Stephen Handler: Dibaginjigaadeg Anishinaabe ezhitwaad, which means, basically, doing things in an Anishinaabe way. ‘Anishinaabe’ is the term that Ojibwe tribes across the Great Lakes region use to refer to themselves, they're the Anishinaabe people.

My name is Stephen Handler, and I'm a climate change specialist with the U. S. Forest Service Northern Research Station and the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science in Houghton, Michigan. And the Tribal [Climate] Adaptation Menu is the product of over two years of work among a team of 20 authors representing a range of organizations from federal agencies, tribal agencies, universities, and academic institutions all coming together over hundreds of hours of work.

The spark for this [Tribal Climate Adaptation] Menu occurred as we were testing a new watershed management adaptation tool and gathered a bunch of people together to talk about how climate change affects hydrology and water resources in forested landscapes. We had strong participation from tribal members at this workshop, we had a team of folks working on a wild rice restoration project, as an adaptation case study. And, after the workshop, a couple of them came up to us workshop organizers and said, ‘Hey, this is great. The way you talk about adaptation is really helpful. We like the resources that you provide. But, there's something missing, it's not the way we would have written it.’ And our tools, and the way we talk about climate adaptation, didn't feel like a perfect fit for recognizing their cultural values and the way they interact with the natural world. And so, that was really the spark. You know, ‘This is great, but it could be better.’ And so, that kicked off a series of discussions and kind of broadened our team of partners around this idea of: what would a climate change adaptation menu look like, that truly reflected and was built upon, the Ojibwe perspective and set of values? close