Nestor Leonardo Silva

My postdoctoral research will generate an ethnographic analysis of fracking-based air pollution; this as part of a broader interdisciplinary research project applying theoretical and methodological approaches from Indigenous Science and Technology Studies to particulate matter (PM) pollution. Fossil fuel combustion’required by frack sites and the vehicular traffic they demand’generates PM pollution, which is carcinogenic and adversely affects plant life. This investigation of the experiences and understandings of PM pollution will take place in North Dakota’s Fort Berthold Reservation, specifically in and around New Town, the reservation’s largest municipality and hub of its fracking industry. The goal of this research is to start a field school for the study of air pollution at Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish (NHS) College in New Town. The funds I am requesting will support two years of operations at the field school, specifically, training and paying student researchers to collect and/or analyze of three types of information: 1) archival data on land-as-property in the Fort Berthold Reservation; 2) GIS data on vegetation, soil, and air pollution around New Town; and 3) ethnographic data on frack sites surrounding New Town and on the work of the field school itself.