Haury's Indigenous Resilience Center (IRes) Initiative supports the creation and build-out of a new UArizona community-driven, place-based tribal research center that engages in respectful outreach to tribal communities and promotes and corporates into its work Indigenous resilience and knowledge and Native science in seeking solutions to climate-based challenges.
On September 13, 2021 President Robbins announced the creation of Indigenous Resilience Center (IRes), a trans-disciplinary Center dedicated to advancement of tribal communities' resilience goals and their responses to environmental changes.
Located within UA Arizona Institute for Resilience (AIR), Indigenous Resilience Center (IRes) seeks to leverage existing UArizona strengths related to climate change resilience challenges, to expand UA capacity to respond to these challenges, and to be nationally and internationally respected hub for such work.
The creation of IRes was only possible with the more than one million dollars investment over three years provided by the Haury Program for faculty cluster hiring, support staff recruitment, equipment, space remodeling (IndigePOD) and general operations. Yet it also was the product of remarkable support from the President, the Provost's Office, the VP for Research, AIR, Levi Esquerra, SVP of rNative American Advancement and Tribal Engagement, the home departments and Colleges of these new hires, and the UArizona Foundation.
We, the Haury Program, regard IRes and this coordinated recruitment and support strategy as a model of how to effect significant change in a resource-strapped environment, by combining resources and leveraging existing genuine UArizona strengths to expand our external impact.
Watch conversation between Dr. Robbins and Dr. Karletta Chief, IRes Director here. Dr. Chief is an expert in watershed hydrology and arid environments, and her commitment to serving others, especially Native Nations and students, exemplifies our mission as Arizona’s land-grant university and further supports the 3rd Pillar of UArizona's Strategic plan.