This summer, Azmal Hossan interned with Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance (GPTWA), a South Dakota-based grassroots tribal organization working for self-determination and water justice in the Northern Great Plains. He conducted in-depth interviews with water resource managers of the federally-recognized tribal nations in South Dakota to assess their climate change adaptation water needs. This project is funded by United States Geological Survey (USGS) through the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center hosted at CU Boulder.

GPTWA’s Annual Climate Change and Water Conference was held in December in Rapid City, SD. Azmal presented the project’s initial findings titled, “‘They write reports for us sometimes, but they have never been here’: Tribal climate adaptation water needs in South Dakota.”

Attending the conference also gave Azmal the opportunity to meet GPTWA’s Board of Directors in person for the first time. “I have been trying to build a strong partnership with GPTWA,” Azmal explains. “I think this partnership will be a key resource for me to conduct participatory action research on settler colonialism, water injustice, and climate change adaptation in the Northern Great Plains that I am proposing for my Ph.D. dissertation.”