Meet the Mellon Fellows: Dr. Shelly Biesel

Dr. Shelly Biesel

University of Georgia
PhD, Anthropology

Host Site: Partnership between Wild and Scenic Rivers Program and the Northeast Region Cultural Resources
Fellowship Title: Reintegrating Indigenous Ecological Knowledge into Northeast Waterway and Park Co-Stewardship Fellowship
Project Description: Dr. Biesel will research the Indigenous ecological knowledge tied to the lands and waters of the Tribal communities whose homelands are proximate to the National Parks of Boston and three Wild & Scenic Rivers in the northeast. Alongside mentors, NPS staff, and Indigenous partners, Dr. Biesel will develop a toolkit of processes and techniques that parks and programs in the northeast may utilize to move from engagement to co-stewardship with Indigenous communities. The project will center inter-generational exchange of Indigenous ecological knowledge from Native elders to Native youth, cultural revitalization, and incorporation of Indigenous teaching into NPS resource management.

Bio:

A cultural-ecological anthropologist by training, Shelly Annette Biesel has worked on collaborative and community-based ethnographic research and applied projects for over a decade. She is a first-generation college student, a Fulbright Scholar, and a recent graduate from the University of Georgia, where she earned her doctorate in Ecological Anthropology.

Dr. Biesel’s dissertation, “Confronting Legacies of Loss: Negotiating Intergenerational Inequalities in Afro-Brazilian Traditional Communities,” was carried out in collaboration with African-descendent fishers, shellfish collectors, and small farmers in Pernambuco, Brazil, where the expansion of a mega-port industrial complex forcibly dispossessed 26,000 residents from their traditional territories. Her work investigates how state development programs articulate with colonial histories, intersectional identities, and local ecologies, impacting traditional ecological knowledge and the well-being of Afro-Brazilian traditional communities with livelihoods and identities profoundly connected to the ocean, rivers, and mangroves. Ultimately, she illuminates how ecological losses—including forced removal from ancestral territories, the destruction of culturally meaningful plant, animal, and aquatic life, and the concomitant loss of ecological knowledge—contribute to profound ecological grief among traditional communities deeply linked to these ecosystems.

At NPS, she will work with ACE and tribal communities of the Northeast to explore how Indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge can improve co-stewardship practices between Indigenous peoples and federal institutions, parks, and rivers.

Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

This project was made possible through the National Park Service by a grant from the National Park Foundation through generous support from the Mellon Foundation. The Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship program is administered through a partnership between NPS, NPF, and American Conservation Experience.