KU EJ 2024

For explanations of the different categories of land on and off reservations click here

Please remember - this is a shared Google Slide presentation and everyone should be careful not to accidentally delete or edit someone else's work. Please be respectful. We encourage you to look at the slides that other students are working on and share ideas, but be careful not to unintentionally change anything.

You will need a Google Account for today's activity - if you don't have one click here to sign up

To edit the slides in the shared presentation click here

1. Chose a Tribe to work on - it is ok if there are multiple people in the class working on the same Tribe. Sign into your Google Account, go to the slides, put your name in the speakers notes and the name of the Tribe on the slide. You can add as many slides as you wish. Make sure that you put all of your references (all of the URL's for websites you consult) in the speaker's notes for each slide.

2. Find the official Tribal government website. Put the URL in the speaker's notes. Look through the website and get a feel for how the Tribe presents the things that are important to their people. Can you find information about any environmental impacts, socioeconomics or other issues that are pertinent to the topic of Environmental Justice? Be very careful about searching for information about Tribal issues on the internet, there is a lot of misinformation and even attack websites that you might come across. In this class we will look at issues from the point of view of the Tribes themselves, so begin with the Tribal government website.

3. Find the Tribe's reservation on Google Maps. Try searching for the name of the Tribe and see what happens. Does it provide the boundaries of the Tribe's reservation? Switch to satellite view and take a screenshot to add to your slides (make sure to say in the presenter's notes that it is a screenshot from Google Maps). Use Pegman to explore different areas using street view and add screenshots with explanations to your slides. Check the date on the street views and see if there are any other dates available. What is your impression of the land and built environment?

4. Find the Tribe's reservation in EnviroAtlas. Use the Summarize Tool to look at landuse, take a screenshot and write an explanation. Use the different layers to explore the environment and socioeconomics of the reservation. What is your impression? Add screenshots to illustrate your points.

5. Find the Tribe's reservation in the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST). This is the tool developed by the Biden-Harris administration to determine if a census tract qualifies as disadvantaged for the purposes of funding and assistance under recent legislation setting aside resources for EJ communities. Note that due to historic as well as current injustices, all federally recognized Tribes automatically qualify as disadvantaged under recent policies and legislation. Go to the reservation you are studying and look at the information provided for different areas and census tracts and form an impression of what may be going on. Summarize your impressions on a slide, provide screenshots where helpful and cite CEJST as your source in the presenter's notes.

6. Now to EJScreen. Note that for the purposes of funding under the Justice40 initiative and recent legislation CEJST is the screening tool used to authoritatively determine if a Census tract is disadvantaged; in contrast, EPA developed EJScreen to provide indicators and analyses of environmental and socioeconomic indicators to explore issues that may be important in environmental assessment and cleanup. The Census Block Group level of analysis in EJScreen is different than the Census Tract level in CEJST, so don't expect the results to look the same. Both tools combine information from different types of environmental and socioeconomic indicators to provide percentiles (not percentages). By using percentiles you can compare between communities, statewide or national data so that the results are put in context. An easy way to get an intuitive feel for this is to go to a community that you know is very wealthy and look at the percentiles for the different socioeconomic indicators, then go to a different community that you know qualifies as disadvantaged and compare the percentiles. For your slides go to the reservation you are studying, use the tools and analyses in EJScreen to get an impression of conditions on the reservation. Use screenshots to illustrate your points. Make sure to put EJScreen in the speaker's notes as your citation.

7. The last tool we will use is the FEMA National Risk Index. Note that this tool is set up to look at county-wide data or by census tract and does not show reservation boundaries - you may have to find the counties within reservation boundaries using the other mapping tools and then search on the relevant counties. Use this tool to explore potential hazards, community resilience, and social vulnerability. Create slides to show what the Tribe you are studying may have to cope with in addition to environmental impacts. How does this information modify your views on potential ways to improve the environment and socioeconomic situation on the reservation? Remember to cite the FEMA National Risk Index in your presenter's notes as your source.