#inform-video-player-1 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }

#inform-video-player-2 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }

A California wildfire survivor Ariella Gaughan’s personal and cultural history has inspired a life dedicated to environmental stewardship.

Born and raised in Northern California, near Yosemite, Gaughan has always been interested in conservation due to the trauma she witnessed and experienced with wildfires. After being evacuated and her great-grandmother’s house burning down, she knew she wanted to create conservation strategies.

After high school, her father encouraged her to get a paralegal certificate. Unsure of what steps to take next, she followed his advice and found herself at Columbia College in Missouri and working in law.

After two years of junior college, she went to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2021. She recently graduated with a bachelor’s in political science.

Tribal reconnection inspires change

Gaughan, a Chickasaw citizen, was inspired by a 2019 internship with the Chickasaw Nation Department of Culture and Humanities.

She was instructed to research the Chickasaw Nation’s government and write an essay on how it changed and progressed throughout time.

“This research changed my life and set me on a trajectory of knowing there was stuff written in history that I didn’t get to know growing up,” Gaughan said. “I was passionate about our tribe’s history. Much of it was painful, but most of it was enjoyable to research.”

She said her newfound passion for environmental law started growing here.

Being in the woods of Northern California and exploring Yosemite, nature has long been close to her heart. Combining this love of nature with her cultural roots and her studies, she has chosen to go into tribal or environmental law.

She prefers creating such solutions by connecting with her First American culture. She believes it has opened more opportunities for her to conserve wildlife and help First American populations.

Entering a sustainability research program at UCLA motivated her to study tribal approaches to environmental issues.

“I decided that for two years, I would research the Native tribes in California, especially the Los Angeles tribes,” Gaughan said. “This last year, I worked with Native Hawaiian tribes on issues related to their sacred sites. This was challenging since I was only educated with my own Chickasaw history.”

Gaughan recently returned from a trip to Lame Deer, Montana, to visit the Northern Cheyenne reservation.

She’s part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Worlding Project, working on a plan called “The Green Print,” an educational game dedicated to maintaining sustainability. It can be played at CreateTheGreenPrint.com. Her job was to research the history of the tribes and land in Georgetown, South Carolina.

Gaughan also recently spoke at the Tribal Lands and Environment Forum Project in New York, and additionally plans to gather traditional healing plants for the people on Maui and Maunakea.

“I’m using these opportunities to go around and gather traditional herbal plant medicines and traditional cultural knowledge from many First Nation communities,” she said. “It’s been really cool to see Indigenous knowledge able to be shared.”

Future plans

The next plan on her agenda is to enter the master’s program for American Indian studies at UCLA.

“What I want to be involved in is sovereignty. There are many sovereignty issues right now,” Gaughan said. Food and education sovereignty, to be exact. She also wants to help tribes become more familiar with solar energy and develop educational materials.

Her true dream is to own a horse ranch later in life. On the ranch, she would like to grow traditional tribal medicine and spend her days gardening.

“When I learned about the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program, I was bawling my eyes out because we had wild horses left in America, but that they were taken away because of cow and sheep farmers,” she said. “

#inform-video-player-3 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }