Proposal for 2017 Conference of Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences

Jacqline Wolf Tice, MA

David Casagrande, PhD

Lehigh University Environmental Initiative

How do place-based communities respond to environmental changes? Can community participatory policies mitigate stress resulting from cultural disruption, ethical dissonance, and conflicting environmental values?

Since 2008, oil and gas extraction on Ft. Berthold Indian Reservation, North Dakota, has brought economic benefit for some, but not without externalized costs for the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation. Extraction industry practices create stress, which can translate to poor health outcomes. The modern extraction ethic propagated by the normalization of extraction industry practices conflicts with the land ethic implicit in traditional cultural values associated with sacred places. This quantitative and qualitative research explores how the “benefits” of extraction industry practices (wealth, pride) negatively impact sociocultural and self-reported stress as cultural values (reciprocity, trust) are disrupted. In this sample population, stress correlates strongly with land ethic dissonance and suggests the need for more culturally relative conceptual frameworks in research of stress among place-based cultures.