Lake coring gets to the base of cooperation

By Lailani Upham

Students from the Gida program in Minnesota travel with a SKC team to take part in lake coring on Lake Josephine at Many Glaciers in Glacier Nations Park last Wednesday. (Lailani Upham photo)

WEST GLACIER — Traveling from Ojibwe Country to Salish/Kootenai Country to Blackfeet Country, comes a collaboration of people to build a vision into a reality to increase the number of Native students in Science disciplines.

Last week a collaboration of Salish Kootenai College and Fond du Lac Tribal Community College faculty, staff, students and scientists participated in a week-long workshop to develop a relationship between the two tribal communities and colleges.

The group took Wednesday to dab in some lake coring on Lake Josephine at Many Glaciers at Glacier National Park.

Lake coring is a process where a core barrel of however many feet is needed to be lowered into a lake from a coring platform floating device, like a small pontoon raft. A core is a vertical section removed from the ground by plunging a hollow cylinder into the sediment (in some cases the top of the tube is closed off to create suction) while lifting the tube out again. Almost similar to a child covering a straw with finger to lift liquid out of a glass, essentially taking cores from the contents from the glass.

A dozen high school students from Minnesota Gidakiimanaaniwigamig (Gida) program took part in the lake coring process last week, which was also part two of the collaboration workshop.

Generally geologists rarely find the information they need laying around on the surface of the earth because of erosion and land movements. When the evidence is hidden under layers of sediment or water, often the easiest way to get at it is to take cores.

Phase one took place in March with students and faculty from SKC and Two Eagle River School traveling to Minnesota for a week-long workshop where they had a chance to observe first hand lake coring on a frozen Minnesota wild rice lake. TERS seventh grade teacher Allen Bone and one seventh grade and one eighth grade student and two seventh grader students from Bonner Elementary School, Deb Fassnacht from Watershed Education Network, and SKC Natural Resource Department Instructor Bill Swaney and one student from SKC participated in the first phase.

The workshops are an effort funded through a supplemental proposal from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a teacher/student development using place-based education and the gidakiimanaaniwigamig 7 Elements of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Learning to improve teaching and learning about the environment.

Gidakiimanaaniwigamig (Gida) program, based out of Minnesota is committed to working with American Indian students as they work towards high school graduation and prepare for post-secondary education in the areas of Science, Engineering, Technology and Mathematics (STEM). The program is funded through the University of Minnesota's St. Anthony Falls Laboratory's Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED) with generous support from the Center for Compact and Effiecient Fluid Power (CCEFP) of professional and financial support for seasonal camps, science fairs, and robotic competitions.

The Gida program has been in existence for decades and making huge steps in the success of increasing a growing pool of Native students to prepare for STEM careers. Antony Berthelote, Pend d’ Oreille and Salish, is an instructor at SKC and currently teaching Water Resource classes met with Diana Dalbotten from the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED) at a fall conference, heard of the efforts being accomplished in Ojibwe Indian County and felt folks on his own reservation and tribal college could model the same success here with students.

A sediment sample take from 45 feet below the surface of Lake Josephine is 770 years old; the sample will be tested for lead, according to the MaCalaster College research team. (Lailani Upham photo)

From one idea to the next during informal discussions at the conference amongst the handful of professionals in the sciences, came the idea of forming such a program here on the Flathead Reservation and developing a Bachelor’s of Science degree program in Hydrology or Water Resources. From this began a process for Salish Kootenai College to not develop a new program in the Natural Resource Department but also gain a partnership with NCED, which is housed at St. Anthony Falls, Minnesota. The center has previously partnered with Fond du Lac Tribal Community College to actually develop math and science camps for kindergarten - college students, according to Berthelote.

The lake coring samples of Many Glaciers and the samples from Minnesota will help introduce teachers and students to topics of local ecological concern and compare both lake environments. Teachers and students will be taught a course in surface water and ground water monitoring through river and well testing which SKC staff, has already developed, Dalbotten explained. The research will help teachers and students consider the two different environments and the impact of anthropogenic factors on the local environments and the importance of good land and water quality management in preserving reservation land and water resources, she added.

The main goal of the NCED’s diversity programming is to increase participation by Native Americans in NCED-related disciplines.

According to Dalbotten, nationally only 20 – 30 bachelor’s degrees are awarded per year in the geosciences to Native American students and only a small fraction of those are in the field of water resources. “This is of significance when you realize that Native Americans have sovereignty over approximately 20 percent of our nation’s water resources,” she said.

Berthelote says the partnership of SKC and FDLTCC and the two reservation communities is great step in developing a relationship that will foster transfer students from the FDL’s pre-science degree program to SKC’s four-year STEM degrees. He said these workshops are a step in developing relations between the two communities that will grow and foster Native students to go toward science degrees.

NCED and SKC have shared a goal of building the number of students who would be interested in pursuing careers in water resources. Berthelote said he would like to do the work required to build the curriculum for SKC and in the near future create a four-year water resource degree to serve approximately 40 students per year.

Luwana Greensky of AlBrook Education Assesment and a Minnesota partner with the group said that they want native kids to get more global in the way of math and science in other native communities. “Put science into context for them, such as the ‘Wild Rice Project,’ it is something that is important to them (Ojibwe),” she said. “We want them to look at the earth’s problems and still think like Indians.”

“Our kids can do it right here (on the reservations) instead of sending them off and having them think the way the system teaches. We don’t want to lose our Indian-ness just because we’re educated,” she added.