Indigenous Expertise Leads the Fight Against Climate Change

Indigenous communities have a longstanding tradition of protecting their land, building extensive knowledge on conservation in the face of climate change. Join Indigenous leader Manny Kudluk and the Pulitzer Center's Blanca Begert, Meral Jamal, and Peter Yeung for a webinar on Thursday, July 13, 2023, at 1:00pm EDT. Panelists will discuss their reporting on Ingenious expertise in preservation efforts in Indonesia, Peru, and the Arctic.

Panelists: 

• Meral Jamal, the Pulitzer Center's 2023 Persephone Miel Fellow, is a journalist based in Nunavut, Canada’s vast Arctic territory. She writes news and feature stories for Inuit communities across Inuit Nunangat. Her Pulitzer Center-supported project, What the Snow Can Teach, highlights the Arctic Snow School, a team of 40 researchers, students, and Indigenous knowledge holders trying to learn more about changing snow in the region.  
• Blanca Begert is an environmental journalist based in Los Angeles. Her report "Peru's Shipibo People Fighting To Reclaim Management of Their Land" shows how Shipibo and local communities are exploring alternate possibilities for a new type of conservation area they could manage themselves and benefit from.
• Peter Yeung is an award-winning freelance journalist and an International Rainforest Journalism Fund grantee. His project, Indonesia's Indigenous Customary Forest, follows nine Indigenous communities who were handed over 13,000 hectares of customary land, recognizing their longstanding good stewardship and management of forests, in an effort to develop a sustainable solution to the country’s future development. 
• Manny Kudluk is an Inuvialuit and has worked in the Arctic as a guide, observer/communicator, and corporate manager. He has served the community of Sachs Harbour as the director of the Inuvialuit Game Council, and he was also the director of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. He was a founding member of PermafrostNet, an initiative for climate-change adaptation.

Pulitzer Center Program Coordinator Mikaela Schmitt will moderate the conversation, followed by an audience Q&A. The webinar is free and open to the public, but registration is required.