Wolf in the desert holding a small own while wearing a blue plaid shirt, green bandana, and brown hat
Discipline
Environmental Life Sciences

Joseph Gazing Wolf

Bio: Joseph Gazing Wolf is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe with mixed race Black Seminole and Amazigh heritage. His life’s work is located at the interface of Indigenous lifeways and colonial cultures. His early journey from landless abject poverty and starvation revealed the vast indignities that Indigenous peoples have endured under colonial rule. His later experiences as a tribal shepherd in the African savanna, a buffalo range rider in the Great Plains, and an organic farmer in California taught him the centrality of place-based dignity to communal and individual well-being. It is this concept of dignity that frames Wolf’s scholarship and activism. He partners with Indigenous communities and allies to implement place-based approaches that further the cause of dignity for all living beings, with a focus on food systems, ecologies, and education. He has worked with Indigenous communities in Mexico, Peru, Costa Rica, Japan, Thailand, Egypt, throughout the northern plains of the U.S., and with Black and Indigenous urban youth. As an activist, Wolf’s work in underserved communities has focused on environmental justice, hunger, homelessness, violence against women and children, animal abuse, education, and biocultural restoration, including the rematriation of bison and grey wolves.

Research: Wolf’s research in education is located at the interface of Indigenous Knowledges (IKs), Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and Indigenous values and identities on the one hand, and colonial knowledge systems and institutional values on the other. Specifically, he studies the structural and cultural barriers that Indigenous students experience in STEM education and research, with a focus on the predictors of persistence, success, and belongingness, as well as the stigmatization of IKs, TEKs, and Indigenous identities.

Publications: 
[7] Gazing Wolf J (2021). Indigenous land tenure and sovereignty as a pre-requisite to adaptive capacity in confronting climate change and addressing global sustainability. In FAO (Eds.), The white/wiphala paper on Indigenous peoples' food systems (1st ed., pp. 91-92). Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cb4932en

[6] Mohammed TF, Nadile EM, Busch CA, Gazing Wolf J, Brister D, Brownell SE, Claiborne CT, Edwards BA, Lunt C, Tran M, Vargas C, Walker KM, Warkina TD, Witt ML, Zheng Y, Cooper KM (2021). Aspects of large-enrollment online college science courses that exacerbate and alleviate student anxiety. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 20(4), ar69. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.21-05-0132

[5] Schulz TL, Wilmer HN, Yocum H, Winford E, Peck DE, Monlezun AC, Schmalz H, Klemm T, Epstein K, Jansen V, Kelley W, Bruegger R, Fick S, Gazing Wolf J, Grace J, Mann R, Derner JD (2021). Campfire conversations at the 2020 annual meeting: Insights and lessons learned from “cuss-and-discuss” rather than “chalk-and-talk”. Rangelands, 43(3), 166-172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rala.2021.04.003

[4] Li H, Crihfield C, Feng Y, Gaje G, Guzman E, Heckman T, Mellis A, Moore L, Bechara NR, Sanchez S, Whittington S, Gazing Wolf J, Garshong R, Morales K, Petric R, Zarecky L, Schug M (2020). The weekend effect on urban bat activity suggests fine scale human induced bat movements. Animals, 10(9), 1636. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10091636

[3] Bhandari S, Raheja A, Chaichi M, Green R, Do D, Ansari M, Pham F, Gazing Wolf J, Sherman T, Gonzalez K, Espinas A (2018). Effectiveness of uav-based remote sensing techniques in determining lettuce nitrogen and water stresses. Proceedings of International Conference on Precision Agriculture, Montreal-Quebec, Canada.

[2] Bhandari S, Raheja A, Chaichi M, Green R, Do D, Pham F, Gazing Wolf J, Sherman T, Espinas A, Ansari M (2018). Lessons learned from uav-based remote sensing for precision agriculture. Proceedings of International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Dallas, TX.

[1] Bhandari S, Raheja A, Chaichi M, Green R, Do D, Ansari M, Pham F, Gazing Wolf J, Sherman T, Gonzalez K, Espinas A (2018). Ground-truthing of uav-based remote sensing data of citrus plants. Proceedings of Autonomous Air and Ground Sensing Systems for Agricultural Optimization and Phenotyping III, Orlando, FL.