Data Sovereignty, Participatory Action Research, and Transformative Systems Design for the Gulf Coast and Southern Plains of Texas

Project Summary

Ties To La Tierra (TIES) began this community science process with the intention of creating a transformative system that would materialize a mapping data ecosystem to strengthen Texas Intertribal community systems and connect resource channels. The team had their initial attention on the themes of data sovereignty and community protection systems specifically for the Springs to Bays region in Texas, of which much of the Intertribal community is located. It became essential to host an Intertribal community gathering- focused on respectful data collection and promoting cultural community empowerment.

This meant that Community-based Participatory Action Research methods were vital to the Texas Intertribal community collectively producing meaningful data resources and intrinsically sharing information relevant to their cultural communities. There were many maps created by the community but TIES has focused on two community-generated maps. With the assistance of a GIS scientist, TIES was trained on how to digitize the two community-generated maps on GIS software. These two maps are Ecology and At- Risk Areas. Also, the maps will be combined with EnviroAtlas (government website) data layers to produce 9 total maps focused on native biodiversity, and protected lands. TIES hosted a workshop on Indigenous Knowledge which included four types of knowledge: personal, public, traditional, and sacred knowledge also what makes Indigenous Knowledge different. TIES’s organizational mission and values guided a shared community agreement for the event, which included ensuring a safe gathering, providing relatives with healthy meals, practicing considerate space creation, and implementing well-thought-out participatory mapping. Other highlights of the event were seed sharing, meals prepared from the land, Intertribal ceremony (sunset and sunrise), and a nature and ecological walk. There were 65 attendees in total at the actual event in South Texas, 180 people who showed initial interest, and 100 registrations. Community elders supported more Intertribal gatherings for the future.

Project Outputs

• Community Agreement: This is an agreement which infuses traditional Indigenous wisdom with shared understandings of conduct. TIES modified this community agreement with the assistance of community feedback and input to establish clarity on our working agreement/expectations of each other as it relates to our cultural community and our collective purpose. This community was made to be event specific to the Intertribal Community Mapping Gathering but is a living community agreement that will continue to be active and situationally modified throughout the course of time.
• Photos of Community Mapping:
• Maps (community-generated and combined with secondary data sources):
• Traditional food systems: Food was a highlight, featuring breakfast porridge, squash soup, mesquite flour cookies, bison tamales, and a prickly pear vinaigrette salad. Every dish had at least one food item that was foraged, cultivated, or raised and harvested locally and intertribally.
• Peaceful resolutions and understandings were made between different factions of Tribal communities that have long been disconnected
• Connections and new pathways of cultural knowledge sharing were built between the youth and the elders.
• A successful workshop in which community members were empowered to map their own geographical areas, and determine areas of importance to them.

Community Impact:

The Texas Intertribal community gathering brought together various Tribal elders with youth and reconnecting tribal persons. This means that this event was able to host a space for intergenerational transfer of knowledge. This intergenerational transfer of knowledge centered around Traditional Ecological Knowledge, history, and cultural understanding. In the short term, we learned what is immediately available to us from the shared mapping data. It uncovered pathways that will help the community move toward solutions, hope, and peace for our Intertribal communities. The long term impacts from this work will be traditional ecological restoration of our lands and waters, strong regenerative economy, sustainable resource distribution, and thriving Intertribal communities and cultures.

Acknowledgements:

Gratitude to the Four Directions, the Plants, the Animals, the Land, the Water, the Sun, Moon, the Planetary systems, our Ancestors, Intertribal Nations of Texas (including Coahuiltecans, Lipan Apache, Karankawa, Mexica, unrecognized communities from these lands, displaced Indigenous peoples from the global diaspora, and recognized tribes that call Texas their home).

The project team also would like to thank:

• Ties to La Tierra (TIES): staff and supporters, and communities and families of TIES staff and supporters
• Red Sun Ranch
• Texas Tribal Buffalo Project
• Lipan Nde’ of Texas
• Inter-Tribal Cycle
• Traditional Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Healing: TCIKH
• Kansas State University Center for Hazardous Substance Research:KSU CHSR
• American Geophysical Union/Thriving Earth Exchange: AGU TEX
• National Park Service: NPS

Future Plans

“We will enter into the sixth cycle of the sun with grounded mapping data to plan for our future. Our Intertribal work will never stop. We have a responsibility as an organization on our traditional lands to speak for our non-human relatives and protect our traditional lifeways. Our elders support this work to continue, therefore it must. We will continue Intertribal Community Science programming as Ties To La Tierra.”

Future workshops will exist in order to familiarize the community and extended partners with mapping tools, and build on the first successful gathering.

About the Community 

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. 

About the Project

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. 

Timeline and Milestones

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.

Community Leaders

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. 

Community Scientist

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’.

Community Science Fellow

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

https://tiestolatierra.org/

Traditional Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Healing

https://www.tcikh.org/

Center for Hazardous Substance Research at Kansas State University