Onondaga Lake
Community Education Project
 

The Onondaga Lake Community Education Project is a collaborative effort between the Onondaga Nation, the Onondaga Environmental Institute, and Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation to provide historical and ecological education, facilitate the exchange of community knowledge/experience, and foster public participation in the restoration of Onondaga Lake and its watershed. In 2010, with the support and review of these partners, OEI developed a suite of educational products for distribution to the watershed community.

These educational materials were produced by OEI for the Onondaga Nation as work products of a series of Clean Water Act grants funded by Region 2 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The suite of resources is in many ways an outgrowth of the intentions stated at the filing of the Onondaga Nation’s Land Rights Action in 2005, especially the Nation’s call for the healing of relationships between our peoples and of the environment. The full restoration of Onondaga Lake and our relationships with the lake is central to this effort. These new resources are tools that the public can use to participate in the ongoing Superfund remediation, the Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration, and other efforts to support the future restoration of the lake.

The new educational materials also seek to promote an inclusive and equitable community dialogue by offering background information to complement “The Onondaga Nation’s Vision for a Clean Onondaga Lake,” released in April 2010 and available through the Onondaga Nation Communications Office (102 West Conklin Ave, Nedrow | 315-492-1922) or Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation (2013 E. Genesee Street, Syracuse | 315-472-5478). OEI and NOON support the Nation’s vision and hope that these educational materials will contribute to the development of a shared, cross-cultural vision for the future of the lake.