Our Philosophy

Overview

Tribal Climate Camp gets more refined every year and builds on previous knowledge, input from delegates and instructors, and experiences of steering committee members in developing similar trainings. 

The overall goal of TCC is to build the capacity of tribal leader teams to address climate change and associated economic, social, cultural, regulatory, and technological trends and impacts within their tribes, between tribes, and between tribes and other governments, through strategic alliances with partners across Indian Country and globally.

TCC is designed for Tribal leaders, tribal environmental professionals, and tribal citizens who are interested in taking a lead role in climate resilience planning. 

Tribal delegations will work with facilitators on understanding lessons from successful tribal climate change programs, building support within a tribe for climate change planning, sustainable fundraising, methodologies for engaging with community members, including youth and elders, the evaluation of climate change programs, and the basic climate science tools tribes can use in developing programs. Through this curriculum, teams will leave the camp with a plan for how to work together to take leadership on climate change programming within their tribes. 

TCC Goals

• Create a collaborative space for Tribes to learn from each other

• Support the development or refinement of Tribal climate VAs and APs

• Share Indigenous Knowledge and Western science frameworks

• Foster partnerships and policy alignment

• Identify funding and technical support for climate programs

Learning Objectives

Create awareness of the variety of ways in which the Tribes of the attending teams can address climate change. 2. Build capacities to use knowledge resources in climate-related sciences (social, cultural, biological, physical) applicable to Tribal programming that is flexible enough to deal with constant environmental change. 3. Engender staff capacity for improving Tribal climate change programming. 4. Develop synergy with Tribal members for creating adaptation planning that includes building support within a Tribe for climate change planning processes, including: A. Sustainable fundraising B. Methodologies for engaging community members, including youth and elders C. Approaches for engaging Tribal institutions including Tribal councils D. Ethical conduct in climate science research E. Evaluating climate change programs.

TCC Outcomes 

Delegates will 1. Develop specific plans of action for building Tribal climate change programming in their Tribes that is responsive to the concerns of the Tribal community regarding climate change; 2. Strengthen relationships with Tribal co-workers that will form a core group of climate change programmers, able to sustain the plan of action and recruit additional Tribal staff and Tribal citizens who are concerned about climate change; 3. Build a network of other Tribal professionals, scientists, and other experts who can be turned to for future advice and feedback on climate adaptation programming. 

How the Camp is Structured to Achieve the Goals 

TCC’s curriculum is organized to provide formal and informal opportunities for the teams to engage with the instructors and work independently. There will be five kinds of educational engagements throughout the week: 1. Formal presentations by instructors, 2. Team meetings and work sessions for individual teams to talk among themselves; each team meeting will be attended by a different instructor (or two). 3. Meetings mixing members of different teams for cross-pollination. 4. A final team presentation for feedback from the instructors and interaction with teams from other tribes. 5. Visit to the tribal hosts’ lands. 

What Each Team Needs to Come Away With 

The TCC hopes that by attending the camp, each team member will come away with outcomes 2 and 3 above. Outcome 1, the specific action plan for building a climate change program for each team, will require a presentation to be developed and given by the end of the camp on Friday. The action plan will involve a document distilled into a 20-minute presentation, followed by 10 minutes of Q/A and further discussion afterwards. The presentation must have the following elements. 

Action Plan

1. Mission Statement and Goals for the Plan of Action for developing a climate change program.

2. Timeline (goals for 1 year, 5 years, and seven generations)

3. Information about the Tribe and why the program will be persuasive to the Tribal council.

4. Plan for how knowledge resources about climate change will be used.

5. Rough Vulnerability Assessment and Asset Map for the relevant Tribal jurisdiction and how climate change will potentially affect it. (This will just be based on the attendees’ knowledge and will serve as a rough exercise in preparation for more thorough assessment and mapping in the future). 

6. Plan for what community engagement strategies will be used, how traditional knowledge holders will be worked with, and how youth, students, and other segments of the population will be impacted and connected to the climate change program.

7. Plan for how the climate change program will be financed.

8. Plan for how the climate change program will be evaluated.

9. Final comments on how the Tribal program is situated within larger policy contexts, national and international.

Ideally, each team should have a document in note form or a set of documents that have detailed (though rough) information for 1 through 9 above. That information should be distilled into a presentation on Thursday afternoon.