2026 Technoscience Salon Series: Kyle Whyte

The 2025-26 Technoscience Salon Series : Ethical Grounds is excited to host Dr. Kyle Whyte (University of Michigan).

As part of this year's series "Ethical Grounds," we are exploring how Indigenous Science is taking the lead in developing methods of Indigenous research suited to data and computationally-driven research conditions, shifting environmental regulations and needs, and transforming scientific policies, protocols, and practices.

The 2025-26 Technoscience Salon Series :: Ethical Grounds is excited to host Dr. Kyle Whyte (University of Michigan) for a discussion on “How does Indigenous Climate Justice Scale Up?”

Indigenous peoples' actions to address climate change continue to achieve meaningful effects, impacting the United Nations, multinational industries, regional governance, and national laws, policies, and investments. Yet many people assume that only multilateral institutions and nations can move the needle at global and regional scales. Indigenous peoples are often labeled as actors who can make change slowly and at local scales. The assumption that Indigenous actions cannot achieve results 'at scale' is wrong. Indigenous movements show how responsible relationships, kinship bonds, care for land, and self-determination are effective elements of methods for scaling up. Compared to dominant methods of scaling up, which are replete with tradeoffs that trend toward worsening climate risk, carbon footprints, and human suffering, Indigenous methods are ethical, just, and can be organized to achieve speed. The presentation shares stories, cases, and evidence of Indigenous methods for generating climate justice 'at scale'.      

(Citizen Potawatomi) is the George Willis Pack Professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability and University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor at the University of Michigan. On campus, Kyle teaches in and coordinates the School’s environmental justice graduate specialization. He is founding Faculty Director of the Tishman Center for Social Justice and the Environment, Principal Investigator of the Environmental Justice + Humanities Hub, co-Principal Investigator of the Global Center for Climate Change and Transboundary Waters, Faculty Associate of Native American Studies, Principal Investigator of the Secretariat for the Pathways Alliance for Change and Transformation, STRIDE Committee member, affiliate Professor of Philosophy, and Senior Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows. 

Kyle’s research on environmental justice centers moral and political issues that Indigenous peoples are addressing in the areas of climate change, conservation, and cooperative relationships with science institutions. He is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. His publications appear in journals such as Climatic Change, Weather, Climate & Society, Science, Daedalus, WIREs Climate Change, Environment & Planning E, and Sustainability Science. 

This event is co-sponsored by the Centre for Indigenous Studies.

This event is hosted by the Technoscience Research Unit. The Technoscience Research Unit is an Indigenous-led home for critical and creative research on the politics of technoscience at the University of Toronto. The TRU draws together social justice approaches to Science and Technology Studies from across the university with an emphasis on Indigenous, feminist, queer, environmental, anti-racist and anti-colonial scholarship.

Learn more at: https://www.technoscienceresearchunit.org/salon

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Host or Publisher Technoscience Research Unit