Tai Koester: Building on Undergraduate Training to Lead Research in Political Ecology and Indigenous Geographies
I am a Masters student in the School of Geography, Development and Environment at the University of Arizona working with Dr. Andrew Curley. My research draws from political ecology and Indigenous geographies to study environmental politics in the US West and examines how the energy transition is shaping the political and economic futures of Native Nations. My Masters research is focused on the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, a federally-recognized tribe, whose reservation is located in southeastern Montana. This is coal country, part of the Powder River Basin, the most productive coalfields in the US. The Northern Cheyenne Reservation is surrounded by large coal strip mines on three sides and is 20 miles from the Colstrip Generating Station, once one of the largest coal-fired power stations in the US. In this remote region, coal extraction represents a reliable source of income for tribal members. However, coal’s future is uncertain, and the Colstrip Generating Station has closed half of its units that produce electricity. Against this backdrop, the Tribe is exploring options for developing its own tribally-owned utility based on renewable energy production, which has the potential to reduce the Tribe’s dependence on external electricity providers (e.g. costs for heating in winter are extremely high) and could employ tribal members.
My research is grounded in qualitative methods involving interviews with tribal government officials, economic development experts, coal miners and plant operators, and renewable energy developers, among others. These interviews are supplemented by participant observation at regional energy events and conferences focused on the energy transition. My preliminary findings suggest that the energy transition seems likely to reinforce existing inequalities. The same power companies that own coal infrastructure are developing renewables that will compete with the Tribe’s own ambitions. Furthermore, existing paternalistic bureaucracy that structures the relationship tribal nations have with the federal government presents roadblocks that make it very difficult to pursue economic development in general. For example, the Northern Cheyenne must negotiate with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a federal agency, in addition to any energy developers before constructing solar on tribal trust lands, while private energy developers operating off-reservation face no comparable obstacles.
My research at Arizona builds off the research and experiences I had as an undergraduate in the Department of Geography at CU-Boulder. Under the guidance of Dr. Joe Bryan, I completed my honors thesis on the role of US public lands and historical mapping in the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, which together have gone on to shape the terrain upon which present-day Indigenous campaigns to protect southeast Utah’s Bears Ears region must struggle. This area was made famous in part by the Trump administration’s rollback of federal protections, centering on its status as a National Monument. Bears Ears, like all public lands, was mapped and managed to facilitate extraction and settlement at the direct expense of Indigenous people and the land itself, putting Indigenous claims of authority over the landscape at a significant disadvantage to the those made by white settlers and miners.
Moving forward, I hope to continue to pursue engaged research that examines the tangled legacies of colonialism and resource extraction on Native Nations in the US. I owe much of where I am to the faculty and peers I had at CU-Boulder.