Welcome to the Fall 2022 issue of Winds of Change! Many of you will be reading this issue at the National Conference in Palm Springs, where a complimentary copy of Winds of Change is provided to every attendee. I’m pleased to report that this magazine has again been recognized with several National Native Media Awards and Honorable Mentions from the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) — including a General Excellence Honorable Mention for all the 2021 issues. We hope you find both the conference and this edition thought provoking and inspiring!
Just as we do at the conference, this Fall issue celebrates the winners of the AISES Professional Awards. You’ll find profiles of these amazing individuals here. Also highlighting Indigenous excellence is this magazine’s annual roster of 10 Native STEM Enterprises to Watch. Check out this year’s list.
“Data sovereignty is achievable because we are scientists … we are data scientists.”
As always, you’ll find news of AISES and our members in “AISES Notebook.” For tips on progressing on your own STEM path, turn to “Career Builder” and “Paths in Education,” which features opportunities for next summer.
You may notice two important words appearing frequently in this edition: data and sovereignty. The feature article “Data, Sovereignty, and Community Health,” tackles some of the many issues underlying those terms through the lens of people who deal with them every day at the University of North Dakota’s Indigenous Health PhD program. Doctoral student Lynn Mad Plume emphasizes that Native people shouldn’t hesitate to take ownership of their information: “Data sovereignty is achievable because we are scientists … we are data scientists.”
In “AISES People,” you can meet inspiring people like Lydia Jennings and read about her concerns regarding the data on tribes held by government agencies. “The data within these agencies needs to be made available to the tribes,” she says, “and tribes need to have authority on what data they want to share.”
We hope you have the opportunity to share your ideas about data and sovereignty and other issues important to Indigenous people in STEM at the National Conference. Think of it as a home base where you will be fully supported in the conviction that, as Lynn Mad Plume says, “We are scientists.”
Ta’ Tura Tsiksu (With Much Respect),
Sarah EchoHawk
Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma
AISES Chief Executive Officer