"Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Plants: Case Studies from California & Greenland" by Dr. Simone Whitecloud

The Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative is excited to welcome Dr. Simone Whitecloud as our keynote speaker on the eve of our 10th Biennial Research Conference. Dr. Whitecloud will discuss Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) and the role of sharing plant knowledge. Traditional indigenous plant use and identification is contrasted with modern scientific training.

Simone is from the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa on her father’s side, and of French and Cajun descent on her mother’s side. Traveling to California in her teenage years, Simone developed an appreciation of plants as healers through native medicinal learning. This appreciation eventually led to a doctoral program at Dartmouth College, where she studied the interactions of plants both with each other and with humans.  

Simone received her undergraduate degrees in Biology and French from the University of San Francisco, CA and her PhD in Ecology, Evolution, Ecosystems, and Society from Dartmouth College in 2016. Her areas of expertise are plant community ecology and ethnobotany. Dr. Whitecloud’s fellowship in the National Science Foundation IGERT program in Polar Environmental Change at Dartmouth paved the way for her interdisciplinary work studying plant uses among the Inuit and capacity building in Arctic communities. She is currently a member of the Food Sovereignty Working Group established through the Arctic Observing Summit and is interested in indigenizing (decolonizing) how science is conducted in the North and beyond. Dr. Whitecloud has mentored underrepresented students for over a decade at the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in the Sciences (SACNAS) conferences and is a lifetime member of the Society for American Indian Government Employees.