On Main Hall Green With … Gregory Hitch: Exploring Indigenous environmental justice

About the series: On Main Hall Green With … is an opportunity to connect with faculty on things in and out of the classroom. We’re featuring a different Lawrence faculty member each time — same questions, different answers.

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Gregory Hitch was already well known on the Lawrence University campus when he began a tenure-track appointment as assistant professor of environmental studies in September 2024. He had served the previous two years as the Jill Beck NEH Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities in the Department of Ethnic Studies. 

He brought to the environmental studies program a deep history of working with Indigenous communities, exploring Indigenous environmental justice and sovereignty, and researching the environmental impacts of settler colonialism in the United States. He is part of a Lawrence team that sought and received a $500,000 Mellon Foundation grant to explore environmental justice issues in the Fox-Wolf watershed in collaboration with the College of Menominee Nation (CMN).

Hitch received his master’s degree and Ph.D. from Brown University. As an undergraduate, he studied history, environmental studies, and American Indian studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

We caught up with him to talk about interests in and out of the classroom.

In the classroom 

Inside info: What’s one thing you want every student coming into your classes to know about you?

I want students to know that my love of teaching is really a love of learning. So, when a student enters a classroom of mine, it is my hope that they will bring their own unique experiential and intellectual knowledge of the world and share it with all of us. In other words, true learning flows from the dynamic conversations we have and an exchange of knowledge and ways of understanding the world that help us collectively form a more thorough and nuanced understanding. 

Getting energized: What work have you done or will you be doing at Lawrence that gets you the most excited?

The work I have continued with the Menominee Nation here at Lawrence energizes me every day. I am so grateful for the opportunity to combine my love of teaching with my community-engaged scholarship. I was lucky enough to begin my work with the Menominee over a decade ago, and to continue to develop relationships of mutual trust and reciprocity as we work toward building a more just and regenerative world. In this work, I am not only researching and writing about the Menominee Nation, but also partnering with them on successfully opposing the proposed Back Forty Mine, volunteering with community nonprofits, and assisting in building out a regenerative economic system based in renewable energy and organic food sovereignty on the reservation. 

This work has resulted in not only my current book project, Regenerative Power: The Menominee Nation’s Long Fight to Save an Old-Growth Forest, but, more impactfully I think, in developing a community-engaged course here at Lawrence. Indigenous Ecology: Ancestral Knowledges and Science in Action essentially builds on the engaged scholarship I have pursued. The idea is that I might share my experience with students to learn how to ethically conduct research with Indigenous communities, study Indigenous knowledge ways, and get hands-on experience by working on environmental justice and sustainability projects with partners at the College of Menominee Nation (CMN) and community nonprofits. I am thrilled to be able to magnify this good work with our newly awarded Mellon Foundation Environmental Justice grant to partner with CMN on addressing environmental injustices in our shared Fox-Wolf watershed. With the $500,000 awarded, we are able to hire an Indigenous scholar-in-residence, expand community-engaged course offerings, along with hiring student workers to engage in research, advocacy, public history, and ecological restoration. I see this as only the beginning, however, as we continue to build better relations between our higher-education communities as well as better relations with the land and water. 

Going places: Is there an example of somewhere your career has taken you (either a physical space or something more intellectual, emotional, or spiritual) that took you by surprise?

I would say spending so much time within the Menominee community really changed the way I see the world. It was in all the conversations with Menominee friends and colleagues while pulling weeds in the garden, boiling maple syrup, hiking through the old-growth forest, or just sitting around a fire that I started to see the world from not just a science-based worldview, but more of a holistic understanding of the interconnection of various more-than-human beings and energies. This really surprised me because it encouraged me to actually lean into interdisciplinarity, which is the opposite of what most doctoral education results in. 

Out of the classroom

This or that: If you weren’t teaching for a living, what would you be doing?  

If I weren’t teaching, I would likely be doing much the same in terms of working with local communities on building out regenerative economic systems that produce increased biodiversity, carbon storage, and human flourishing, but with much more down time! That downtime would mean more hiking, swimming, snowshoeing, and the arts—I would likely join community theater, relearn piano, and start a punk-rock band. 

Right at home: Whether for work, relaxation or reflection, what’s your favorite spot on campus?

I have a circuit I love to walk when I need to clear my head. It starts at the big oak next to the library, goes down the hill to the wooded trail behind Warch, then loops back around over the old train-track bridge, and back up the hill. The combination of the old oak that has witnessed so much, alongside the wooded trail that calms me, to being above such a beautiful and powerful river that inspires—all of these places just seem to center me. 

One book, one recording, one film: Name one of each that speaks to your soul? Or you would recommend to a friend? Or both?

Can I choose two books? If so, nonfiction would be Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, which is one of those books that can change the trajectory of your life’s work—at least it did for me. Kimmerer so elegantly weaves ecology and Indigenous knowledge ways into a narrative that offers a different modality of thinking from which we might build a more just and resilient world. As for fiction, I would have to say The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is one of the best speculative fiction/CliFi novels I have read. Robinson not only poignantly tells of the impacts of climate change, but weaves in potential solutions that open up a wide array of regenerative possibilities for our global community and future generations.