2024 Indigenous Communities Fellowship
Indigenous Bioculture Design-x-Spatial Justice
What is the name of your solution?
Indigenous Bioculture Design-x-Spatial Justice
Provide a one-line summary of your solution.
It links Indigenous biotechnology knowledge to Western perspectives on alien plants, leveraging their bioculture regenerability.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
New York, NY, USAIn what country is your solution team headquartered?
What type of organization is your solution team?
Not registered as any organization
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
The systematic displacement and erosion of biocultural identity among Indigenous Peoples (IPs), driven by contemporary development activities and historical policies, underscore a pressing global challenge, particularly acute in urban contexts where socio-environmental inequities compound the loss of ancestral lands and practices. The lack of integration of Indigenous practices into urban land management exacerbates socio-environmental inequities. It threatens native biodiversity, highlighting the need for alternative, inclusive approaches that empower Indigenous communities and prioritize their rights, knowledge, and voices in climate action and urban planning. Globally, Indigenous Peoples (IPs) represent significant planetary commons’ stewardship such that with +/-5% of the earth’s population, IPs are commoning +/-80% of the global commons’ biodiversity. Indigenous communities often reside in areas most vulnerable to the effects of contemporary development activities, i.e., food, fiber, and material resources. This leads to the physical, more-than-human displacement of these communities and a profound loss of biocultural identity and autonomy, affecting countless individuals' livelihoods and cultural lifeways.
In the United States alone, policies of contemporary development and conservation areas have historically decimated Indigenous populations. By the 1960s, policies aimed at industrialization and resource extraction had reduced the Native American population to approximately 800,000 individuals, confining them to reservations and countless becoming a diaspora in urban areas like NYC, severing their engagement to ancestral lands and practices.[1]
The scale of this problem is immense, with local and global IPs resettling in urban metropolises like NYC. Urban living often exacerbates existing sociopolitical inequities that affect these diaspora communities in the US, and environmental spatial justice issues hinder their access to physical space, disconnecting them from their ancestral practices, thereby struggling to maintain a vital connection to their heritage. Resettlement is a 'more-than-human' migration pattern that displaced alien plants to the US and NYC; with few to no natural predators and lacking the right stewardship story, they threaten native biodiversity.
Systematically, non-native plants are removed through manual and chemical processes based on Western weed science. Manual removal is labor-intensive and cost-ineffective, while chemical solutions significantly threaten local ecosystem health, impacting the targeted area and those downstream. Hence, Western weed science is analogous to antibiotic development models with ever-more-resistant microorganisms; similarly, non-native plants rapidly adapt to “conservation” interventions. While Indigenous systems are more likely to thrive in rural areas, guiding conservation efforts, they are rarely incorporated into urban land management, adaptation, or mitigation strategies. The historical lack of agency granted to immigrant Indigenous communities in NYC and the US effectively silenced their voices in decisions that shape socio-environmental space policies. Recognizing and integrating Indigenous systems and practices into nature-based climate solutions is not just a matter of spatial justice, but it creates resilient futures for all.
NYC only provides information to DEC when dealing with invasive plants. We both know more can be done.
[1] David Graeber and D. Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, 1st ed., vol. 1 (Picador, 2023); Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, 1st ed., vol. 1 (Beacon Press, 2014).
What is your solution?
Our solution, Indigenous Bioculture Design-x-Spatial Justice, seeks to reframe the Western understanding of alien or invasive species using Indigenous knowledge systems. The framework, alongside reimagining alien plants’ potential in building novel climate-culture-smart land management, creates a digital platform and a public-facing webpage hosted by the Kinray Hub website for the accessibility and implementation by Indigenous diaspora in NYC and the US. Hereafter, we (a) spell selected c-words with an Indigenous philosophy-based ‘k’; (b) replace the prefix ‘co-‘ with ‘ko-‘ in ‘design’ to remind us of kinship across all complexity systems nested in our cultural heritage and offer processes for Indigenous and non-Indigenous in their capacity and relations; and (c) kodesign spatial justice to ensure the ‘I’ aggregated in BIPOC and IPLC has a decision-making agency overcoming plastic land acknowledgments.
Storysharing (data collection) and storytelling (knowledge processes) are at the heart of Indigenous research & development governance (iR&D). This approach allows recognition of the relationships of all forms and the importance of every species in maintaining a healthy ecosystem resilient rhythm. First, we source existing open plant data from multiple authoritative sources (USDA NY, GISD, and Invasive Plant Atlas), aggregating them into a master list of alien plants and normalizing the joined data in our platform. Second, we collaborate with partner organizations to facilitate public storytelling/storysharing workshops and kodesign surveys. Third, we implement responsible data linkage to augment the source data with novel qualitative data (bioculture and biotechnology knowledge), defining the typological and relational structure of the joined data. By weaving culture, science, and technology, this dataset will problematize the Western management of alien flora and propose new perspectives (i.e., productive and allies) and practices for private and public land stewards on nature-based solutions efforts.
The stewardship of knowledge generated through these processes will adhere to iR&D and data provenance, cultural intellectual property rights (CIPR), CARE, and FAIR principles to ensure accessibility and share risk, responsibility, and accountability with participants. These practices and principles will contribute to the stewardship of (a) physical commons (community gardens, urban agriculture, land restoration, and parks) by implementing novel insights and (b) the digital commons (open science/technology platform), linking both commons to Indigenous systems and agency of Indigenous community members. The platform’s digital commons are kodesigned with community members in a way that can be scalable to additional branches of Indigenous systems and communities across geographies and diasporas.
Our primary method of dissemination will be the public-facing webpage that realizes the genuine beneficial intentions behind ‘open source’ and Indigenous science & technology, offering holistic and just solutions that serve as a repository for our data and supplementary modules, facilitating the understanding and application of its insights to explore in-house alternative food, fiber, and material resources instead of plundering the Global South agro-biodiversity. Additionally, the platform will receive ongoing updates based on the self-determined needs and collective agency, uplifting communities' autonomy and resilience to lead environmental stewardship and climate action efforts.
Which Indigenous community(s) does your solution benefit? In what ways will your solution benefit this community?
Our efforts aim to reframe the historical conditions established by Western policy to erode Indigenous cultural identities in the Americas (Apya Yala & Turtle Island), which persist currently within Indigenous diaspora communities of Maya, Kichwa, Shuar, Quechua, and Aymara coexisting in New York City and members of the Lenape Nation in New York State and the Hopi and Diné (Navajo Nation) in Arizona and New Mexico. Despite facing the challenges of displacement, precarious social status, and cultural erosion, these communities carry rich traditions and knowledge systems that are critical in the fight against climate change and in pursuing resiliency development.
To ensure our solutions are grounded in the realities and aspirations of our communities, we have initiated kollaborations with key organizations such as Garifuna Coalition, Kichwa Hatari, Nación Shuar, and the Archeology Department at Brooklyn College and Columbia University in New York. These kollaborations are pivotal in gaining insights into the unique challenges and opportunities the Indigenous diaspora faces in biocultural loss. Meanwhile, in Arizona and New Mexico, we have seeded kollaboration with the Indigenous Resilience Center at the University of Arizona, Global Indigenous Data Alliance, and Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance, focusing on the self-determined needs and strengths of the Hopi and Diné communities. These partnerships are not merely consultative; they are deeply kollaborative. By ko-designing directly with our communities and organizations, we can facilitate solutions that are not only technologically innovative but also Indigenist.
The Community Capital Framework (CCF) (developed to evaluate communities’ sustainability) is at the core of our engagement strategy.[1] This framework is a tool for understanding how the Indigenous diaspora and First Nations can participate in community and cultural sustainability solutions. It allows us to holistically map out these communities' assets, needs, and aspirations, considering cultural, social, environmental, and economic kapital.[2] We adopt the CCF as a living document through ongoing dialogues with partners, ko-designing impactful and respectful interventions in socio-environmental spaces. Our kollaborative approach ensures that our solutions are not imposed but sprout from the ground, with Indigenous communities leading. Thus, we are committed to Indigenous-led solutions that benefit the communities we aim to serve, leveraging IKS and biotechnology.
Our solution builds a collective agency, linking the physical and digital commons stewardship, driving novel non-native plant stewardship practices and methods, biodiversity konservation, and supporting the resiliency development of Indigenous diaspora communities. Through our kollaborative efforts, we catalyze the conditions for Indigenous communities to not only withstand the challenges posed by climate change but thrive, ensuring their voices are heard, and their rights are protected in the global climate action movement. By deeply engaging with these communities and respecting their leadership, we are working to ensure that our solutions address their needs while honoring their contributions to our shared planet.
[1] Bo Beaulieu Lionel J., “Community Capitals Framework,” Community Vitality & Sustainability 1, no. 1 (October 2024): 1–7, https://pcrd.purdue.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Community-Capitals-Framework-Writeup-Oct-2014.pdf.
[2] Tiffanie F Stone et al., “Equity and Resilience in Local Urban Food Systems: A Case Study,” Agriculture and Human Values, 123AD, https://doi-org.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/10.1007/s10460-024-10551-w.
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
Ñawi, a citizen of Tawantinsuyu, Apya Yala (so-called Ecuador) and diaspora in Turtle Island (so-called USA), embodies the essence of navigating between Indigenous lifeways and the challenges of assimilation in a new environment. His experiences of ‘adaptive preference,’ the ‘outsider-within’ feeling, and the struggle for a sense of belonging deeply resonate with the experiences of diasporic communities facing socio-environmental injustices. His active kollaboration with organizations like Grinding Stone, GreenThumb, GrowNYC, The Campaign Against Hunger, NYBG, and the CUNY has immersed him in the intersection of sustainability transformative. His firsthand experience in how Indigenous bioculture design principles integrate into urban settings to address food deserts and support community regenerability.
The Indigenous complexity systems with human and non-human relationships fundamentally mentor our team's ko-design approach. It offers processes for Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities' input, ideas, and agendas in their capacity and relations. It strengthens Indigenous epistemologies and methodologies, ensuring that the projects we embark on are not only representative of but actively championed by the communities they aim to serve. The team is a caring environmental policy advocate, data scientist, software engineer, and Indigenous R&D catalyst, ko-designing a highly interoperable platform with our target communities to make sure that they are engaged at every step of the process.
Kianna comes from Turtle Island, and her diasporic journey from her Indigenous community to an urban setting has animated the intricacies of maintaining personal connections to the Navajo Nation while actively building resources alongside other diaspora communities through education, social, and environmental justice initiatives. Guided by Diné teachings, she respectfully bridges collective community knowledge to advocate for environmental policy and equitable education. As such, Kianna collaborates with Navajo tribal leaders, educators, students, universities, and nonprofits such as Start:Empowerment, Urban Indigenous Collective, Western Leaders Network, and Haul No!
Corey Tegeler has served on the board of directors of a Brooklyn community garden for the past seven years and has been involved with several community organizations and participatory research projects around plant and soil health and urban food justice in New York City.
Alexander Rickard, a Co-Founder of the Kinray Hub, has Founded multiple innovative tech companies and led product teams to design and build complex digital platforms - including a geo-location video-sharing platform powered by government-providing GIS data and a generative AI platform. With his tech startup background and experience building and leading non-profit organizations, including the African Rainforest Conservancy and NYCMesh, Alexander is well-positioned to help this project accomplish its goals from conception, design, and execution.
Paulo Arantes is a Brazilian data scientist with a business background who has spent the last decade working in technology in Silicon Valley. From biometrics (security via human factors) and climate (enabling electrification with an intelligent electric panel) startups to large companies (Autodesk), he thrives at end-to-end approaches from R&D to scalable deployment of machine learning pipelines. He has also developed a data ethics framework, worked on a soil analysis project, and is currently focusing on bioinformatics and horticulture applications of data science.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Strengthen sustainable energy sovereignty and support climate resilience initiatives by and for Indigenous peoples.Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
What is your solution’s stage of development?
ConceptWhy are you applying to Solve?
Our initiative is in its conceptual phase, focusing on Indigenous research, community engagement, and the initial development of prototypes. Funding access is essential for advancing to the next stage—developing functional prototype deployment. However, beyond this, Solve's network is crucial to connect us with partners to sustain long-term resiliency development and mycelial scaling (nature-based horizontal increase returns on inspiration, social, nature, and finance kapital instead of business-as-usual exponential growth) efforts.
Integrating Indigenous bioculture design with dominant ‘print culture’ systems presents unique technical and social challenges. We developed banked on Indigenous biotechnological solutions on the ground and ko-design spatial justice to steward the digital commons; thereby, we seek support from Solve in connecting with scientific and technical partners who have experience in cross-cultural and transdisciplinary research would significantly enhance our platform weaving culture, science, and technology based on Indigenous research governance and data provenance principles.
Legal issues are significant, particularly around Indigenous research governance, data stewardship in the digital commons, and cultural intellectual property rights. Our work involves navigating complex legal landscapes to ensure that Indigenous knowledge systems are protected and returned in a manner that benefits the communities they come from. Solve's assistance in accessing legal expertise and advice on best practices for managing cultural intellectual property rights in a way that respects CARE and FAIR would be invaluable.
Solve's network of Indigenous-led solutions and organizations provides mentorship and guidance on effectively engaging with Indigenous diaspora communities facing ‘adaptive preference’ and ‘outsider-within’ assimilation. Building genuine, respectful, and equitable partnerships with Indigenous communities requires a deep understanding of cultural protocols and sensitivities. While we are committed to these principles, the network’s support helps ensure that our approach shares risk, responsibility, and accountability of ko-design spatial justice conditions for cultural sustainability.
Bringing our solutions to the climate market, especially in a way that benefits Indigenous communities, presents significant challenges. We aim to develop Indigenous business models that support the revitalization of the Indigenous economy and the well-being of our communities, with a focus on sociocultural cohesion, socio-environment regenerability, and socioeconomic subsistence. Access to Solve's network of socio/ecopreneurs, investors, and market experts would provide critical insights into developing and mycelial scaling market-based solutions that are equitable and resilient.
The nine-month personalized support program offers a unique opportunity to address these barriers. Connecting with a diverse cross-sector community creates a spatial area to learn from expertise, partnerships, and resources needed to move from concept to impact. Moreover, the visibility and credibility associated with being a Solver team can open doors to new kollaborations and opportunities, accelerating our Indigenous science and technology and history of Indigenous biotechnology journey towards ko-designing resilient, sustaining, and just solutions for Indigenous communities facing socio-environmental challenges.
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Ñawi Flores
Please indicate the tribal affiliation of your Team Lead.
Indigenous Diaspora of the Karanki Nation, Kutakachi Kichwa, Chichupampa Clan, Apya Yala
How is your Team Lead connected to the community or communities in which your project is based?
Ñawi Flores (tikzi/his/our), team lead, embodies a profound connection to the Indigenous diaspora communities this project aims to serve, positioning him and his team as uniquely ko-designers of this solution. His journey from Apya Yala to Turtle Island mirrors the experiences of displacement, immigration, cultural adaptation, and the search for belonging at the intersection of socio-environmental justice and cultural sustainability that many Indigenous diaspora communities face. This lived experience provides him with an intimate understanding of our communities challenges and opportunities, particularly in defending their customary territories and preserving their cultural lifeways amidst pressures from dominant Western social norms and lack of spatial justice to interact with the ecosystems.
Ñawi's migration story is not just a backdrop; it's the foundation of his commitment to returning Inspirational, Social, Natural, and Indigenous economic Kapital to our diasporic and home communities. His direct experience with the adaptive preference phenomenon and the "outsider-within" dynamic has given him firsthand insight into the complex interplay of Indigenous philosophy, cultural identity, assimilation, and the struggle for socio-environmental justice among Indigenous diaspora communities. These experiences have shaped our perspective on the issue of identity, being Indigenous, and identifying as Indigenous. As an Indigenous researcher, kodesigner, and katalyst, we earth on Tawantinsuyu worldviews that being Indigenous does not preclude us from being systematic, ethical, and scientific in the bioculture design; we approach wicked problems from Indigenous complexity systems. Hence, He has been researching a kodesign approach fundamentally mentored by the Indigenous philosophy of kinship complexity systems with human and non-human relationships, offering processes for Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities to participate in their capacity and relations.
Our kollaboration with organizations like Grinding Stone, GreenThumb, GrowNYC, New York Botanical Garden (NYBG), Campaign Against Hungry, Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), Biomimicry Institute, OurTownHall, SEEKCommons, and Climate Collective underscores proactive approaches to community engagement and dedication to addressing issues of community-based circular food systems, the development of novel agro-ecosystems and cultural interactions, stewardship of the digital commons, cultural intellectual property rights, Indigenous Peoples rights and rights of nature, and novel kodesign of Indigenous monitoring, reporting, and verifying (iMRV) of nature-based solutions. Through these partnerships, Ñawi has gained valuable experience in Indigenous bioculture designing for transition and transformation design, weaving culture, science, and technology to examine contemporary systems and climate change challenges from IKS perspectives and kodesign climate technology solutions, spatial justice, and revitalize the Indigenous economy and business subsistence.
Moreover, Ñawi's work reframing the paradox of ‘open’ and systemic architecture of contemporary programs and initiatives around the ‘empty promise of development,’ ‘sustainability for whom,’ and ‘plastic’ traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) acknowledgment demonstrates his metabolic and catalytic ability to bridge the gap between culture, science, and technology. This is crucial for the Indigenous Bioculture Design-x-Spatial Justice solution, which seeks to ko-design climate-resilient culture-smart agro-ecosystems and communities by leveraging Indigenous environment science and agronomy (agriculture science), Indigenous bioculture design, and Indigenous biotechnology. His seven years of experience catalyzing these diverse elements for ethical bioculture design practices and methods and justice signifies a deep commitment to creating solutions that honor and regenerate the collective agency of Indigenous diaspora communities.
What makes your solution innovative?
This initiative distinguishes itself through its foundational premise of leveraging accessible existing alien plant data and responsible linking with novel Indigenous research-generated qualitative data to reframe non-native plants as resources rather than a threat by contributing to the lack of analysis of global accumulation and the exchange of alien plants and reframing native biodiversity challenges as opportunities for novel agro-ecosystem designs and cultures regenerability.[1] Our solution approaches the multifaceted problem of climate change and its disproportionate impact on Indigenous diaspora communities with sustainability transformation deeply rooted in Indigenous bioculture design. By doing so, we provide a novel solution to climate resilience and collective Indigenous community agency through Indigenous biotechnology renaissance of bioculture and TEK in environmental solutions.
Our solution's core innovation lies in fashioning an interoperable platform alongside the public-facing Kinray Hub website, dissimilar to CyVerse (iPlant Kollaborative), USDA Invasive Plant Data, Soil Web Survey, NCBI, and other comparable databases, linking existing plant data with Indigenous research-generated qualitative knowledge. In addition, we will enhance our local context solution(s) by integrating a hand-held soil reflectometer assessing hyper-local soil health and an Oxford Nanopore to map hyper-local genetic agro-biodiversity (environmental DNA (eDNA)). The data collected within our communities’ physical commons will be monitored, reported, and verified (iMRV) in partnership with OurSci’s open-source SoilStacks platform.
Through the catalysis of this knowledge, we can ko-design novel urban Indigenous soil health stewardship indicators and benchmarks and make iMRV assessments accessible on our public-facing web page alongside novel practices and methods to steward non-native plants and expand their classification into ‘productive and ally plants’ concerning agro-biodiversity konservation.[2] It encourages other researchers, policymakers, and environmental organizations to adopt our bioculture design for adaptation and mitigation efforts. At the climate market level, it can lead to a paradigm shift in how climate technology solutions like NbCDR are conceptualized and implemented.
At the mycelial scalability, it offers a local context and cost-effective approach to support SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities & Communities) by landscapers, conservationists, farmers, gardeners, and land stewards engaging with restorative non-native plant management. Our platform’s dissemination module will output training materials and programs, opening new opportunities for Indigenous diaspora members to become trainers, instructors, and consultants in climate change adaptation, mitigation, konservation, and climate markets solutions. Furthermore, the success of our solution can engage investors and funders to support Indigenous-led initiatives, thereby increasing funding availability for projects that prioritize Indigenous knowledge systems and sovereignty.
[1] Mark van Kleunen et al., “Global Exchange and Accumulation of Non-Native Plants,” Nature 10, no. 2 (August 19, 2015): 1–7, https://doi-org.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/10.1038/nature14910; Andrea R Litt, Adam B Mitchell, and Douglas W Tallamy, “Alien Plants and Insect Diversity,” 2024, https://doi-org.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/10.1016/B978-0-323-99918-2.00005-7.
[2] John D Parker and Mark E Hay, “Biotic Resistance to Plant Invasions? Native Herbivores Prefer Non-Native Plants,” Ecology Letters 8 (2005): 959–67, https://doi-org.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2005.00799.x; van Kleunen et al., “Global Exchange and Accumulation of Non-Native Plants.”
Describe in simple terms how and why you expect your solution to have an impact on the problem.
We ko-design resilient, sustainable ecosystems and communities by integrating Indigenous biotechnologies with contemporary science and technology solutions. The solution thereby addresses wicked socio-environmental spatial injustices exacerbated by climate change and treating the livelihoods of the Indigenous diaspora.
Rationale: Indigenous communities possess extensive bioculture (social-ecology) knowledge, and Indigenous systems are sources of complex knowledge processes about ecosystems and sustainable living in kinship with humans and non-humans.[1] However, Western scientific approaches in systems design (socio-environment spatial), climate change, land, and non-native species management often undervalue and overpower this knowledge. Our Indigenous bioculture design bridges this gap and recognizes the need for ko-design commons stewarded by Indigenous communities, weaving Indigenous knowledge systems and Western perspectives to lead authentic partnerships in innovation and effective solutions for climate resilience and cultural sustainability.
Activities: (a) We establish kollaborations with Indigenous Peoples and communities, organizations, scientific institutions, and environmental NGOs directly or indirectly engaged in socio-environmental spatial justice and climate change konservation, adaptation, and mitigation; (b) The Indigenous bioculture design facilitates knowledge exchange workshops through our Indigenous research storytelling and storysharing practices and methods to generate novel insights on non-native plant stewardship and biotechnology applications; (c) We ko-design solutions engaging in joint research and development projects with Indigenous communities to create biotechnological solutions for ecosystem restoration and climate resilience; (d) We deploy a pilot implementation, testing the developed solutions in selected Indigenous diaspora communities in New York City, supporting the ko-evolution of novel agro-ecosystems biodiversity konservation, adaptation, and mitigation practices and methods; and (e) Through our dissemination module, we develop bio-capacity, creating training for Indigenous diaspora communities in nature-based solutions, biotechnological techniques (eDNA), Indigenous research governance, and data provenance.
Immediate Outputs: (a) We enhanced kollaborative networks and authentic partnerships between Indigenous communities, scientists, environmentalists, community organizers, and artists; (b) increased knowledge storysharing of Indigenous biotechnology knowledge, bioculture design, open science, and open technology; (c) innovative solutions developed with Indigenous biotechnological solutions for urban NbCDR and novel agro-ecosystem restoration; and (d) collective Indigenous communities agency equipped with new skills and knowledge responsible data linkage, Indigenous research governance, and Indigenous science and technology practices and methods, climate solutions and markets.
Longer-term Outcomes: (a) We support the ko-design of resilient agro-ecosystems, strengthening their bio-capability and bio-capacity to increase agro-biodiversity size (rather than growth) for withstanding climate change impacts and their regenerability from socio-ecological relational disruptions; (b) regenerative Indigenous communities and cultures, improving participation of livelihoods and sustainability through enhanced resource management and Indigenous economic opportunities; (c) advocate for Cultural Intellectual Property Rights (CTPR), increasing ethical and relevant integration of Indigenous knowledge systems in systems design and evidenced-based environmental policies backed by pilot projects, research, and collective agency; and (d) honor Indigenous philosophy of mycelial scalability and interoperable models to ko-design climate technology solutions offering spatial processes for Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities worldwide to engage in their capacity and relation with the stewardship of the digital commons.
[1] Nadaraj Govender, “Educational Implications of Applying the Complexity Approach to Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS),” Alternation, vol. 19, 2012.
What are your impact goals for your solution and how are you measuring your progress towards them?
Our solution is at the intersection of sustainability transformation and collective community agency, with a focused mission to weave Indigenous biotechnological and bioculture design approaches with Western counterparts for climate resilience and regenerative cultures. Our impact goals are directly aligned with the UN-SDGs, mainly focusing on SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 15 (Life on Land), SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions), and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) while also supporting SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, Infrastructure), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) through our transdisciplinary and Indigenous bioculture design approach.
Impact Goals: (a) Climate resilience through IKS enhances socio-environmental spaces and Indigenous diaspora communities to climate action by integrating novel non-native agro-ecosystem solutions, contributing directly to SDG 13, (b) biodiversity adaptation and mitigation by utilizing biotechnological approaches to restore degraded abandon lands, aligning with SDG 15, and (c) unlike Western “conservation” that limits social-ecology interactions idealized by “pristine nature,” konservation from Indigenous bioculture design perspective honors engagement with nature, promoting SDG 16, and (d) strengthened authentic partnerships between Indigenous communities, scientific institutions, environmental organizations, artists, and community organizers to support collective agency, reflecting SDG 17.
In addition, we regenerate Indigenous communities through indigenizing education and bio-capacity building in biotechnology, environmental science, Indigenous science, and technology, promoting SDG 3-5 and 10, and (b) supporting Indigenous diaspora communities’ sustainability, diminishing socio-economic and socio-environmental inequalities by designing and implementing solutions that address their self-determined needs and cultural intellectual property rights, contributing to SDG 9 and 11-12.
To track our progress towards these impact goals, we have identified three types of assessments: (1) Sociocultural: Evaluating the engagement of bio-capacity building with a number of Indigenous community members trained in Indigenous science and technology, including disaggregation by gender, to monitor progress toward gender equality in STEAM fields, (2) Socio-environmental: Measuring the application of novel non-native plants stewardship solutions informed by Indigenous knowledge in restoring ecosystems (SDG 15.3: By 2030, to combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought, and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world) and (2.1) reporting on the effectiveness of the implemented solutions in increasing agro-ecosystems and community resilience to the impacts of climate change (SDG 13.1: Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries), and (3) Socioeconomics: It verifies restorative innovation deployments ko-designed with Indigenous communities, serving as a proxy for validating the effectiveness of partnerships (SDG 17.16: Enhance the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology, and financial resources).
Through these assessments, the platform and its public-facing website are committed to creating measurable, transformational impacts that uplift Indigenous communities, adapt and mitigate biodiversity, and combat the adverse effects of climate change. Our progress towards these goals is regularly assessed, measured, refined, and equitably communicated to ensure continuous improvement and impact scaling.
Describe the core technology that powers your solution.
Our solution is a database system (back-end) with a public-facing webpage (front-end) that showcases our ko-design normalization, linkage, analyses, and interpretation of existing data and Indigenous R&D-generated knowledge. It leverages Ancestral Technology & Practices, Big Data, Social Networks, Software, and Biotechnology (Bioinformatics) to address pressing environmental and community resilience challenges. Our solution front-end webpage will offer practical and methodological processes to ko-designed with insights generated from the responsible linkage of knowledges accessible by Indigenous and non-Indigenous. It illustrates a holistic method to sustainability transformation that embodies Indigenous complex systems science, which has embraced uncertain outcomes naturalized in our cultural heritage.
We incorporate data mining and web scraping with Python to access existing invasive/weed plant data. We also integrate GIS mapping for more-than-human migration patterns, ecosystem monitoring, and reporting to assess project impacts. Once enough data has been normalized with our data linkage process; we aim to integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict ecosystem responses to various restoration strategies. Open sources and technologies enhance our ability to design, implement, and scale our solutions, ensuring they are based on solid evidence and can be adapted to changing socio-environmental conditions.
An integral part of our approach involves leveraging social networks to engage communities and build capacity. We use mobile applications to facilitate knowledge sharing and participation in the project’s kodesign, implementation, and iMRV. This ensures that solutions are tailored directly to the self-determined needs and aspirations while empowering them by enhancing their access to the local context information and the bio-capacity to collaborate, meeting SDG 9, 10, 11, 13, and 16, and benefit from the project themselves.
Our solution weaves Indigenous science and technology with Western biotechnology to benefit culture regenerability and urban solutions with planetary impact. Our contribution to environmental sustainability is not only implementing biotechnology knowledge to restore degraded lands and biodiversity adaptation but also safeguarding responsible digitization of TEK. By documenting and disseminating our Indigenous methodologies and outcomes responsibly, we aim to inspire broader adoption of integrated environmental and community resilience approaches.
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new application of an existing technology
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
If your solution has a website or an app, provide the links here:
@KinrayHub
In which parts of the US and/or Canada do you currently operate?
New York, especially New York City's five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island.
Which, if any, additional parts of the US or Canada will you be operating in within the next year?
Arizona, New Mexico, and California
How many people work on your solution team?
Our part-time team includes Ñawi Flores, Team Ko-Lead, weaving Indigenous R&D; Alexander Rickard, focusing on platform functionality and project management; Adam de Yong, developing strategies for community and partner engagement; Paulo Arantes, leading our bioinformatics and responsible data analysis on plants; Kianna Pete, Team Ko-Lead, focusing on climate justice and education from Indigenous perspectives; Melody Feo, supporting community engagement virtually and in-person; and Corey Tegeler engineering the software development aspects, seamlessly integration of datasets across our digital platform.
Our goal is to transition to full-time, holistic engagement with the Kinray Hub, deepening our connection and impact within our communities.
How long have you been working on your solution?
Founded in 2019, the K’allam’p organization emerged from our collective experiences with climate change, cultural sustainability, and spatial inequities. Throughout COVID-19, K’allam’p addressed issues like more-than-human migration patterns, Indigenous science, regenerative cultures, and education, supporting initiatives such as community gardens, urban agriculture, and soil health management systems. Recognizing the need for innovative approaches to enhance community and agro-eco-system regenerability, we launched Kinray Hub in 2023. Kinray Hub, grounded in real-time and deep-time processes, prioritizes a just and equitable socio-cultural, socio-environmental, and socio-economic ecosystem by redistributing power, embracing relational complexity, and fostering inquiry rooted in Indigenous bioculture designs.
Tell us about how you ensure that your team is diverse, minimizes barriers to opportunity for staff, and provides a welcoming and inclusive environment for all team members.
We are deeply committed beyond the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), recognizing that the richness of our work stems from the diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and complex systems of our team and the communities we serve. Our leadership team reflects this commitment, comprising individuals from various cultural, academic, and professional backgrounds, including Indigenous community leaders, environmental scientists, biotechnologists, and advocates for socio-environmental justice.
Our team's diversity extends beyond ethnicity and culture; it encompasses a range of experiences, disciplines, and worldviews that enrich our approach to complex environmental and social challenges. Thus, we ko-design collective agency engaging with historically marginalized voices, particularly members of BIPOC, IPLCs, and the LGBTQ community, whose knowledge and perspectives are central to our mission. By ensuring our team reflects the communities we aim to serve, we enhance our vision for relevance, effectiveness, and sustainability transformation for self-determined needs and autonomy (with relational check-in place).
Indigenous Bioculture Designing for Transition, DEI into Kinship Systems: (a) We recognize the journey towards kinship systems is ongoing and to enrich our team's diversity and embodiment of uncertainty, we foster an Indigenous philosophy guided climate wisdom to generate equity, caring, collective agency, and holacracy relationships with humans and non-humans, (b) we actively seek out and recruit team members, partners, collaborators, supporters, accomplices, and allies from above underrepresented groups, women in STEM, and communities from regions most affected by climate change and socio-environmental disaggregation, (c) we implement adaptive learning enhancing the skills of Indigenous peoples and others for equity opportunities for leadership and decision-making within our project, (d) we deepen our engagement with diverse communities through storytelling/sharing, ensuring self-determined needs, perspectives, and CIPR, and (e) caring structures and processes that ensure decision-making, emphasizing the value of consensus and community wisdom.
Actions Taken: (a) We have undertaken several actions from partnership development with organizations and groups representing the diversity of BIPOC, IPLCs, and the LGBTQ community, ensuring their perspectives are integral to our Indigenous bioculture design, (b) adopted hiring practices prioritizing diversity, such as inclusive job postings, outreach to diverse networks, and structured interviews that mitigate bias, (c) conducted DEI and culture intelligence training for all members at the Kinray Hub ecosystem, focusing on unconscious bias, and inclusive communication to foster an environment of autonomy, and (d) implemented ko-design practices with Indigenous and non-Indigenous and human and non-human communities, ensuring they were not just participants but leaders in catalyzing the conditions for subsistence solutions.
Our commitment to DEI is not merely about achieving numerical or checking plastic boxes on diversity but fostering an ecosystem of autonomy (relational check in place) where every team member and community partner hones collective agency, finds a niche to thrive, and feels cared for, valued, and contributed to their inspirational, social, natural, and economical kapital. As we progress, we remain open to learning/unlearning, adapting, and deepening our commitment to these principles, recognizing that our project's success and integrity depend on our ability to embody the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in every aspect of our work.
What is your business model?
The project delivers value to Indigenous communities through a unique combination of environmental restoration, climate resilience, and regenerative cultures—interweaving Indigenous biotechnological innovation. Our holistic approach focuses on the immediate impacts on agro-eco-systems and our communities' long-term sociocultural, socio-environmental, and socioeconomic regenerability.
Key Customers and Beneficiaries:
Our primary beneficiaries are the Indigenous communities directly impacted by climate change and socio-environmental justice issues. These communities are not just recipients of the platform’s features and services but are active stewards and contributors to restorative solution(s) development, data collection, and the implementation of scientific findings. Our customers include environmental organizations (GreenThumb and GrowNYC), grassroots groups, education institutions (the Brooklyn Library and NYBG), and potentially government agencies (NYC Land Trusts and Madison Square Park Conservancy) interested in sustainable, innovative, and agro-biodiversity konservation.
Products and Services Provided:
We develop and implement NbS that leverage Indigenous science and technology knowledge to enhance agro-biodiversity, build climate resilience, and promote regenerative cultures. These solutions range from konservation, adaptation, and mitigation projects, as well as contributions to the in-house analysis of global accumulation and exchange of alien plant species to food, fiber, and material resources and rehabilitate nature kapital, (b) offer community members decolonial training on novel Indigenous biotechnological techniques, iMRVs, and land stewardship practices, and (c) further refine Indigenous R&D not merely to participate in surveys and listening sessions but to author community-relevant scientific papers alongside research institutions, promoting the return of scientific findings back to the community for implementation on environmental restoration, ensuring the return of inspirational kapital.
Value Proposition:
Environmental Impact: It provides novel NbS that directly contributes to agro-ecosystem restoration, climate resilience, agro-biodiversity, and the exploration of novel non-native plant services, functions, and processes. We also support the building of healthy ecosystems and communities.
Sociocultural Impact: By centering Indigenous systems in our approach, we affirm the cultural identities and wisdom of the communities we serve, contributing to the regenerability and revitalization of traditional practices and knowledge systems.
Socioeconomic Benefits: Decolonial training and Indigenous R&D partnerships provide new Indigenous economic opportunities and ensure that communities have authority and control over their natural resources, reinforcing their rights and sovereignty.
Delivery Model:
Our model is digital through our public-facing webpage hosted at the Kinray Hub website and in-person as community ko-designers, catalysts, trainers, consultants, and collaborators of 'accomplice' implementation. We engage with communities from the outset, identifying self-determined challenges and opportunities, and work collaboratively through every stage of project development and execution. This inclusive approach ensures our solutions are culturally sensitive, environmentally appropriate, socially impactful, and long-lasting.
Revenue Streams:
While our primary aim is impact, potential revenue streams include partnerships with organizations identified above for land restoration projects and research grants for developing Indigenous biotechnological innovations. These funds will support project subsistence and mycelial scalability, ensuring our work continues to benefit communities and ecosystems in the future. We have also considered pursuing technology partnerships to provide subsidized technological solutions (e.g., hardware, infrastructure, and software) to assist us in achieving our environmental iMRV and impact goals.
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?
Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)What is your plan for becoming financially sustainable, and what evidence can you provide that this plan has been successful so far?
The project utilizes a multifaceted approach to funding designed to ensure our work's sustainability and scalability. Our funding strategy encompasses grants, partnerships, private donations, and revenue from services, each tailored to support and advance our mission of integrating Indigenous science and technology with Western counterparts to promote biotechnological solutions for environmental restoration and community regenerability.
Grants and Donations:
Our organization has been primarily supported by private donations from the Wichana Foundation, Tandana Foundation, and philanthropic entities focused on climate change, biodiversity conservation, and Indigenous Peoples’ rights. These funds have been instrumental in supporting our pilot projects, Indigenous R&D efforts, and community bio-capacity building programs.
In addition, we have completed the Climatebased Fellowship and Gotham Innovation Gambit—Lean Startup, securing a significant grantmaking network for climate technology solutions. Through this connection, we joined the Climate Collective and Indigenous Commons to enable the launch of our Indigenous Bioculture Design-x-Spatial Justice project with Indigenous diasporas in NYC, which is accessible globally on our public-facing web page. These programs and partnerships provided the kapital to initiate our work and validate our innovative approach, enhancing our credibility and attracting further support.
Products and Services:
To ensure long-term sustainability, we offer specialized services, including novel non-native stewardship consultancy, Indigenous R&D partnerships, and decolonial training programs in Indigenous biotechnological techniques and novel agro-ecosystem management. These services will be offered to grassroots, environmental NGOs, local government agencies, and private sector entities interested in sustainable and culturally intelligent climate technology solutions. Through the Gotham Innovation Gambit—Lean Startup, we appreciate an upstream and downstream market demand for our approach. This has generated initial kollaboration revenue streams that will be reinvested into our community-focused projects.
In addition, we aim to secure kollaborations with institutions like the CUNY-Advanced Science Research Center, the University of Arizona—Indigenous Research Center, and Grinding Stone Collective, to name a few, for large-scale land rehabilitation, culture sustainability, and climate action projects. These partnerships represent a significant revenue generation opportunity, enabling us to scale our impact across bioregional borders and geopolitical areas.
Proof of Concept: Our ongoing partnership with the University Catholica of Cuenca in Ecuador for a bioregional restorative subsistence agriculture project, informed by weaving Indigenous science and technology, highlights the potential for large-scale projects to become a significant revenue source for this project in NYC and the US.
Emerging Future:
Moving forward, our financial sustainability strategy involves diversifying and expanding our revenue streams through more profound engagement with the public and private sectors, the development of proprietary biotechnological innovations, and exploring emerging climate markets. By aligning monetary capital with our mission, we ensure the return of the Indigenous economy to support Indigenous communities and environmental restoration efforts for the long term, creating a model of success that blends financial viability with profound sociocultural, socio-environmental, and socioeconomic impact.
Solution Team
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Nkwi Flores Indigenous R&D Katalyst, Kinray Hub
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Our Organization
Kinray Hub - Indigenous-led Klimate Research and Resiliency Development