indigenous people

Hydropower is a green-energy darling. But it comes with tremendous costs.

In FERN’s latest story, published with Truthdig, reporter Christopher Ketcham unpacks the extensive human and environmental costs of hydroelectricity, even as government regulators, environmental journalists, climate academics, and green-grid design wizards celebrate it as a key piece of our sustainable energy strategy.

FERN talks to the Sioux Chef about the reality of a political restaurant

In FERN's latest story, FERN Editor-in-Chief Theodore Ross talks with Sean Sherman, the Native American chef, author, and activist about his restaurant Owamni and the politics of food. The interview was produced in partnership with Switchyard magazine as part of a special food issue. 

A remote Alaskan town confronts historic collapse of crab fishery

Some 800 miles west of Anchorage, in the Bering sea, sits the island of St. Paul, the source of snow crab eaten in the rest of the United States and globally. “Over the last few years, 10 billion snow crabs have unexpectedly vanished from the Bering Sea,” writes Julia O’Malley in FERN’s …

Louisiana tribe confronts future after repeated climate disasters

In FERN’s latest story, produced in collaboration with Harvard Pubic Health Magazine, reporter Barry Yeoman describes the challenges faced by a Louisiana tribe in the face of repeated climate disasters and the burden on a young chief trying to chart a path forward. “The 1,100-citizen tribe …

As herring decline, tribes challenge Alaska’s respected fisheries program

Each spring, in Alaska's Sitka Sound, herring return to spawn, touching off a long-running clash between commercial fishers and the Tlingit tribe, whose subsistence harvest of herring roe has been going on for millennia, as Brett Simpson explains in FERN's latest story, published with The Nation.

Ahead of White House hunger conference, groups argue for equity and a stronger safety net

More than 50 years ago, the Nixon administration convened a conference on food, nutrition, and health that set the course for America’s anti-hunger efforts in the coming decades. Now, as the Biden administration prepares for its sequel this September, anti-hunger groups, health advocates, farm groups, and others are trying to get their priorities onto the agenda.  (No paywall)

Native American food sovereignty means ‘rebuilding our nations and our food systems, one taste bud at a time’

When Covid-19 hit, intensifying hunger rates and limiting food access across the country, tribal communities drew on ancestral knowledge to mount a resilient response, said A-dae Romero-Briones, who directs Native agriculture and food systems programs at the First Nations Development Institute. “These long-buried behaviors would come up, and it was like honoring our ancestors,” she said. “To me, it was a renaissance.”

Who will reap the benefits of Mexico’s ‘miraculous’ nitrogen-fixing maize?

Last summer, researchers from Mars Inc. and UC Davis announced the "discovery" of a variety of corn grown in Oaxaca that fixes its own nitrogen through mucus-covered aerial roots. Their study, in the journal PLOS Biology, touched off a debate—in Mexico and beyond—about the effectiveness of global policies designed to safeguard the genetic resources of indigenous communities, according to FERN's latest story, published with Yale Environment 360.

Multiple studies say rate of sea level rise is growing

At least the third study in a year has found that the rate of sea level rise is increasing. A recent report in Nature Climate Change said that the rate of sea level rise had grown from 2.2 millimeters per year in 1993 to a 3.3-millimeter annual rise in 2014.