I spent 6 years funding, planning, and supervising the Makah Fisheries Management Summer Internship Program with other staff in the marine mammal program at the Makah Tribe. You can read more about the program and the research projects each intern completes on the internship blog that I created.
Each summer the Tribe hired high school or college-aged students from Neah Bay to learn about natural resource management on their Reservation. In the first part of the program they job-shadowed in-house staff in forestry, fisheries, marine mammals, water quality, habitat, and air quality. We also enlisted outside researchers from a variety of agencies and organizations (including the University of Washington, University of Chicago, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, Seattle Aquarium, and others) that conduct research on the Reservation to engage with the interns, explain their work, teach relevant topics, and demonstrate the importance of intergovernmental cooperation.
Each intern also chose an independent research project and went through the process of collecting data, conducting analyses, and writing up their results in a poster that they presented at the Senior Center and at Makah Days, and then hung in the Fisheries Management building for all to see.
Some highlights each year included the trip to Tatoosh Island to learn about marine ecology, a trip to Seattle to learn from researchers at UW and NOAA, and many days in the field poking crabs, fishing, and running around the beach.