Dana E. Powell (U.S. citizen/white; she/hers) is a sociocultural environmental anthropologist working in North America and Taiwan on questions of energy extraction and environmental governance in Indigenous territories. Powell obtained her PhD in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where she studied political ecology and social movements with co-advisors Arturo Escobar and Dorothy Holland. Powell’s first book, Landscapes of Power: Politics of Energy in the Navajo Nation (Duke Press, 2018), traces a controversial coal-power plant slated for Diné (Navajo) lands and the resulting re-articulations of environmentalism and justice. Her current transnational project partners with colleagues in Navajo Nation, eastern North Carolina, and Taiwan, to critically examine the lived effects of sustainability and energy “transition” projects as climate mitigation, on Indigenous self-determination, recognition, and wellbeing, within statist projects of social inclusion. Powell has taught at undergraduate and graduate levels at Appalachian State University’s Department of Anthropology; Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities; National DongHwa University’s College of Indigenous Studies; and at Taipei Medical University, where she is currently Associate Professor in the Graduate Institute of Medical Humanities. In Taiwan, Powell directs the CoLab in Environmental Health, Equity, & Renewal (CEHER) with projects based in rural Hualien County along the FengPing and Lakulaku Rivers (with Bunun and other colleagues), a sister-lab to the Eastern North Carolina Environmental Justice CoLab, with projects based in rural lowlands along the Lumbee River in Robeson County, North Carolina (with Lumbee and other colleagues). This work informs her current book project, Kin/Etics: Energy Ecologies and Co-Interpretive Strategies of Riparian Care in Settler States, a collaborative ethnography spanning two watersheds impacted by industrialized energy development. 

The CoLab in Environmental Health Equity & Renewal (CEHER)/baqlu is an experimental “lab without walls" grounded in field-based, collaborative ethnography, guided by values of anti-colonial research and knowledge co-production. We use the word “baqlu,” from the Bunun language, to rethink the concept of “renewal” – with a commitment to elevating equity and wellbeing in Indigenous and other communities impacted by extractivism. In response to SDG's and other global, national, and regional mandates to mitigate climate change and create energy security, “renewable energy” initiatives all too often lack a critical dimension of social science and humanistic analysis. Our lab is dedicated to this task, grounded in and led by (predominantly women) researchers from impacted Bunun and other Indigenous communities where renewable energy systems impact existing socioecological systems, to generate new forms of environmental injustice and dislocation. Our Lab in Taiwan takes inspiration from and maintains a close partnership with Powell's sister lab, the Eastern North Carolina Environmental Justice CoLab (co-founded in 2019 with Dr. Rebecca Witter, other faculty researchers, and our community-based partners in Sampson County and Robeson County, NC). It also takes inspiration from Powell's two decades of collaborative research in the Navajo Nation (American Southwest), especially regarding the introduction of Indigenous-led research methodologies. The CEHER/baqlu project is presently co-led by Powell and her Bunun research associates and involves faculty from human geography, Indigenous education, and gender/women's studies; partners from leading environmental NGO Citizens of the Earth-Taiwan; and graduate and undergraduate students from Taiwan and the USA.