Michael Waasegiizhig Price joins the GLIFWC team as traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) specialist. Price is Anishinaabe and an enrolled member of Wikwemikong First Nations. For the last 20 years, he has lived and worked in Anishinaabe Akiing in northern Minnesota. Before coming to GLIFWC in January, Price served as forest ecology instructor at Leech Lake Tribal College in Cass Lake, Minn. During his tenure at LLTC, he worked to integrate Anishinaabe language and traditions into forestry curriculum to make the science more culturally relevant. In December 2019, Price took two LLTC forest ecology students for an intensive 2-week research expedition to Costa Rica to study canopy gaps in tropical forests; this project was funded by Salish Kootenai College and the National Science Foundation.
In 2012, he received his Master of Science in Forestry from the University of Montana–Missoula and in 2018, Price received a Certificate of Ojibwe Language Instruction at Bemidji State University. Price, however, said his most valuable education has come from the teachings of Anishinaabe elders including Tobasanokwut Kinew-iban, Basil Johnston-iban, Leroy Littlebear (Blackfoot), Henrietta Mann (Cheyenne), Wallace Humphrey, Nancy Kingbird, Robert “Bob” Jourdain and Bob Shimek, as well as other traditional knowledge-keepers who have kept and preserved indigenous ways of life.