This session is made possible by the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. To learn more, visit our Partners page.

Since the Cold War, Indigenous peoples to the United States including Navajo have suffered from the environmental trauma of uranium mining, contamination, and other byproducts of the nuclear industrial complex in the American Southwest. But, through acts of resilience within these communities, new traditions and ways of knowing have surfaced, showing that response to historical violence is not only about preservation, but also perseverance.

In 2017, Navajo storyteller Sunny Dooley and nuclear policy researcher Lovely Umayam began collaborating on "Ways of Knowing," a film to document Navajo responses to nuclear legacy, especially contamination of Indigenous communities and sacred sites from uranium mining, with the expressed goal of practicing research that does not extract from communities, but rather regenerates them.

The session will build upon due diligence practices with local and Indigenous communities, and what it means to apply these practices across various fields and contexts.