Udall Center shines at the UArizona Washington, D.C. Center for Outreach and Collaboration 2021 Annual Event
The Udall Center proudly participated in a week-long series of events marking the opening of the new UArizona Center for Outreach and Collaboration in Washington, DC. The Native Nations Institute’s Executive Director, Joan Timeche, led a panel on the best practices for engaging Native American communities titled Building Relationships with Native Nations: Native Know How. Based on NNI’S acclaimed “Native Know-How” curriculum, this event spoke about Tribal governments and their sovereignty, ways to engage Tribal leaders, how to be an effective ally, and examples on how to build respectful relationships and partnerships with tribes.
Included in the panel were: Kathryn Isom-Clause, Deputy Assistant for the Secretary of Indian Affairs with the Department of the Interior; Levi Esquerra, Senior Vice-President for Native American Advancement and Tribal Engagement for UArizona; and Jamie Azure, Tribal Chairman for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Watch the recorded event.
A second event featuring the Udall Center, titled Fulfilling NEPA’s Vision through 21st Century Data Science, was led by Professor Laura Lopez-Hoffman, who holds a joint appointment with Udall Center and with the School of Natural Resources and Environment. The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, requires that the public be informed of any environmental federal projects, and for those federal agencies to considers any alternatives and environmental impacts which their projects may cause. This event discussed the release of a new website built by Laura’s team of interdisciplinary researchers, NEPAccess.org, which revolutionizes NEPA by finally providing a way to search, download, and analyze thousands of environmental review documents, which have previously been inaccessible (or hard to access) for federal agencies and any other interested parties.
NEPAccess aims to be a one-stop-shop for all documentation regarding environmental projects within a specific region or project area. Other panelists for this NEPAccess debut included: Ted Boling, Associate Director for NEPA, Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ); Sudha Ram, Anheuser-Busch Chair in MIS, Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Professor of Management Information Systems, Eller College of Management, UArizona; Steven Bethard, Associate Professor, School of Information, UArizona; Marc Miller, Dean and Ralph W. Bilby Professor of Law, James E. Rogers College of Law, UArizona; Brenda Mallory, Chair of the CEQ; and Justin Pidot, Co-director of the Environmental Law Program, James E. Rogers College of Law, UArizona. Watch the recorded event.
The Udall Center would like to thank President Robbins, the Center for Outreach and Collaboration, all the panelists that participated, and the attendees (both in-person and virtually) for making these events a huge success. We are grateful for the support of UArizona RII.