McKalee Steen traces her career in data science to her family's efforts toward environmental justice when the creek running through their farm in northeastern Oklahoma had been polluted by a chicken processing plant and was contaminating their well water. Her community fought to hold the company accountable, and a neighbor who was a scientist helped collect water samples, generating data that led to a legal settlement.
Although she was a young child at the time, seeing how powerful it was for her family to succeed planted early seeds for her career combining environmental science with data. "I have always had that drive," she said.
Now a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, Steen uses data science to analyze where and how Indigenous communities in the United States are reclaiming territory and the social and ecological impacts of those land acquisitions. In January, Steen became the first graduate student researcher at the Eric & Wendy Schmidt Center for Data Science and Environment (Schmidt DSE), contributing to the center's research on Indigenous data sovereignty. The center is a partnership between UC Berkeley's College of Computing, Data Science, and Society and Rausser College of Natural Resources.
Her work connects to broader environmental and conservation science by examining how Indigenous knowledge and land management practices, which are recognized for their ecological benefits, can only be implemented when tribes have control of their land.
Regaining land management
As a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she has a personal connection to why land reclamation is crucial. "I have Trail of Tears survivors on both sides of my family," Steen explained. Her ancestors were forcibly removed in the mid-1800s from their homelands in the southeastern United States to what is now Oklahoma. "Just knowing that history has led me to the area of interest that I have with my research today."
Steen's research focuses on what's called the "land back" movement, which aims to return ancestral land to Indigenous communities. Her work examines the strategies tribes use to regain land – direct purchases, legislation or gifts – and analyzes the ecological changes that occur when tribes resume land management.
She is building a database of nearly 100 instances of land being returned to tribes since the 1970s, primarily from news reports. "It feels like every other week there's a headline of 'X Tribe gets X amount of land back,'" she said. Her data shows these cases have increased over the past five to 10 years, which Steen attributes partly to a broader awareness of social justice issues and racial reckoning in America.
The database tracks which tribes received land, the acreage, acquisition dates, and the type of land being returned. Steen is conducting spatial analysis to determine whether returned lands are forested, grasslands or urban areas, and examining how land management practices change after tribes regain control.
Steen hopes to expand her analysis into deeper case studies and develop strategic guidance for tribes seeking to reclaim land. "There's a myriad of strategies that have been successful to date that we can learn from," she said.
Asking who has access to information
In her new role at Schmidt DSE, Steen also brings an important perspective on data ethics. Her focus extends beyond collecting data to questions of who controls, owns and has access to information.
Her work builds on historical patterns where Indigenous communities had data collected about them but couldn't access or use that information. "I think a lot about data ethics and how we manage and store data, and who has access to data," she said.
Steen acknowledged how the data science community’s FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable and reproducible) guide open data movements, but she also emphasized the importance of CARE principles (collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility and ethics) for Indigenous data sovereignty. She's exploring how these two sets of principles fit together for Indigenous communities where data openness may not always be beneficial – for example, leading to exploitation of tribal land.
Putting these principles into practice beyond her research, Steen has worked to create spaces where Indigenous youth can engage with these concepts. In 2023, she secured a grant to organize a conference for Native youth to discuss land back efforts. The event brought Native youth from 20 different tribes across more than 10 states to Berkeley's campus, some taking their first-ever airplane trip to attend. "That was a cool moment," she said.
Creating pathways and mentors
As one of few Native women in STEM, Steen recognizes the importance of creating pathways for others. "It's a privilege to be in these spaces," she said, noting that even her mother's generation would have experienced more barriers in academia. "But there's especially few Native women in STEM and environmental sciences or data science."
She has found her own Native women mentors through organizations like the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. "I think it's really important to continue increasing opportunities for us to be here and be supported while we're here," Steen said.
This commitment to representation shapes her long-term research vision to explore more instances of land returning to tribes, each with its own unique narrative. "I care a lot about storytelling, and storytelling is so important in our cultures in different ways," she said. "Being able to collect this data piece by piece, and then start telling the story of what's happening has been really rewarding."
