Migration, Old Crow, YT; photo by Jon Luedee
We often associate environmental research with STEM, focusing on the science of human-environment relationships that have impacted climate and ecosystems. For Dr. Heather Green, environmental research encompasses not only the tangible evidence of climate change but also the histories of how environmental change has affected Indigenous and settler populations, wildlife, and the natural world.
The Council of Atlantic University Libraries (CAUL-CBUA) sees the broader potential for Green’s research and teaching, announcing April 15 that she is among the first five recipients of its AtlanticOER Development Grants. The new grants are intended to encourage educators in the region to create open educational resources (OER), and increase student access to course materials.
An assistant professor in the Department of History at Saint Mary’s, Green applied for the grant in relation to her course HIST 2833: Environmental History of North America. Her winning project aims to raise awareness of Northern issues and experiences by incorporating them into her course curriculum and creating an online teaching module on environmental histories of borders in the North.
This work is part of her current research with the Northern Borders Project, developed in collaboration with two other historians: Dr.Jonathan Luedee, Postdoctoral Fellow in the University of Toronto’s history department; and independent scholar Dr. Glenn Iceton, Williams Lake, B.C. (PhD University of Saskatchewan).
The project has been supported through web support by the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE), where she is an editor. The environmental humanities initiative is exploring “the dynamic socio-environmental contexts that have shaped the making of borders and boundaries throughout the circumpolar world from the nineteenth- century to the present,” says the project’s website.
A large portion of Green’s OER project is incorporating Indigenous and Inuit traditional knowledge and generational memory into course material and the public realm.
“Within the last 10 to 15 years, there has been a lot of controversy in the North around land claims, Indigenous sovereignty, certainly conflicts over resources, mining issues and of course climate change, so we are interested in examining the deep historical roots related to these issues. In keeping with our project goals, we want to ensure that this research is public,” says Green, adding this makes NiCHE an ideal home base for the project website.
“We wanted to approach an exploration of environmental and social contexts that have had a long history reaching into the present and look at how they have shaped the formation of borders in the northern region of North America,” Green explains.
On the flip side of that, she’s interested in understanding the role that borders themselves have played in the environmental crisis in the North today. Borders are more than geopolitical boundaries; they include racial and cultural boundaries, identity, gender, and the boundaries between Western knowledge production and Indigenous ways of knowing.
“Understanding ways in which knowledge is produced plays a crucial role in the lived experience of the North, because so much of northern residents’ lives have been shaped by southern influences from the nineteenth century onward,” says Green.
Further plans to boost accessibility to information about the Northern Borders Project include creating practical and applied mentorship and employment opportunities for students at Saint Mary’s.
“Our open, educational resource teaching module will consist of four different teaching units,” says Green. “These units will discuss broad conceptual themes, using different case studies in various forms of multimedia, including oral history, videos, photographs, and GIS (geographical information systems) mapping.”
Through a SSHRC Summer Research Award, SMUworks and the OER funding, three students will work with Green during the summer months. They will help develop the teaching modules and conduct their own original research, which will be featured in the module units.
“This opportunity is exciting for students, as it will give them the skills training that is transferable outside of history,” says Green. “They will also have the chance to walk away from these work terms having completed their own original research and digital history project.”
Find out more about the Northern Borders Project and follow Dr. Green on Twitter at @heathergreen21. Her first book, The Great Upheaval: Gold Mining and Environmental Change in the Klondike, is forthcoming with the UBC Press Nature, History, Society series.