Casey Thornbrugh, Long-Time Tribal Climate Science Liaison, Departs from NE CASC

Over the past seven years, many members of the NE CASC community have had the distinct pleasure of working with and getting to know Dr. Casey Thornbrugh, the center’s Tribal Climate Science Liaison. Throughout this time, Casey has distinguished himself as an effective advocate for Tribal climate adaptation, a tireless force for constructive change, and a talented community-builder. Given Casey’s positive impact on NE CASC, his impending departure from the center is a bittersweet occasion. While we will miss his warmth, kindness, and easygoing personality, we are pleased that our colleague and friend is beginning an exciting new chapter in his career.  

A citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, Casey embarked on his Tribal service career after completing a doctoral degree in Geography at the University of Arizona in 2013. He first worked on sustainability issues for the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona before returning to his Tribe in Mashpee where he served as Director of Natural Resources for two years. In 2017, he joined NE CASC as a liaison between Tribal Nations, United South and Eastern Tribes Inc. (USET), and the Northeast and Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Centers. In this role, he has worked with Tribal Nations to provide them with the most current climate science information, identify their climate research needs and priorities, and help facilitate their climate adaptation planning. 

While Casey has carried out a wide range of strategies to achieve these goals, much of his relationship-centered approach to this work is captured in the many community-building events he has organized, including group writing retreats, Tribal climate resilience camps, and a Tribal climate resilience summit. These events have been enthusiastically praised for providing invaluable technical support to participants in addition to helping establish positive relationships between Tribal Nations and the Northeast and Southeast CASCs. Many of these efforts, which have had a galvanizing impact on the climate adaptation science community, were recognized with an AFWA Climate Adaptation Leadership Award in 2020.  Since that time, Casey has only further strengthened Tribal climate adaptation in each of the regions where he works and has been credited with having a transformative impact on the Tribal engagement efforts of both the Northeast and Southeast CASCs. 

“NE CASC has been incredibly fortunate to have Casey as part of our team for the past seven years,” said Jon Woodruff, NE CASC University Codirector and a principal investigator at the Center for Braiding of Indigenous Knowledges and Science. “His dedication, work ethic, and leadership have helped make NE CASC so much more than it otherwise would have been. And his contributions in helping NE CASC form new relationships with Tribal Nations have been remarkable. I have no doubt that he will succeed as he enters a new phase of his career and hope that we can collaborate in the future.” 

While Casey will miss the many friends he is leaving behind at NE CASC, he is looking forward to assuming his new role as the director of the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, which seeks to reestablish the Wampanoag language as the principal means of expression for the Wampanoag Nation. In this capacity, Casey will be responsible for maintaining and acquiring new funding for the project, which employs a large cohort of language instructors. “I am excited to begin my next phase of Tribal service in this new position,” Casey said. “The prospect of restoring Native language fluency in my Tribe is important to me for many reasons, but especially because Native language acquisition can help open Tribal citizens to new ways of thinking that will in turn lead to new forms of problem-solving, something that is desperately needed across society, including in the area of climate adaptation.”