Life Cycle Assessment and Renewable Energy from an Indigenous Perspective (HS)

This lesson focuses on ways of reclaiming sustainability as an in Indigenous way of knowing and focuses on the western science concepts of energy from wastes and life cycle assessment. Students will explore how chemical engineering concepts allow for us to take the idea of converting food (traditional corn ethanol) into fuel and how we should be looking at converting waste materials into fuel. Using concepts within traditional engineering along with chemical engineer’s ability to use biochemical means to break down waste and generate a fuel. The second part of this lab will compare our current food system and look at all of the inputs of the lunch we just had and compare it to our ancestors’ food systems’. What energy went into the walleye we caught and ate, what energy goes into the manoonim we harvested and prepared, what energy comes from the picking of berries or the drying of sage?

The first part of the lesson focuses on how engineering can be used to help make use of “waste” sources. We will have discussion of the bison or the deer (depending on tribes) and how all parts were used. There was no such thing as waste in indigenous culture. We will discuss the effects of traditional fuels and how scientist came up with using our food as a fuel. Students will be asked to brainstorm other ways in which we can get fuel and help reduce waste. Students will perform a demo using a food source. Students will then preform a second demo where we use a waste material to form a biofuel and then using chemical engineering concepts, we will apply enzymes to our waste and watch as fuel is formed. This process takes a while, so may need to be wrapped up in a different period.

This second part of the lesson introduces students to life cycle assessment. In this lesson, students will consider what raw materials and energy that went into our lunch. In addition, students are tasked with considering ways in which these resources can be reduced using indigenous knowledge. Following a discussion of the life cycle of our foods, students are asked to compare and contrast our lunch we had with how our ancestors ate.