Exploring Environmental Communication in the U.S. Indigenous Diaspora

Abstract

ABSTRACT Indigenous people living away from their homelands represent a substantial but under-researched population in environmental communication. Through a series of interviews with 21citizens living in the U.S. Indigenous diaspora at four separate field sites, the present study explores how environmental information moves to and through this population, with particular focus on the roles of social media, government communicators, and multimedia storytelling. For the citizens interviewed, mediated environmental communication helped maintain cultural connections and sometimes provided the basis for political action. Social media, particularly Facebook, were cited as key channels of environmental information. Elected leaders served as sources of environmental information with the official communications of environmental departments rarely cited as sources. Newspapers and newsletters still played an important role, but citizens also saw multimedia storytelling as an important new way to both maintain traditional ecological knowledge and communicate about the foundations of Indigenous environmental governance.