An Environmental Scientist and an Educator Highlight Navajo Efforts to Balance Tradition with Scientific Priorities
This article is part of the magazine, "The Future of Science In America: The Election Issue," co-published by LeapsMag, the Aspen Institute Science & Society Program, and GOOD.
The global pandemic has made it impossible to ignore the stark disparities that exist within American communities. In the past months, journalists and public health experts have reminded us how longstanding systemic health and social inequities have put many people from racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19. Still, the national dialogue noticeably lacks a general awareness of Indigenous people's needs and priorities, especially in the scientific realm.
To learn more about some of the issues facing often-overlooked Indigenous tribal communities, we sought the perspectives of two members of the Navajo Nation: Nonabah Lane, Director of Development of New Mexico Projects at Navajo Power and the founder of Navajo Ethno-Agriculture, a farm that teaches Navajo culture through traditional farming and bilingual education; and Elmer Guy, Ph.D., president of Navajo Technical University, the first university to be established forty years ago on the Navajo Nation that today stands as a premier institution of higher education focusing on a balance between science and technology and traditional culture.
Elmer Guy and Nonabah Lane.
Credits: Navajo Technical University, left, and Diana Levine
Nonabah Lane: The COVID pandemic is really highlighting a lot of ways in which we are lacking, and that's especially true here in our tribal community, because the first thing you need to even address where we are in this science and technology space is the internet. There's a considerable gap between the haves and the have-nots in terms of internet. The Navajo Nation is roughly the size of West Virginia, but we don't have anywhere near the broadband and internet access that other "states" this size would have. Some of the more glaring reasons for this go back to historical policies, lack of funding for infrastructure on tribal lands, and current rights-of-way issues, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that larger corporations aren't as willing to take risks in doing business on a tribal trust land. When you don't have the internet, you don't have access to information, you don't have access to what is going on in the world or science or technology, and you can't keep up with work or school.
Dr. Elmer Guy: That's right. In this pandemic, as we're being forced to go online, I see school buses parked outside for students who don't have internet at home. The buses are equipped with Wi-Fi, so if students can find a way to get to where those buses are parked, they can get on and do their homework. But only then.
Internet has long been an issue, and the Navajo Nation's telecommunications department created a cyber task force that we at Navajo Technical University (NTU) are members of. One of the things we recently did was to petition the FCC for special temporary authority of an EBS [Educational Broadband Services] 2.5-GHz spectrum that was available but not being used. So now we have that and we're using it to set up hot spots for students to connect. We're also working with the four internet-service companies: Cellular One, Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, Sacred Wind, and Frontier. As Nonabah was saying, the Navajo Nation is quite large and has five agencies. NTU is in the eastern agency, but Navajo Tribal Utility Authority doesn't have a footprint here, so we partnered with Sacred Wind as well as Frontier to broaden our bandwidth.
We've also been collaborating with the Navajo Cyber Team on developing a Navajo Nation broadband policy, and we're almost done with that. The Navajo Nation received some CARES [Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security] funding, and part of that is being used to address broadband. One of the things we're trying to do is see if tribal colleges can qualify for E-Rates [educational rates], since schools are eligible for E-Rates. And so some of the schools are getting connected.
What's also happening is that the Navajo Nation is trying to expand water lines to families so that they have water to wash their hands during this pandemic. We're recommending that if they're going to dig for the water lines, they might as well lay down conduits, too, so that later we will be able to install fiber as well. We happen to specialize in wireless technology here at NTU, and that is making a significant impact. In the past, it used to be about point-to-point, and when you're trying to serve a community in the valley, you'd have to find a water tank or something high and then get down and into that community from there. But with newer technology, they can bend now into those valleys. We keep reminding the state that they need to address rural communities. We've reached out to congressional members to push them to address broadband issues with Indian communities, and there are a couple of bills out now addressing that.
Of course, there are other things we're looking at in terms of scientific priorities: artificial intelligence, robotics, and climate change. We're in a high-desert environment, and the sand dunes are increasing because of overgrazing and other factors. Water sources are limited, and air pollution doesn't really help, so robotics could be promising. For example, we're looking at the water-filtering systems for wells so that both animals and humans have access to safe water. We're beginning to see the reach of technology in places like grocery stores, where people can check themselves out without the need for cashiers. So we try to look ahead and project what kinds of jobs will and will not be needed on the Navajo Nation, then have our faculty think about ways of adjusting the curriculum to stay in line with where the world is headed.
"One of the biggest challenges for us is how we make sure there's a connection between the students who want to go into science and how they can continue to contribute to Navajo communities—to their parents' and grandparents' way of life."
NL: Since we're talking about the internet and A.I., I think one of the key issues that isn't addressed in tribal communities is data: data security, privacy, and, ultimately, ownership. It's such a gray area. Take this pandemic, for instance, and the numbers and the data that's being collected: who's taking all of this information out of our communities and who's accounting for it? It's an important component being extracted seemingly covertly. Our tribal communities don't necessarily understand how valuable it is to keep that data within our communities.
I know there are various data holders who are not Navajo who have studied Navajo people and our environment, from soil samples to diabetes rates, and it's just not information we fully have access to as a population—our own information. It's critical to get everyone on the same page and to understand the importance of that.
There's a water project I'm working on that came out of the Gold King Mine waste-water spill of 2015, which was a major environmental catastrophe in New Mexico that affected the run-off from the San Juan Mountains. The water contamination really hurt agriculture, especially Navajo farmers on the San Juan River. We still feel it, even if the pandemic has kind of overshadowed it, and before the pandemic, my organization, Navajo Ethno-Agriculture, adopted a lot of the hard-science data that was taken by the University of Arizona. We've been working with New Mexico State University in continuing to collect and share data with the community in order to build back confidence with Navajo consumers about our farm produce. We have an ongoing partnership with New Mexico State University where they come out and do soil testing, and Navajo Preparatory School students are developing a curriculum around this as well. The point is to get easy-to-use, low-cost technology so that farmers can do this testing on their own and not have to wait for and rely on a university or the government agencies to come out and test it. This initiative would not have been possible without the support of the MIT Solve Indigenous Communities Fellowship.
Of course, you're always going to have the people in the community who don't believe in science and don't believe that the water is, in fact, okay, but it's essential that we have that scientific data. It's about empowering farmers to be able to relay that message as well—and finding a bridge between our longstanding traditions and modern science. A lot of the farming among the Navajo is deeply traditional to this region, and, as a culture, we're focused on the traditional aspects of the food. That's really why we felt like it was important to be proactive about this—because if you lose one more generation of farmers who don't produce these heritage foods, it's not just your food, it's your whole culture and way of life—your heritage—that could be gone. So it's important to preserve that tradition, but also alongside Western science—and data is critical.
EG: Nonabah is right about tradition, and I think one of the biggest challenges for us is how we make sure there's a connection between the students who want to go into science and how they can continue to contribute to Navajo communities—to their parents' and grandparents' way of life. A lot of the time, you have to create those opportunities. For example, we're trying to develop an environmental laboratory at one of our sites in Chinle, Arizona, where we want to be able to test the water, soil, air, uranium, etc. We have people who can run that facility mainly to help with the uranium mine clean-up. There are over 500 abandoned uranium mines, and what might usually happen is that funds would become available and outside entities would get those grants and they'd come in and do the work. Then, as soon as the grant is up, they leave and everything disappears, but the problem remains. It's these kinds of situations where we say, Why can't we do that ourselves? And the only way is to train and prepare engineers ourselves, from our community.
A lot of our students intern with the U.S. Army and Air Force Research Labs Faculty Fellowship or with Boeing or NASA, and, when they graduate, those groups grab them for themselves. So I keep asking the Navajo Nation where they are in all of this. A lot of times we are the ones who create the barriers that only end up hurting us. When the Navajo Nation puts out job vacancies, they require candidates to have so many years of experience, and our students don't qualify. There is a tremendous need for our graduates, but everybody except the Navajo Nation ends up hiring them.
NL: As Dr. Guy says, creating opportunity is so important. My family's non-profit organization, Navajo Ethno-Agriculture, actually came about for that particular reason. We had people coming in and doing workshops and telling us how we should plant and do this or that. It was absurd—how can you come from Washington State and tell us how to plant when you don't know what native crops have been planted in our home region for centuries? And so, because of my family's background in the sciences and the traditional upbringing we all share, we built this program ourselves. We incorporate the science into our program, and we encourage students to pursue a career in science, while trying to create those job opportunities for them here. I find that more than 75% of the Navajo students I interact with—whether in high school or college—want to come back home. They just don't have the work or career opportunities to do so.
EG: NTU also has a partnership with the Navajo Nation's economic department, and we run their business incubator program. We encourage people to go into businesses here on Navajo. One of the challenges is that, even though the Navajo Nation may be the size of West Virginia, we don't own the land. So you have to deal with leases or homesite land-use permits, and it's daunting. We streamline that process and help people put together business plans, set up payroll taxes, figure out marketing strategies, and so forth.
One of the challenges is resistance, and that's something you have to deal with. For example, when I was pushing my faculty to develop an engineering degree, no one could understand why. So I told them about the national goal—that the United States has set a goal for itself that by the year 2026 or whenever, it wants to have 100,000 engineers. But what about the Navajo Nation's goals? We don't have a goal, but we should, and you have to push people to get there. Eventually everyone sees the benefits of these kinds of decisions.
NL: I also believe we have to encourage the entrepreneurial mindset: If something doesn't exist here already, then ask yourself what's needed and create it. This is our community, and we can make that change. I'm really biased toward starting your own thing because that's what I do. Before COVID-19 hit, I was developing a water lab that would stand closer to the Southern Ute Reservation so that it could be at the opening to the tributaries that run into the Colorado River and downstream to the tribes. I wanted that specific site because it would allow us to monitor the water that's a priority for tribes—because everyone else already has their own resources. And all of the water scientists involved were Navajo. If people like us don't take the initiative for these kinds of projects, the absolute wrong person is going to do it, without understanding the community.
EG: Whether it's the environment or water or some other scientific need, it's important that we remember to develop the smaller steps necessary for achieving any goal. For example, if we need veterinarians, then we have to ask what the steps are to get us to that point. A veterinary or medical school probably won't happen at NTU, but we could begin by identifying and building the steps needed to get there. We did this by starting a veterinary technician program and then added an animal science degree and then a biology degree, which is designed somewhat as a pre-medical degree, so that students can go into either medicine or veterinary science. We know we can't always make a leap right away, but we can build the pathways that get us there.
NL: For everything we've been discussing, I think it's really important to understand that we're not talking for the whole of the Navajo Nation; the Navajo Nation is large, and its culture is regional. There are different priorities in different communities. Where I live, we have abundant water around us, so that is not a need, but if you go 100 miles south, there's no water infrastructure whatsoever. And there are other issues, from coal and oil and gas extraction, to the uranium issue, which are regional. Some people live close to large health facilities while rural communities only have access to a clinic. NTU is resource-abundant in terms of having that academic outlet for students while people on the other side of the reservation may not have that. I'm always very clear about this. I may be speaking from a tribal nation, I may be speaking from experience, but I'm not speaking for the Navajo Nation as a whole, and I'm not speaking for tribal communities as a whole. Yes, we are a community, and we can expose a greater picture in our area of expertise, but there are definitely different areas that have individual needs.
Still, I do believe in the promise of what the future can hold for us in terms of both science and tradition. The two can complement each other and are not at odds, even though we tend to think of sustainability in scientific terms. And yes, science can help us achieve sustainability through things like solar tech, health innovations, and natural sciences. But I'm talking about sustainability overall and of the Earth: sustainability of water, energy, and agriculture, but also of human capacity and Navajo culture.
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How sharing, hearing, and remembering positive stories can help shape our brains for the better
Across cultures and through millennia, human beings have always told stories. Whether it’s a group of boy scouts around a campfire sharing ghost stories or the paleolithic Cro-Magnons etching pictures of bison on cave walls, researchers believe that storytelling has been universal to human beings since the development of language.
But storytelling was more than just a way for our ancestors to pass the time. Researchers believe that storytelling served an important evolutionary purpose, helping humans learn empathy, share important information (such as where predators were or what berries were safe to eat), as well as strengthen social bonds. Quite literally, storytelling has made it possible for the human race to survive.
Today, neuroscientists are discovering that storytelling is just as important now as it was millions of years ago. Particularly in sharing positive stories, humans can more easily form relational bonds, develop a more flexible perspective, and actually grow new brain circuitry that helps us survive. Here’s how.
How sharing stories positively impacts the brain
When human beings share stories, it increases the levels of certain neurochemicals in the brain, neuroscientists have found. In a 2021 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Swedish researchers found that simply hearing a story could make hospitalized children feel better, compared to other hospitalized children who played a riddle game for the same amount of time. In their research, children in the intensive care unit who heard stories for just 30 minutes had higher levels of oxytocin, a hormone that promotes positive feelings and is linked to relaxation, trust, social connectedness, and overall psychological stability. Furthermore, the same children showed lower levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress. Afterward, the group of children who heard stories tended to describe their hospital experiences more positively, and even reported lower levels of pain.
Annie Brewster, MD, knows the positive effect of storytelling from personal experience. An assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the author of The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma, and Loss, Brewster started sharing her personal experience with chronic illness after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2001. In doing so, Brewster says it has enabled her to accept her diagnosis and integrate it into her identity. Brewster believes so much in the power of hearing and sharing stories that in 2013 she founded Health Story Collaborative, a forum for others to share their mental and physical health challenges.“I wanted to hear stories of people who had found ways to move forward in positive ways, in spite of health challenges,” Brewster said. In doing so, Brewster believes people with chronic conditions can “move closer to self-acceptance and self-love.”
While hearing and sharing positive stories has been shown to increase oxytocin and other “feel good” chemicals, simply remembering a positive story has an effect on our brains as well. Mark Hoelterhoff, PhD, a lecturer in clinical psychology at the University of Edinburgh, recalling and “savoring” a positive story, thought, or feedback “begins to create new brain circuitry—a new neural network that’s geared toward looking for the positive,” he says. Over time, other research shows, savoring positive stories or thoughts can literally change the shape of your brain, hard-wiring someone to see things in a more positive light.How stories can change your behavior
In 2009, Paul Zak, PhD, a neuroscientist and professor at Claremont Graduate University, set out to measure how storytelling can actually change human behavior for the better. In his study, Zak wanted to measure the behavioral effects of oxytocin, and did this by showing test subjects two short video clips designed to elicit an emotional response.
In the first video they showed the study participants, a father spoke to the camera about his two-year-old son, Ben, who had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. The father told the audience that he struggled to connect with and enjoy Ben, as Ben had only a few months left to live. In the end, the father finds the strength to stay emotionally connected to his son until he dies.
The second video clip, however, was much less emotional. In that clip, the same father and son are shown spending the day at the zoo. Ben is only suggested to have cancer (he is bald from chemotherapy and referred to as a ‘miracle’, but the cancer isn’t mentioned directly). The second story lacked the dramatic narrative arc of the first video.
Zak’s team took blood before and after the participants watched one of the two videos and found that the first story increased the viewers’ cortisol and oxytocin, suggesting that they felt distress over the boy’s diagnosis and empathy toward the boy and his father. The second narrative, however, didn’t increase oxytocin or cortisol at all.
But Zak took the experiment a step further. After the movie clips, his team gave the study participants a chance to share money with a stranger in the lab. The participants who had an increase in cortisol and oxytocin were more likely to donate money generously. The participants who had increased cortisol and oxytocin were also more likely to donate money to a charity that works with children who are ill. Zak also found that the amount of oxytocin that was released was correlated with how much money people felt comfortable giving—in other words, the more oxytocin that was released, the more generous they felt, and the more money they donated.
How storytelling strengthens our bond with others
Sharing, hearing, and remembering stories can be a powerful tool for social change–not only in the way it changes our brain and our behavior, but also because it can positively affect our relationships with other people
Emotional stimulation from telling stories, writes Zak, is the foundation for empathy, and empathy strengthens our relationships with other people. “By knowing someone’s story—where they come from, what they do, and who you might know in common—relationships with strangers are formed.”
But why are these relationships important for humanity? Because human beings can use storytelling to build empathy and form relationships, it enables them to “engage in the kinds of large-scale cooperation that builds massive bridges and sends humans into space,” says Zak.
Storytelling, Zak found, and the oxytocin release that follows, also makes people more sensitive to social cues. This sensitivity not only motivates us to form relationships, but also to engage with other people and offer help, particularly if the other person seems to need help.
But as Zak found in his experiments, the type of storytelling matters when it comes to affecting relationships. Where Zak found that storytelling with a dramatic arc helps release oxytocin and cortisol, enabling people to feel more empathic and generous, other researchers have found that sharing happy stories allows for greater closeness between individuals and speakers. A group of Chinese researchers found that, compared to emotionally-neutral stories, happy stories were more “emotionally contagious.” Test subjects who heard happy stories had greater activation in certain areas of their brains, experienced more significant, positive changes in their mood, and felt a greater sense of closeness between themselves and the speaker.
“This finding suggests that when individuals are happy, they become less self-focused and then feel more intimate with others,” the authors of the study wrote. “Therefore, sharing happiness could strengthen interpersonal bonding.” The researchers went on to say that this could lead to developing better social networks, receiving more social support, and leading more successful social lives.
Since the start of the COVID pandemic, social isolation, loneliness, and resulting mental health issues have only gotten worse. In light of this, it’s safe to say that hearing, sharing, and remembering stories isn’t just something we can do for entertainment. Storytelling has always been central to the human experience, and now more than ever it’s become something crucial for our survival.
Want to know how you can reap the benefits of hearing happy stories? Keep an eye out for Upworthy’s first book, GOOD PEOPLE: Stories from the Best of Humanity, published by National Geographic/Disney, available on September 3, 2024. GOOD PEOPLE is a much-needed trove of life-affirming stories told straight from the heart. Handpicked from Upworthy’s community, these 101 stories speak to the breadth, depth, and beauty of the human experience, reminding us we have a lot more in common than we realize.
A new type of cancer therapy is shrinking deadly brain tumors with just one treatment
Few cancers are deadlier than glioblastomas—aggressive and lethal tumors that originate in the brain or spinal cord. Five years after diagnosis, less than five percent of glioblastoma patients are still alive—and more often, glioblastoma patients live just 14 months on average after receiving a diagnosis.
But an ongoing clinical trial at Mass General Cancer Center is giving new hope to glioblastoma patients and their families. The trial, called INCIPIENT, is meant to evaluate the effects of a special type of immune cell, called CAR-T cells, on patients with recurrent glioblastoma.
How CAR-T cell therapy works
CAR-T cell therapy is a type of cancer treatment called immunotherapy, where doctors modify a patient’s own immune system specifically to find and destroy cancer cells. In CAR-T cell therapy, doctors extract the patient’s T-cells, which are immune system cells that help fight off disease—particularly cancer. These T-cells are harvested from the patient and then genetically modified in a lab to produce proteins on their surface called chimeric antigen receptors (thus becoming CAR-T cells), which makes them able to bind to a specific protein on the patient’s cancer cells. Once modified, these CAR-T cells are grown in the lab for several weeks so that they can multiply into an army of millions. When enough cells have been grown, these super-charged T-cells are infused back into the patient where they can then seek out cancer cells, bind to them, and destroy them. CAR-T cell therapies have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat certain types of lymphomas and leukemias, as well as multiple myeloma, but haven’t been approved to treat glioblastomas—yet.
CAR-T cell therapies don’t always work against solid tumors, such as glioblastomas. Because solid tumors contain different kinds of cancer cells, some cells can evade the immune system’s detection even after CAR-T cell therapy, according to a press release from Massachusetts General Hospital. For the INCIPIENT trial, researchers modified the CAR-T cells even further in hopes of making them more effective against solid tumors. These second-generation CAR-T cells (called CARv3-TEAM-E T cells) contain special antibodies that attack EFGR, a protein expressed in the majority of glioblastoma tumors. Unlike other CAR-T cell therapies, these particular CAR-T cells were designed to be directly injected into the patient’s brain.
The INCIPIENT trial results
The INCIPIENT trial involved three patients who were enrolled in the study between March and July 2023. All three patients—a 72-year-old man, a 74-year-old man, and a 57-year-old woman—were treated with chemo and radiation and enrolled in the trial with CAR-T cells after their glioblastoma tumors came back.
The results, which were published earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), were called “rapid” and “dramatic” by doctors involved in the trial. After just a single infusion of the CAR-T cells, each patient experienced a significant reduction in their tumor sizes. Just two days after receiving the infusion, the glioblastoma tumor of the 72-year-old man decreased by nearly twenty percent. Just two months later the tumor had shrunk by an astonishing 60 percent, and the change was maintained for more than six months. The most dramatic result was in the 57-year-old female patient, whose tumor shrank nearly completely after just one infusion of the CAR-T cells.
The results of the INCIPIENT trial were unexpected and astonishing—but unfortunately, they were also temporary. For all three patients, the tumors eventually began to grow back regardless of the CAR-T cell infusions. According to the press release from MGH, the medical team is now considering treating each patient with multiple infusions or prefacing each treatment with chemotherapy to prolong the response.
While there is still “more to do,” says co-author of the study neuro-oncologist Dr. Elizabeth Gerstner, the results are still promising. If nothing else, these second-generation CAR-T cell infusions may someday be able to give patients more time than traditional treatments would allow.
“These results are exciting but they are also just the beginning,” says Dr. Marcela Maus, a doctor and professor of medicine at Mass General who was involved in the clinical trial. “They tell us that we are on the right track in pursuing a therapy that has the potential to change the outlook for this intractable disease.”