Alana Dixson

Alana Dixson earned her B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Yale University. Her studies focused on American Indian cultural identity, the medical anthropology of cultural change, and women's reproductive and mental health in the context of cultural change. Other educational experience includes pre-medical studies at Harvard University Extension School and Advanced Russian Language and Area Studies at Moscow International University, in Moscow, Russia. Ms. Dixson received a Fulbright Fellowship for her studies in Russia. She has also undertaken Japanese language and culture studies in the Princeton University program Nihongo Studies in Kanazawa, In her internship with the Institute, Ms. Dixson is based in Denver. Her research focuses on the impacts of genetic research and the Human Genome Project on health care in Indian country.

Noriko Ishiyama

Noriko Ishiyama is a Ph.D. student in geography at Rutgers University. She is a Fulbright scholar from Tokyo, Japan. She interned at the Institute during summers of 1997 and 1998, doing research on environmental justice and American Indian tribes. Receiving grants from the Matsushita International Foundation and the American Association of University Women, she is currently working on her dissertation, focused on the locational conflict over the siting of a temporary storage of high-level radioactive waste on the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Reservation in Utah. She analyzes this land-use dispute from critical perspectives of environmental justice and political ecology. She is still closely working with the Institute, consulting with Mr. Tano and Ms. Rubin. She enjoys working with the Institute, learning from staff and other interns with grounded knowledge, insightful visions, and provocative perspectives on issues she has been studying.

Noriko Ishiyama sat curled up in a chair in the institute's living room talking about the research she is doing to complete her Ph.D. Ishiyama is a political geographer who is doing research on environmental justice and Native American tribes for her thesis.

"I am doing a case study of an Indian tribe in Utah that is going to lease land to a power company so it can store nuclear waste. .. In the past, tribes have criticized that advocates don't understand the unique sovereign status of tribes and they under estimate the tribes' ability to make accurate assessments. The tribe is fighting for its right to make an informed decision. It's an issue of control, an issue of tribal sovereignty and an issue of conflict between the state and the tribal nation."

In the fourth year of a 5-year Fulbright fellowship, Ishiyama has received grants from the Association of American University Woman, Matsushita International Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and Rutgers University to support her research. Ishiyama has been associated with IIIRM since 1997 when she had an internship.

Born in Tokyo, Japan Ishiyama, who is 29 years old, received her bachelors and masters degrees from Japan Women's University and was an exchange student at Wellesley College where she took classes in American Studies and sociology. She became involved in Native American environmental issues almost by accident.

"My major was American Studies and I read an article on the Navajo and uranium mining. I wrote letters to a lot of people…being an activist, I wanted to talk to activists here and I received some letters from Kim TallBear who works here and her letter was so interesting. She talked about the complexity of sovereignty and environmental injustice. I didn't know the unique status of Indian tribes and her letter opened my eyes so I met with Kim and Merv in 1996." Her work with the institute, she says, has been invaluable.

"It has been great. I didn't have a very strong background about environmental justice in the context of American Indian tribes. Merv and Jeanne became good advisors to me. I have very good advisors at Rutgers but to do research you have to know a lot of the history, culture and context of American Indian Tribes and they have really good resources here. Their library is great and just talking to them is very helpful. They give me good contacts, who I should talk to and very specific advice. It has been very exciting."

Kawika Malama

Kawika Malama participated in the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management internship program from February through October 2001. He holds a B.S. in Business from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado. While at UNC, Kawika served as Vice President for Diversity Relations on the Student Representative Council and played an integral role in developing and maintaining minority programs at the University. He worked with the Institute to document the history of tribal involvement in the operation and cleanup of the U.S. Department of Energy's Nuclear Weapons Complex.

Huia Ann Pacey

Sitting on a blue couch in the offices of the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management's (IIIRM), Huia Pacey described her circuitous route from Kawerau, a small town on the north island of New Zealand to Denver Colorado. It is a journey that was started by her tribe's efforts to validate its claims to land that was confiscated by the British crown in the late 1800's.

Pacey is a member of the Tuwharetoa tribe. "A loose translation is 'House of the God of War," she says. "We were a warrior tribe that had over 87,000 acres of land confiscated by the British crown in 1864." Today her tribe has about 8,000 members and they are now trying to get back some of the thousands of acres they lost over a century ago.

In 1994 the New Zealand government established the Waitangi Tribunal to help settle land and other disputes it had with various indigenous tribes that inhabited the island nation before British colonization. In order to present their claims, the tribes had to organize committees and a structure so they could develop the cases for claims to present to the tribunal. They also had do research to validate their tribal history.

"In 1994, we (the tribe) decided to create a tribal authority and I was asked to help create it. I was also asked to work on research we needed to validate our tribal history. "We went through diaries, pictures and oral histories to prove the crown breached the treaty with us."

The tribe also held hearings over a three year period to gather information about its history and that of neighboring tribes. "Other tribes had geothermal resources to keep track of, fresh water and salt water fishing, forestry, and indigenous versus exotic forestry. We had to be aware of what was happening nationally just in case they affected our case," Pacey said.

All of the information was compiled into the tribe's presentation for the tribunal. That case is now in the last stages of negotiations.

How did all this lead to the Institute and Denver? It was a family connection. "Mike, my cousin, has been involved in indigenous issues and when he was in the U. S. he went to the Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT) and met Merv Tano and they became friends. When Merv formed the Institute, they talked about exchanging people back and forth. I am the first of the exchange people.

During her internship at the Institute, Pacey has been looking at the issue of federal facilities clean up at the Pine Ridge Reservation. Specifically, she is looking at cleaning up unexploded ordnance at the Badlands Bombing Range on the reservation. While doing her research, she visited the reservation, "it was so much like back home and I felt comfortable there and with tribal life in general."

"The good thing for me is I can see the issues we are dealing with back home are really similar to issues here and some of the solutions they have come up with here I can take back to New Zealand. We can perhaps become a little bit more innovative in terms of cooperative arrangements."

Pacey had been working on watershed issues in New Zealand before coming to the U.S. in which two paper companies were dumping chemicals into rivers on tribal land.

Pacey says the experience she is gaining here will be invaluable back home. "My tribe knows I am going home with a greater sense of strength when dealing with industry. Just because our tribe is little we don't have to give in so much. We can take our time to be firm and not so naïve."

"The tolerance I have seen between indigenous people, government agencies and industry is something I can take back and use."

Huia Pacey can be contacted via email at huiapacey@hotmail.com.

Ashleigh Wolf

Ashleigh Weanako Wolf joined the Institute as an intern in January 2006. She was introduced to the Institute by a colleague, Stuart Harris, Director of the Department of Science and Engineering of Pendleton, Oregon. Her two month internship will consist of researching renewable energies and the ways in which they affect indigenous peoples and their land. In particular she will explore waste management and clean up of nuclear bio-hazardous sites, and how the potential impacts of waste management can be kept to a minimal impact level by substituting renewable energy developments.