Benedict Colombi

Benedict J. Colombi, Ph.D. is Past Faculty Director (2016-2022) of the Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs (GIDPs) and Chair of the American Indian Studies GIDP (PhD and Master’s programs) in the Graduate College. He is Professor of the American Indian Studies Department in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. He holds affiliated faculty appointments in the School of Anthropology, School of Geography, Development, and Environment, and School of Natural Resources and Environment, and is a CO-PI and Faculty member with the Indigenous Food, Energy and Water Security and Sovereignty NSF NRT Award and GIDP, respectively. He served as Program Chair of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), Anthropology & Environment section, and served as Faculty Fellow with the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and a Fellow with the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA). In 2014, he was awarded a U.S. Fulbright Scholar Award, under the US-Russia Commission, for extensive fieldwork along the Far Eastern, Kamchatka Peninsula with local-Indigenous communities (Itelmen and Koryak).

His specialization lies at the interface of complex human-environmental problems (i.e. fisheries, climate, water, and energy). Significant publications include the books (Colombi and Brooks 2012), Keystone Nations: Indigenous Peoples and Salmon across the North Pacific (Advanced Seminar Series, School for Advanced Research Press) and (Maldonado, Colombi, and Pandya 2014), Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples in the United States: Impacts, Experiences and Actions (Springer Verlag Press), and a number of articles and chapters, including long-term and engaged research with the Nez Perce Tribe (Nimiipuu) about large dams, salmon, and the regional economy in the Columbia River basin (Colombi 2004-2020). He also has expanded his research to include Southwestern Indigenous peoples and watersheds (Colombi 2010; Colombi 2014; Pasqualetti et al. 2016; Bair et al. 2019); complimented with field studies of local-Indigenous resources/management in the United States, Canada, Russia (Thom, Colombi, Degai 2016; Colombi, Thom, Degai 2018), Iceland, Norway (Ween and Colombi 2013), Japan, Brazil (Colombi 2014; Perry et al. 2018), and Mexico (Colombi 2010; Colombi 2014).