River Rally 2026

Kurt Naquin (they/them) is a Houma scholar, qualitative researcher, creative writer, and third-year PhD student at North Carolina State University. They study climate change as a form of colonialism, and how adaptation as conventionally practiced can carry colonial logics. Their work asks how cultural practice functions as climate infrastructure, and what adaptation looks like when humanities and Indigenous knowledge lead from the center. More broadly, they research the cultural, narrative, and humanistic dimensions of climate change and adaptation. Kurt is a two-time Global Change Fellow with the Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, a Rising Voices/Changing Coasts fellow, and Indigenous writer in residence at ESF SUNY's Cranberry Lake Biological Station. Before grad school, they spent half a decade in the Permian Basin to Gulf South environmental justice movement as a communications and narrative strategist. They are a member of the Houma Language Project, an Indigenous and community led initiative working to rebuild Uma', Houma's ancestral language, and to promote intergenerational language exchange for Louisiana's Bayou Indigenous communities.