs and scope of project before departure of Community Science Fellow.
Sabrina Chapa is a Chicana, born and raised in Texas, on traditional Karankawa lands, and from Selena Quintinilla’s hometown of Corpus Christi. She is executive director of Ties To La Tierra, an ecological stewardship organization that focuses on land-based projects, healing and restorative justice, and education. Ties To La Tierra’s mission is to bring transformative practices, participatory research, traditional ecological knowledge, and community building to the Gulf Coast and Southern Plains region. Sabrina has a Masters of Science in Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management From the Milano School of Public Engagement and a Bachelors of Science in Geography and Environmental Resources from Texas State University. She is an avid fisher, hunter, and land steward. Her lineage traces back to original land stewards, migrant farmworkers, construction/industrial workers, and “people who hold grit and do stuff with their hands.”
Born in unceded Coahuiltecan, Lipan Apache and Estok G’na territories, known as Yanawana (San Antonio, TX), Alexas Ramirez is a Two-Spirit Guaní (Taino), Coahuiltecan, Guachichil, and Black woman. She says, “I have cultivated a deeper relationship with seeds, birthwork, health and the land through my culture. I believe that through a harmonious relationship with nature, we can begin to restore equilibrium, as individuals, and as a human collective.” She is a land steward, birthworker, an herbalist, a seed-keeper and farmer, food sovereignty advocate, educator, director and co-founder of the Traditional Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Healing, owner of f l x s: healing-informed support services, and a strong advocate for traditional Indigenous culture. All of her land stewardship and conservation efforts have been received through Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge practices and Indigenous mentors. Her life work is devoted to the preservation and restoration of Indigenous life-ways.
Deandra Sanchez was born in so-called Corpus Christi, Texas and is a descendent of the Karankawa and Lipan Apache. Deandra enacts their passion of multigenerational skills sharing for the future of generations simultaneously with the respect of ancestral wisdom from elders. Through the course of Deandra’s life they have been integrating spirit with Indigenous events planning, leading youth protests, and relationship building with community and local mutual aid initiatives. Deandra likes to spend their time in solitude, with nature, and nurturing their connection to the land by growing plants.
Haven Clare Townsend (she/they) works and lives on the land of the Dena’ina in Anchorage, Alaska, and is a recent graduate from the University of Toronto, specialized in International Development and Geography. Haven brings 5 years of expertise in GIS analysis and participatory research methodologies to projects that make critical and counter cartography and interdisciplinary geospatial analysis more accessible. Her previous work on Indigenous land reclamation and young caregiver experiences during COVID-19 demonstrates her commitment to ecological justice and innovative, community-responsive policy approaches. When Haven’s not nerding out on her maps, you can find her reading at a local cafe, thrift shopping, seeing live music, or getting outside to hike and ice skate. Drawing from lived experience, she recognizes how institutions perpetuate stigma and exclusion, specifically as it concerns young people. In her future work, Haven hopes to draw upon queer ethnographies, feminist geographies, and Indigenous knowledge in collaborative efforts which decolonize modern constructions of ‘care’.
Maria explores the intersection of climate impacts and cultural preparedness and response. Born and raised in Southern California, she now ventures the deep cultural and natural landscapes of the Mid Atlantic region. She is currently Assistant Tribal Liaison with the National Park Service (NPS) Northeast Region. Additionally, she hosts the Tribal Engagement & Climate Change Working Group for NPS on a national level. Maria worked as a disaster analyst in Hawai’i and Europe, and her personal research explores cultural responses for climate change preparedness. Maria holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in Anthropology from California State University, Fullerton.
Ties to La Tierra
Traditional Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Healing
Center for Hazardous Substance Research at Kansas State University
