Utilizing Environmental Analytical Chemistry to Establish Culturally Appropriate Community Partnerships

Abstract

In the United States, minority communities are disproportionately exposed to environmental contaminants due to a combination of historically discriminatory based racial policies and a lack of social political capital. American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities have additional factors that increase the likelihood of contaminant exposure. Some of these factors include the disparity of social, cultural, and political representation, differences in cultural understandings between AI/AN communities and western populations, and the unique history of tribal sovereignty in the US. Since the 1990s, research from both private and federal organizations have sought to increase research with AI/AN communities. However, although rooted in beneficence, the rift in cultural upbringing can lead to negative outcomes as well as further isolation and misrepresentation of AI/AN communities. Environmental analytical chemistry (EAC) is one approach that provides a means to establish productive and culturally appropriate collaborations with AI/AN populations. EAC is a more holistic approach that incorporates numerous elements and disciplines to understand underlying environmental questions, while allowing direct input from AI/AN communities. Additionally, EAC allows for a myriad of experimental approaches that can be designed for each unique tribal community, to maintain cultural respect and probe individual nuanced questions.

1. Introduction

The tumult of the 1960s saw the rise of various social rights movements (e.g., civil rights, Native American activism, the environmental movement, etc.) and established the foundation for a change in ideology that sought justice for disenfranchised populations and issues [1, 2]. When focusing on just the environmental movement, arguably its greatest success was the establishment of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1970 [3]. The purpose of President Nixon’s presidential directive that created these agencies was to address the rising public concern about air and water quality, as well as the implications to ecosystem and human health from a contaminated environment. The establishment of these two federal agencies also gave the American public a federal outlet to argue for the rights of nature and human health.

The 1970s would see the application of the environmental argument for human health, the coining of the term “environmental justice,” and the birth of the environmental and economic justice movement. In 1978, African American residents in Houston, Texas formed the Northeast Community Action Group (NECAG) to fight against the placement of a “sanitary landfill” in their suburban neighborhood [4, 5]. With the help of their attorney, Linda McKeever Bullard, NECAG filed a class action lawsuit in 1979 against Southwestern Waste Management, Inc. [4, 5]. The 1979 lawsuit would be the first of its kind to use a civil rights argument to propose environmental discrimination, highlighting the “economic, political, psychological, and social advantages for whites at the expense of blacks and other people of color” [4]. The lawsuit would ultimately fail, but it set a legal precedent to argue environmental justice and set the stage for the first environmental justice incident that would captivate the nation. In 1978, oil containing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were illegally dumped along the roads in fourteen North Carolina counties. In 1982 the roadways were cleaned, but the state needed a disposal site for the contaminated soil. It was decided that the disposal site would be constructed in Warren County, a predominantly black community in North Carolina. Like the scenario in Houston, Texas that led to the formation of the NECAG, the PCBs disposal site would be built in Warren County. Though the State of North Carolina would eventually spend more than $25 million to cleanup and detoxify Warren County, the decision to build the PCBs disposal site would galvanize grassroot organizations around issues of environmental discrimination nationwide [5, 6, 7].

2. Disproportionate impact to minority communities

The late 1970s, through the 1980s, saw many environmental issues across the United States (U.S.) that demonstrated environmental justice was applicable to more than just African American communities (e.g., Love Canal and creation of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act [CERCLA—aka ‘Superfund’] 1977–1980, the Church Rock uranium mill tailings accident—the largest uranium mill tailings accident in U.S. history—in 1979, pesticide reform and justice for agricultural workers led by Cesar Chavez in 1988, etc.) [5, 8, 9, 10]. In 1987 the United Church of Christ Commission on Racial Justice released the first report in U.S. history that examined the relationship between race, class, and the environment at a national level [6]. The report found that millions of minority Americans (e.g., African Americans, Hispanics, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indians/Alaska Natives [AI/AN]) were exposed to abandoned or uncontrolled toxic waste sites within their community.

The creation of the USEPA in 1970 gave the American public a means for environmental issues to be addressed by the federal government. This was expanded and strengthened following the enactment of CERCLA by Congress in 1980 following the events of Love Canal in New York state [9]. Through CERCLA, sites across the U.S. that were deemed hazardous to human health, or the environment, were ranked on the national priorities list. CERCLA also served as a mechanism to provide funding for clean-up and remediation efforts of polluted sites. As of May 2021, there are 1322 sites on the national priorities list [11]. For a site to be placed on the list it requires a minimum hazard ranking system (HRS) score of 28.5 [12]. HRS is a scoring system developed by the USEPA that uses information from a variety of reports and site inspections that gather information about one of four pathways: “ground water migration (drinking water); surface water migration (drinking water, human food chain, sensitive environments); soil exposure and subsurface intrusion (population, sensitive environments); and air migration (population, sensitive environments)” [12]. Each of these four pathways are then compared to a rubric that is broken into three categories and then tallied for a final score: likelihood that a site has released or has the potential to release hazardous substances into the environment; characteristics of the waste (e.g., toxicity and waste quantity); and people or sensitive environments (targets) affected by the release [12].

Despite these defined criteria and the intent of CERCLA to address the disparity of the existence of environmental contaminants in vulnerable communities, both CERCLA and the HRS have been criticized for failing to address these inequalities of exposure [9, 13, 14]. Specifically looking at AI/AN communities, 532 sites, approximately 40%, are found on AI/AN lands, with the possibility of additional sites requiring clean-up that do not meet the criteria to be placed on the national priorities list [11, 14]. CERCLA and HRS do not address the underlying reasons why minority communities are disproportionately at risk for exposure, specifically the historical based discriminatory policies (e.g., land value, population density assessment, administrative resource management, etc.) [9, 14]. Tribal populations are additionally at a disadvantage due to the confusion on which regulatory agency (e.g., local, state, federal, or tribal) has oversight and which agency will contribute resources to either clean-up or seeking legal action against polluting enterprises [14]. An additional limitation of CERCLA and the HRS is that both are designed on historical pollutants (e.g., inorganic elements, metals, respiratory toxins, etc.), leading to a lack of evaluation for modern chemicals, especially emerging contaminants of concern such as organic pollutants [9, 15, 16].

During the 2000s there was a rise in studies that sought to understand and investigate the root causes of environmental injustice, including official recognition in 2002 by former USEPA Director of Environmental Justice, Barry Hill, confirming that minority communities are disproportionately impacted [17]. While there are many nuances to what causes environmental injustice, one of the unifying themes is the lack of political representation and influence of minority and low-income communities. Perhaps best summarized by the Cerrell Report in 1984, the report stated that although every community resents the building of a waste or toxic disposal site in their community “middle and upper socioeconomic strata possess better resources to effectuate their opposition” [18]. The report also identified the factors that make a community either more or less likely to resist placement of contaminating sites, including rural versus urban, political leaning, education, income-status, etc. [18]. At the core of this report, as well as many studies that have come after, the inability for vulnerable communities to exercise political influence is one of the most significant factors determining environmental injustice [19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24]. For this reason, it is understandable why minority communities tend to have a higher incidence of environmental exposure from contaminating industries as they tend to lack political representation and do not have the social capital associated with the majority.

An additional compounding factor is that existing regulation and enforcement tend to favor majority communities over minority communities. As an example, existing regulation considers population density as a marker for public health and as a factor for placement of noxious facilities: the higher density a population, the less likely the placement [22, 25, 26]. This means that lower density areas, such as rural communities/counties, have a higher likelihood of placement for contaminating facilities. Unfortunately, because these facilities need power, water, and other infrastructure they are placed near access points which tend to be adjacent to higher concentrations of residential areas in rural communities. Sites on the national priorities list, a list of sites marked for environmental remediation by the USEPA, also use population density as a significant factor in evaluating which sites receive financial support and clean-up [27, 28]. The continued existence of contaminating sites in certain communities also impacts enforcement. Placement of contaminating sites result in a decrease in land-value as well as an exodus of individuals that can afford to leave the community [7, 22, 29, 30]. These two factors synergize to move a site even lower on the priorities list because the land is cheap and less well-populated. Even once these sites are evaluated, the cost of any infractions or potential harm to the community is less expensive to the polluting enterprise than if it was placed in a non-minority community, in some cases as much as 500% less expensive [22, 31]. The reason for this price discrepancy is based on the inherent economic value of the community, which further perpetuates the vulnerability of minority communities versus majority communities.

Perhaps the path of least resistance to address this discrepancy is to understand how to give minority communities greater political influence. Unfortunately, studies undertaken in the name of environmental justice uncovered that this potential solution is mired in the root causes that created minority communities in the first place. Historically, minority communities were established by blatant racial segregation practices and policies that separated the majority (i.e., whites) from the minority (i.e., blacks, Hispanics, Asian/Pacific Islanders, AI/AN) [22, 26]. Following legislative changes after the Civil Rights movement, the basis for segregation switched to concepts of economics (e.g., land value) and spatial separation (e.g., rural versus urban) [22, 32, 33]. Despite this change, the legacy of racial segregation practices and policies would still be apparent under the new paradigm. As an example, historically white neighborhoods had a higher level of infrastructure (e.g., internet access, renewable power, clean water, etc.) and luxuries (e.g., schools, green-spaces, health care access, etc.) that conferred a higher intrinsic land value and tended to be in urban centers which made them less likely to be targeted for placement of polluting sources [22, 34, 35]. An additional lasting impact of racial segregation practices was that of social homophily, which predicts that individuals are more likely to interact and live in communities with others they considered like them (e.g., similar ethnicity, culture, appearance, beliefs, etc.) [36]. While social homophily confers certain benefits (e.g., social protection, cultural connection, etc.), it does stymie an individual’s ability to escape environmental injustice situations by limiting their network capabilities or limiting their ability for social advancement [36, 37, 38, 39]. As an example, areas with lower land value attract both minority populations as well as noxious facilities (e.g., waste disposal sites, polluting industries, etc.).

Interestingly, one of the concerns for environmental injustice also provides a means to increase social political influence. Health disparities, or social determinants of health, is the difference in health equity between populations resulting from a variety of extrinsic factors (e.g., socioeconomic status, access to healthcare and education, lack of infrastructure, etc.) [40, 41]. While it may be morally and ethically unjust for there to be environmental exposure inequalities between communities, that approach can be ephemeral as it is vulnerable to sways in public opinion and media coverage [42, 43]. Relating environmental injustice and contaminant exposure to human health provides a stronger basis for public concern as well as being associated with political influence [44, 45, 46]. Not only this but using health outcomes as a quantifiable measure allows conceptualization of a goal. For example, air quality can be evaluated by the presence or absence of certain airborne factors (e.g., particulate matter, carbon emissions, ozone, etc.) [47]. Individuals that live in areas with “poor air quality” are at risk for measurable detrimental health outcomes (e.g., headaches, asthma, cancer, etc.). Removal of the factors that contribute to “poor air quality” result in an improvement in health outcomes. This example was one of the clarion calls of the environmental movement that would establish the USEPA in 1970, as it not only provided the public a means to understand the problem but also motivated political action. It is well documented that minority communities, specifically those of lower income and ethnic minority backgrounds, experience higher rates of asthma, cancer, mortality, and overall poorer health than majority communities and that these differences, in some cases, are associated with differences in environmental exposure [19, 20, 21, 41, 48, 49]. Establishing the link between environmental exposure and health equity has been the approach for many governmental agencies, most notably the National Institutes of Health (NIH). More recently, President Joe Biden announced environmental justice linked to public health as one of his presidential goals under “Justice40” [50].

2.1 Tribal communities and environmental justice

Although across the U.S. minority communities are at a higher risk of disproportionate exposure to environmental contamination, it is important to understand that every minority community is nuanced in the variables that impact severity of the exposure. AI/AN communities frequently are recognized as one of the greatest under-represented populations for demographical reporting of any kind in the U.S., and this has been known for decades [25, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59]. Federal demographic information is collected through the decennial U.S. Census, arguably the largest, most extensive, and possessing the greatest resources of any demographical study in the U.S. An initial evaluation and interpretation of the decennial U.S. Census would suggest that the cause for this under-representation is simply due to the population of AI/AN peoples either remaining stagnant or not growing at the same rate as other populations in the USA [25]. However, a closer evaluation of the methodologies for the census reveals a more complex story. One explanation is because AI/AN communities are considered “hard-to-count” populations, meaning that they are either “hard to locate,” “hard to contact,” “hard to persuade,” “hard to interview,” or a mixture of these reasons [51, 54, 58]. To demonstrate this point, imagine a scenario of an AI/AN community on the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation is the largest contiguous Native American sovereign nation in the U.S. and is spread across the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah with the land mass of approximately the state of West Virginia (71,000 km²) [60]. Complicating this matter, some families on the Navajo Nation may travel to different homes within the Nation depending on family situations, work availability, possession of livestock, etc. Even once a community is located, the Navajo Nation is largely rural with only one interstate (I-40) and six state roads (64, 89, 160, 163, 191, and 491); by comparison the state of Rhode Island, the smallest state in the union and 183 times smaller than the Navajo Nation, has eight interstates, five U.S. highways, and 74 state roads [61, 62]. The lack of maintained roads means that many communities utilize unmarked dirt roads that are subject to varying degrees of travel. A precipitation event may make a road impassable or may even obfuscate its location or route entirely. Next, outside of American English, Navajo, or Diné Bizaad, is the most common language spoken on the Navajo Nation [63]. Famously, the language is so obscure as well as difficult to speak and understand yet shared by a significant number of people that it was used by the Americans as a code language during World War II and not declassified until 1968, 13 years after the end of the war [64]. Finally, if a census volunteer has been able to locate, contact, and can communicate with this hypothetical community on the Navajo Nation, as with most AI/AN communities, the Navajo people have a long history of distrust towards the US Government and outsiders due to treaty violations, inhumane practices, economic exploitation, etc. [65, 66, 67, 68, 69]. While this is a hypothetical situation, it demonstrates the challenges that qualify AI/AN populations as “hard-to-count” and simply because these communities may be congregated on reservations does not mean they will be adequately represented.

The lack of standardized methodologies and methodological protocols also present difficulties when trying to obtain accurate population information for AI/AN communities. Although Tribes may collect their own demographical information through health forms, registration for utility services, blood quantum, etc., these forms may not use the same methodologies to prevent miscounting or representation or may not collect enough usable information to qualify them to count as an individual on the census [54, 55, 59]. Many AI/AN individuals also identify as multi-racial/ethnic. Unfortunately, disaggregating this data is difficult, hard to interpret, and hard to discuss, all resulting in potential inaccurate representation. There are approaches that can be taken to attempt to address these inaccuracies, but all represent their own challenges and typically result in an over-simplification of the dataset and analysis. One approach assumes that multiracial people are the same as single-race individuals and does not bias the result significantly [55]. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and, for example, multi-racial AI/AN individuals tend to have greater income, education, and live in different environments than single-raced AI/AN individuals [55, 70]. A different approach groups all multi-racial responses into a single category and interprets this new group as an individual category [55]. This presents difficulties because not all multi-racial individuals are similar and subtleties like culture, language, behavior patterns, and health statistics are lost, which invalidates the usefulness of the survey/data [53, 55, 71, 72]. An added difficulty was the previous approach by the US and state governments that disallowed disaggregating data as well as many federal and state guidelines only allowing or using single race responses [25, 53]. While this approach may provide some protection against demographical fraud, it disregards the polyethnic nature of the US resulting in an inaccurate enumeration of its citizens. There have been attempts by various organizations, including the National Congress of American Indians, to institute a re-evaluation of the methodologies used by the US Census and other demographical surveys, and it remains to be seen if these attempts proved successful [51, 52, 54].

Separate to the under-representation of AI/AN communities that contribute to a lack of political and social influence, western colonization of AI/AN communities have left a legacy of environmental injustice [57, 73, 74, 75]. White Americans used the doctrine of “manifest destiny” in the 1800s to justify the westward expansion and colonizing of lands under control of AI/AN communities [76, 77]. This doctrine elevated white Americans as superior, portraited the AI/AN in a negative light, and emphasized that the land was being underutilized by AI/AN people and under American control the land could be developed for maximum economic value. For more than 100 years, various laws, treaties, and other policies were adopted that favored American interests over AI/AN interests [57, 76, 77, 78, 79]. Because the land was under the auspices of the American government or private entities, there was no need for consent from AI/AN people. This opened the land to the construction of various industries that either harvested the land for natural resources (e.g., minerals/ores, oil, natural gas, etc.) or developed the land for economic growth (e.g., agriculture, cities, utilities, etc.). Looking at mining and natural resource extraction as an example, this period of American development has left more than 160,000 abandoned mines in the western U.S. (defined as Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming), the location of the majority of Native American lands [75]. In addition to land development, the policies of the time saw the exile of AI/AN communities from their traditional boundaries and confinement on reservations, small allotments of land that were deemed harsh or of low-economic value therefore undesirable for development. The reservation system also contributed to severely limiting AI/AN autonomy and produced a system of dependence on the federal government. Though the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act appeared to give AI/AN communities autonomy back through tribal sovereignty, there were caveats to consider [78, 79]. As mentioned, many AI/AN communities were located on lands that were undesirable and still greatly relied on federal aid for survival. To this day, many reservations lands are under-developed and lack significant infrastructure; as an example, approximately 30% of the people on the Navajo Nation lack access to running water and are required to haul water from unregulated sources [80, 81]. Another condition lies in the meaning of “sovereignty” outlined by the 1934 act. A better definition is that tribes that met the qualification to be considered “sovereign” gained limited sovereignty; the US government retained “plenary power” meaning Congress still has authority to regulate AI/AN affairs [78, 79]. This dichotomy created by the Indian Reorganization Act has been the basis for numerous legislative issues for AI/AN people since the 1960s. An example that demonstrates this fact and how environmental injustices persist is the case of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation.

Previous hard rock mining ventures and surveys from the late 1800s through the 1940s revealed large amounts of uranium in the American Southwest, much of it within the boundaries of what would be the Navajo Nation [69, 75, 82, 83]. In attempts to establish a strategic source of domestic uranium for the US military, uranium extraction and refinement began on the Navajo Nation in 1944 [69, 75, 82]. Following the start of the Cold War with the former USSR, in 1946 the US military seceded control of the atomic science and technology sector to the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) [69, 82]. To ensure continued availability of refined uranium for atomic munitions and remove the dependency on foreign uranium, the AEC set a guaranteed price for uranium in 1948 and established itself as the sole purchaser of uranium mined in the US [69, 82]. This policy directive led to a uranium boom, attracting dozens of private entities to the American Southwest and the Navajo Nation. These companies employed thousands of Navajos to work in the uranium industry: uranium extraction, refinement, and transport.

At the time, little was known about the occupational hazards of uranium exposure, so the Navajos worked in conditions without any engineering controls (e.g., mine ventilation) and minimal personal protective equipment, often limited to helmets and flashlights [69, 82]. In 1951 the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) began conducting health evaluations and surveys on the Navajo miners. By 1952, preliminary data from the PHS study suggested detrimental health outcomes from uranium exposure. These findings were confirmed in 1962 when PHS released its first report that documented significant occupational health hazards from the uranium industry being experienced by the Navajos, including respiratory distress, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, and cancer [69, 82]. Citing national security concerns, the AEC and federal government kept the results and findings of these studies as well as the hazards of uranium exposure from the Navajo people through the mid-1960s [69, 82]. The federal government did respond by instituting recommendations for limiting exposure, including the need for ventilation and limits an individual could work, but these were weakly enforced, and few companies invested in these safeguards.

The uranium industry on the Navajo Nation would continue until 1989. During this 45-year period almost 4.0 million tons of uranium ore was extracted, and thousands of Navajos were exposed from either directly working in the uranium industry or indirectly due to the proximity of communities to uranium features [65, 68, 69, 73, 82]. While over the years there have been legislative successes to reconcile the injustices committed against the Navajo people, more than 1000 abandoned uranium mine features still exist on the Navajo Nation today and hundreds of families have likely been impacted by the uranium legacy [69, 82]. The plight of the Navajo people and uranium mining is just one example of how historic policies towards natural resource extraction and land rights for AI/AN communities have contributed to their disproportionate exposure to environmental contaminants and persistent environmental injustice. Across Alaska, Alaska Native communities have been displaced since the 1940s for military and economic reasons [57, 84, 85, 86]. Many of these sites, abandoned or otherwise, are still polluted with industrial chemicals such as PCBs and flame retardants that are associated with cancers, developmental conditions, and chronic health diseases [73, 86]. Along the Colorado River corridor on the Arizona and California border is a large agricultural sector that applies year-round agrichemicals to support crop production. These lands are also home to Native American Tribes, such as the Chemehuevi, Cocopah, and Quechan, that face daily exposure with an unknown impact to their health [87, 88].

Both previous points demonstrate the subtlety in the shared factors of environmental injustice to minorities; however, AI/AN communities possess a unique dimension that requires redefining what environmental injustice means to them. Unlike other minority communities, though AI/AN people are US citizens they are also the original inhabitants of North America, and most tribes have a cultural and spiritual element wholly different to western conventions [66, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93]. A recent survey funded by the First Nations Development Institute, the leading American Indian non-profit in the US, found that 40% of respondents believed that AI/AN people no longer existed [94]. Respondents also held a dual-nature belief about AI/AN people: AI/AN people live in abject poverty yet are wealthy due to “casino money” and “government handouts” or AI/AN people are cultural and spiritual leaders/protectors of the environment, but their communities are polluted [94]. These cultural misunderstandings may exist given the inaccurate depiction of AI/AN people in US culture. These inaccuracies have created a mystique about AI/AN people that has persisted since the first European settlers arrived in North America, through westward expansion, to application of the AI/AN image for social licensing and marketing [94]. The survey found this misunderstanding of AI/AN communities extended to elected officials as well, many of whom did not know there were distinctly different AI/AN tribes, some tribes possessed “sovereignty,” or what “tribal sovereignty” entailed [94]. As of January 2022, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs federally recognize 574 tribes in 35 states and within the 15 states (Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, and West Virginia) that lack a federally recognized tribe, some possess distinct tribal communities lacking the qualifications for federal recognition [95]. The number of distinct federally recognized tribes in the US across a diverse landscape demonstrates that these communities cannot be lumped together when thinking about AI/AN populations, especially when trying to address environmental injustice. Additionally, the degree of sovereignty and the wording of the tribal constitutions for each tribe poses a significant challenge for all federal-tribal relations and regulations. These differences have been highlighted throughout the USEPA’s and NIH’s long history of attempting to rectify injustices committed against AI/AN communities or both agencies’ various resources for individuals and organizations seeking to partner with AI/AN populations [89, 91, 96, 97]. Unfortunately, many of these problems arise from cultural differences and understanding between outsiders (e.g., federal agents, scientists, activist, academics, etc.) and tribes. Perhaps one of the most significant examples of this is the unethical collection and use of biological specimens from the Havasupai Tribe in Arizona collected by Arizona State University scientists [98, 99].

2.2 Case study: Havasupai blood case

In 1989, Dr. John Martin, an anthropologist at Arizona State University (ASU), was approached by members of the Havasupai tribe, a tribe located within the Grand Canyon and 1 of 21 federally recognized tribes in Arizona. The tribe hoped Dr. Martin could provide insight on why diabetes was increasing in their community and, if possible, help combat the chronic disease. As there had been other genetic links to diabetes in a different tribe, Dr. Martin enlisted the help of Dr. Therese Markow, a geneticist at ASU whose research involved genetic causes of disease.

From 1990 to 1994, samples of blood and medical records were collected from approximately 400 members of the Havasupai Tribe, all of whom signed a broadly worded consent form that allowed the researchers to “study the causes of behavioral/medical disorders” [98, 100]. The Havasupai members who consented in the study believed their samples would solely be used for the purpose of diabetes research and would help their tribe fight the disease. The ASU team discovered that the previous genetic link to diabetes was not present in the Havasupai. However, research utilizing the Havasupai samples continued in other pursuits, including studies on tribal migration and origination, mental health, and alcoholism, all conducted without the Havasupai’s knowledge.

While attending a dissertation presentation in 2003, Carletta Tilousi, a member of the Havasupai Tribe, learned her sample and those of her tribe had been used in studies that she viewed were never consented, including some studies centered on controversial and taboo topics in the Havasupai culture. In 2004, the Havasupai Tribe filed a case against the Arizona Board of Regents and Dr. Markow about the misuse of the samples [98, 100]. The case would be settled out of court in 2010 with the tribe receiving USD 700,000 in direct compensation, funds for a tribal clinic and school, and the return of the collected samples [98, 100].

As a result of the Havasupai case, the Havasupai tribe passed a “Banishment Order” that barred all ASU researchers and employees from the Havasupai lands and stopped all ongoing research with the tribe. In addition, the case exemplified the concerns other Native American tribes had of working with outside researchers. To this day, many tribes are wary of entering research partnerships with outside entities and many continue to refuse to participate in genetic research studies. The effect in the scientific community has not been as widespread. While the Havasupai case serves as an example of the importance of communication and how “informed consent” can be misused, many researchers and institutional review boards still are not aware of the significance of this case or have not internalized any general lessons about tribal ethical considerations or cultural sensitivity [98]. Therefore, it necessitates new approaches and adaptations of existing methodologies to build productive and successful partnerships with tribal Nations to address environmental injustice.

The conflict between western trained scientists and AI/AN communities stems from the prevailing western scientific pedagogy that establishes the researcher in a paternalistic role [99]. In this capacity, regardless of intent, a researchers’ innate training and approach to a situation may come off as disrespectful while the researcher may find the hesitation from the AI/AN community as unfounded, ill-informed, or short-sighted [91, 101, 102]. This can also provide a possible rationale for why cultural diversity trainings do not have the desired effect, as western trained researchers may find it difficult to either understand why certain precautions are taken or to change their behavior when approaching situations [103, 104]. U.S. scientific evaluations (e.g., grants, funding agency reviews, manuscripts, etc.) also contribute to the promotion of the existing paternalistic dogma because their evaluation criteria fail to consider the unique considerations when working with AI/AN communities, such as the amount of time needed for capacity building, requirement to seek tribal approval prior to dissemination or project expansion, etc. [91, 105].

However, if done appropriately, tribal research collaborations can be incredibly fruitful and productive. Since the mid-2000s, there has been an increased level of discussion for the benefits of approaches that view AI/AN communities as equal stakeholders, most prominent is Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) which has been promoted by the National Institutes of Health [106, 107]. Adoption of culturally appropriate epistemologies, such as TEK, can confer benefits such as facilitating a two-way exchange of knowledge and ideas, ensuring intervention or research approaches are successful, or securing social political capital for AI/AN communities [89, 92, 108]. An example that demonstrates the potential benefits of a tribal community collaborating with an outsider researcher is the case of the 2016 Sanders, Arizona water quality news story [109]. This research collaboration, led by Dr. Tommy Rock, demonstrated that for over a decade the water supplying the Sanders community had uranium concentrations that exceeded the USEPA Clean Water Act guideline, including the water supplying the community center and school. Although the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality had records of this elevation, no action was taken until the work conducted in 2016. Upon further investigation, it was suggested that one of the reasons for the chronic exposure was the size and location of the Sanders community. Sanders is a small community of 575 residents located in eastern Arizona on the border of the Navajo Nation [110]. The community size as well as its location on the border, led to a combination of nebulous administrative oversight and neglect resulting in the decade long water contamination. This collaboration led to changes that addressed the water contamination and provided a voice to a community facing environmental injustice.

2.3 Application of environmental analytical chemistry to address environmental justice

Environmental analytical chemistry (EAC) is a subspecialty of analytical and environmental chemistry, with roots in numerous other disciplines, including biology and ecology, focused on quantifying chemicals in environmental samples, using instruments (e.g., inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry) or techniques such as separation and purification. Although technically EAC has been around for hundreds of years, the rise of environmental concerns in the 1970s has led to an increase in EAC application to understand the nature of chemicals within the ecosystem.

Given the diversity and broad application of EAC, it is an excellent model to establish culturally appropriate and successful collaborations with AI/AN populations. At its foundation, EAC is relatable to everyone given that EAC focuses on environmental samples. Everyone on Earth drinks water, eats food, breathes air, and both anthropogenic (e.g., mining, use of chemicals, farming, combustion, etc.) and natural processes (e.g., volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, algal blooms, etc.) can result in fouling of any of these components. From the youngest child to the eldest adult, regardless of our education or upbringing, our innate senses allow us to determine if something smells, tastes, or looks bad or abnormal. Further, dependent on an individual’s level of curiosity, there is a transitive property of environmental contamination. If a substance is offensive and known to cause harm it stands to reason that observation of this substance being added to food, water, or air may lead to those being contaminated, even if we are no longer able to perceive the substance. EAC provides a means to investigate if these resources are contaminated and, if so, to what extent and what is the significance. As an example, a lasting question and concern of the Navajo people in relation to the uranium legacy (vide supra) is how uranium has impacted the environment (i.e., air, food, soil, water) and how does it impact their health and lifestyle [67, 69, 75, 111].

EAC is also applicable as an educational modality at every level of knowledge and training [112, 113, 114, 115]. Primary school children can be introduced to EAC with coffee filters or mesh grating. These barrier devices are implemented to provide varying levels of filtration to water, based on pore size. With this understanding this lesson can be related to the functionality of wastewater treatment plants that filter and test water at various stages within the plant. There are a variety of means high school and college age adults can be introduced to EAC. One example is the application of a barrier device (e.g., white sock or borosilicate glass chamber) to the tailpipe on vehicles that are then driven around a parking lot. Students likely understand that vehicle exhaust smells bad and can leave a residue, but some students may not give it much thought once the exhaust is diluted in the atmosphere as its noxious qualities dissipate. The barrier device acts as a filter and provides visualization of previously unobservable microscopic atmospheric pollutants, such as carbon and sulfur particulates. This lesson could then be pivoted to a discussion of petrol grades and how they impact emissions, the rationale for the institution of the USEPA and air quality, or analysis of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene via gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, all dependent on the level of education, educational setting, and resource availability.

Outside of formal education, EAC provides a means to involve the public as well with “citizen scientists.” The use of “citizen scientists” is widely recognized as successful for a variety of reasons including motivating the public in STEM disciplines and issues, providing an inexpensive way to gather samples for a study, or early to long-term surveillance, among many more [116, 117]. An example of the wide-reaching teaching possibilities of EAC is the long-term surveillance of water quality on the Navajo Nation. As part of an ongoing project at Northern Arizona University (NAU) and a cornerstone project of The Partnership for Native American Cancer Prevention (NACP), a collaboration between the University of Arizona Cancer Center and NAU, hundreds of water samples across the Navajo Nation have been collected since 2012 and analyzed for elemental contaminants [67]. Throughout this process, community members have been incorporated from relatively low engagement such as providing directions to a water source or sharing their story of uranium contamination to high engagement such as actively collecting water samples or visiting the laboratories at NAU. This project has also provided opportunities to for hands-on lessons taught to K-12 students on impactful EAC research.

EAC provides a bridge between western thought and AI/AN indigenous knowledge, dissolving the barrier that can prevent meaningful collaborations from forming. Many AI/AN cultures place a significance and respect for the environment in their cultural practices and teaching, imparting an understanding that nature is equally as important as living creatures [66, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93]. This teaching imparts a holistic worldview that describes everything as having a purpose and a level of interconnectedness, so if the natural world is impacted it necessitates an understanding of how all aspects of life may be affected [66, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93].

Previous western endeavors tended to be interested in a singular aspect of an event, such as how to maximize profits from a mine. In this approach, no forethought was given to how the mine may impact human or ecosystem health. This singular thought process is also evident in the dogmatic application of the scientific method. The scientific method teaches us that a “good” experiment/experimenter will control all possible variables in each system to understand the effect of a singular variable. The benefit of this approach is that it gives the impression that we understand how this variable will act, once we know how it behaves, we can predict future outcomes. Unfortunately, the world does not exist in a vacuum, and we are unable to control all variables.

As an example of the limitation of a singular thought process, consider the numerous inventions from Thomas Midgley Jr., a chemical and mechanical engineer in the early twentieth century. Two of his most infamous inventions would be tetraethyl lead, a fuel additive in gasoline as an “anti-knocking” agent and protection for valves, and chlorofluorocarbons that saw a wide array of applications from refrigeration to aerosol propellants [118, 119]. While both inventions were excellent at accomplishing their designed purpose, humanity would learn dozens of years later that both pose significant danger to the health of the environment and humans [118, 119].

The application of EAC seeks to understand the environment through a multi-faceted lens, often relating quantified measurements to a regulatory standard or mechanistic study to describe the impact of the chemical concentration. While EAC may not elevate the environment to the same cultural significance as some AI/AN tribes, it does acknowledge the ecosystem as a web of interconnected interactions and provides a modicum of the same holistic worldview shared by some AI/AN tribes. An additional benefit to EAC is its ability to provide quantifiable numbers and objective evidence that allows regulatory science and standards to compare the content of the environmental sample. As an example, while a direct emotional, ethical and even spiritual appeal has been used to address the controversy of the lasting impact of uranium contamination on the Navajo Nation, these approaches do not provide quantifiable data for federal agencies to assess regulatory standards [89, 91, 93, 120]. Further, without objective data any possible detrimental health effects experienced may be related to other possible variables such as lifestyle choices (e.g., diet, smoking habits, etc.), occupational exposure, or family history.

As the goal of EAC is to make measurements of environmental samples, this approach can provide hard numbers to determine if there is any actual threat from exposure. The adaptability of EAC also allows its methodologies to be applied to the quantitation of contaminants in a variety of matrices, both abiotic and biotic. This versatility is beneficial because EAC practitioners can track a contaminant throughout an ecosystem to understand the mobility and characteristic of the contaminant. As it pertains to AI/AN communities, this versatility is beneficial because it offers AI/AN communities the option to donate biological samples that are not considered sacred or taboo while still providing a means to quantitate contaminants in humans. If an AI/AN community, or any community, is hesitant about providing biological samples, but is concerned about the impact a contaminant has on living organisms, EAC methodologies can utilize animal models or other biological proxies that circumvent this controversial sample collection.

3. Conclusions

Both minority and tribal communities are disproportionately exposed to environmental contaminants and tribal communities have additional factors that exacerbate this inequity. This disparity creates an environment in which government agencies, academic institutions, and other research driven organizations may want to partner with AI/AN communities to address these concerns [121]. However, this desire, while potentially rooted in beneficence, can result in unintentional disastrous outcomes if not approached in a culturally appropriate manner. The prototypic example is that of the ASU and Havasupai blood case [98, 99, 122]. In that case, the initial intent of the study was not only to help the tribe but was also instituted at the request of the Havasupai people. In the end, the study was a failure as not only did the original purpose of the study not produce fruitful results, but the biological samples collected were used in research endeavors that went beyond the consent of the Havasupai Tribe. Outside of Arizona and indigenous research networks, the case of the Havasupai study has produced mixed interpretations within the U.S. [98, 105]. In general, researchers and institutional review board (IRB) members that have either previously worked with indigenous individuals or identify as a minority themselves, especially AI/AN, saw the Havasupai case as a clear violation of human rights and one that necessitates expansion of cultural understanding [98, 102]. On the opposite side, IRB members and researchers that did not have these shared experiences broadly had a difficult time understanding why the case was controversial, citing that the language of the informed consent covered the expanded research projects and the potential for research may have ultimately benefited not only the Havasupai people but other populations [98]. This rift in understanding of the significance of the case demonstrates that there is still an underlying need for western trained scientists to appreciate cultural nuances that exist in non-majority communities.

Environmental analytical chemistry [EAC] provides a means that may help establish research collaborations with tribal communities. The inherent hybrid nature of EAC provides a foundation for the spirit of collaboration. Practitioners recognize that their training represents a component of the project and to address the underlying question necessitates teamwork from a variety of experts, including community members. As EAC focuses on the quantification of contaminants in the environment, this approach is also apt for assessing both the existence and the potential impact of contaminants an AI/AN community may be exposed. In addition, the versatility of sampling modalities for EAC provides an anodynic pathway that affords the time for trust and collaboration to build between the AI/AN community and the researcher. As an example, had the community of Sanders wished to pursue quantifying biological availability and uptake of uranium from the water, EAC provides a means to do so with a wide range of approaches: using biological samples (e.g., blood, hair, serum, etc.), animal models, or even environmental sampling (e.g., soil, water, plants, etc.) [123, 124].

Environmental exposure to contaminating industries is a problem that plagues all individuals across the globe, regardless of race, gender, economic status, political affiliations, etc. The environmental movement that captivated the U.S. in the 1960s–1980s shed light on these concerns. Unfortunately, since modernization and industrialization, there have been communities that face an increased risk of exposure to these contaminants. Compounding these issues, historical policies have made minority communities additionally vulnerable to exposure, and AI/AN communities have a further set of unique considerations that change the definition of environmental injustice. The diverse nature of EAC, including approaches that analyze environmental contamination from a variety of perspectives as well as the ability to provide regulators objective evidence, makes it a great model for addressing environmental concerns in minority and AI/AN communities.

Within the NACP, EAC has helped to destigmatize science and STEM for many AI/AN and minority individuals, one of the commonly cited barriers to STEM [125]. Dozens of students have been mentored through the NACP partnership using the lens of EAC methodologies to understand how environmental contaminants effect human and ecosystem health. Many students, both minority and majority, as well as community members have commented how the research is not only relatable, but it demonstrates that even they are able to contribute to science in a meaningful way. This normalization of science and STEM is greatly important for both students and communities. For students, it breeds curiosity for the next generation and demonstrates that science is not an unobtainable art, but rather a functional process that occurs every day of our lives all around us. For communities, it helps to empower these communities because it provides a means for them to come to the table as equals with scientists, policy makers, politicians, businesses, and other stakeholders and contribute to a two-way exchange of knowledge. Increasingly, research is demonstrating that science, especially disciplines and fields concerning the environment, requires a network of approaches to understand how a contaminant or system functions. Our world is one of mixtures and our antiquated approaches to evaluating individual variables is ill-equipped to answer the questions we have today.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the American Indian/Alaska Native communities that have worked with us over the years. They have shared their knowledge and teaching, as well as opening their communities for us to learn and collaborate. Special thanks to The Partnership for Native American Cancer Prevention (NAU Grant Number U54CA143925 and UACC Grant Number U54CA143924) for providing years of support and training. Lastly, thank you to the members of the Ingram research group of the years, without your hard work this work would not be possible.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.