From the St. Lawrence River to St. Lawrence Island: The Role of Community Engaged Research in Achieving Environmental Health and Justice

The CHE-Alaska speaker in January 2020 was Dr. Elizabeth Hoover, an Associate Professor of American Studies at Brown University who teaches about environmental health and justice in Native communities, indigenous food movements, and community-engaged research. She has written on all of these subjects, most recently focusing on food justice and food sovereignty by co-editing Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States: Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019) with Devon Mihesuah, and writing an upcoming book From ‘Garden Warriors’ to ‘Good Seeds;’ Indigenizing the Local Food Movement.  She is joining us on our January CHE-Alaska call to discuss her first book, The River is In Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community (Minnesota Press, 2017), and parallels with environmental health and justice issues on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. The book, which earned the Labriola Center’s American Indian National Book Award and the Native American Literature Symposium Beatrice Medicine Award, delves into the effects of Superfund contamination in Akwesasne along the St. Lawrence River and the environmental health research projects undertaken by the community to try and protect their health and