Survey of Energy and Indigenous Environmental Studies in the Americas

A growing number of case studies exist on Indigenous peoples’ relationships to energy systems throughout the Americas, however an overview of the state of the literature is absent. We will advance energy studies by conducting an analysis of Energy and Indigenous Environmental Studies in the Americas. In the course of reviewing the literature and writing a review article, we intend to form a working group on Energy and Indigenous Environmental Studies with Indigenous and other scholars, building a hub for these conversations at Dartmouth with the Irving Institute. We will build upon a less-developed area of energy scholarship through a multidisciplinary review of three themes: energy sovereignty, renewable energy, and the water-energy nexus. As part of this endeavor, we will create engaged learning activities for Dartmouth undergraduate and graduate students, focused on case studies in Canada and Chile. For the Canadian case study, three visitors will be invited to the Dartmouth campus, while we will lead an Energy Immersion trip to Chile. This one-year project will augment and complement the Irving Institute’s mission to transform humankind’s understanding of energy issues, with an emphasis on the development of creative approaches to energy challenges confronting Indigenous peoples.