Policy

In ReviewApril 24, 2019

Storying Pinhook: Representing the Community, the Floods, and the Struggle

When They Blew the Levee is a fierce love letter to the power of community, one encoded to Black sociality, the broader American social imaginary, and the mythical power of the Mississippi River. In praxis, it is a political tool—a lyrical baseball bat—for the residents of Pinhook, Missouri to wield in a rally against the sustained structural violence of a biased justice system and racialized world.

GeographiesApril 23, 2019

Resonant Rivers: Water, Indigenous Relationality, and Other Futures

Two sets of rivers in what is now known as Canada are vital actors in urban landscapes. The McIntyre and Kaministiquia Rivers in Thunder Bay, Ontario and the Assiniboine and Red Rivers in Winnipeg, Manitoba are sites of colonial violence and disappearance: in both cities, dead Indigenous people have been pulled from their depths.

Anthropology Environmental Justice North America Policy

The PulseMarch 7, 2019

2019 Will Be a Big Year for Water

By Tara Lohan

In the last few weeks of 2018, the Trump administration set the stage for a big battle over water in the new year. At stake is an important rule that defines which waters are protected under the Clean Water Act.

EcoWatch

Planning / Policy Policy United States

The PulseNovember 15, 2018

Red Wing residents, tribal members find common ground on He Mni Can

By Dan Browning

In Minnesota, another step in efforts by indigenous people and local governments to recognize the layered names for lands associated with the state’s waters. This case is in Red Wing, on the Mississippi River.

StarTribune

Engagement Environmental Justice History Minnesota Policy

The PulseNovember 15, 2018

Can L.A. build new parks and public spaces without gentrifying away low-income residents?

By Jon Christensen and Allesandro Rigolon

As plans move forward for revitalization of the Los Angeles River, questions arise about the potential for “green gentrification.” Waterfront redevelopments often do not serve everyone in the community; many eyes will be on LA to see if this problem can be solved.

Los Angeles Times

Design Engagement Environmental Justice Planning / Policy Policy United States

ForumJuly 25, 2018

New Orleans Was Once Above Sea Level

Early one September morning in 1975, in a quiet Metairie subdivision west of Transcontinental Drive, a ranch house suddenly exploded in a fireball so powerful it damaged 20 neighboring buildings and broke windows a mile away. The house plus four adjacent homes were reduced to rubble, and 11 people were seriously injured.

Civil Engineering Design Engagement Lower Mississippi River Planning / Policy Policy

ForumJuly 25, 2018

Water as a Source of Regional Cooperation in the Middle East: The Work of EcoPeace Middle East in Jordan, Israel, and Palestine

Water is at the core of sustaining all life on earth, and the people who have inhabited the arid and semi-arid lands of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region throughout the centuries know this very well. Scarcity of water in the region has shaped its history and geopolitics, including into the present day, with climate change and population growth putting more pressure on already scarce water resources (World Bank 2018).

Engagement Environmental Justice International International Development Policy

PerspectivesJuly 25, 2018

An Endangered River: The Mississippi River Gorge

Almost 500 river miles below its source at Lake Itasca, the Mississippi River tumbles over its only waterfall in downtown Minneapolis. Dubbed the Falls of Saint Anthony by explorer Father Louis Hennepin, the falls were formed by glacial action more than 10,000 years ago. The magnificent waterfall was once over 200 feet high and located in downtown St. Paul. Over the years, the falls migrated upstream to their present location in downtown Minneapolis.

Civil Engineering Engagement Minnesota Planning / Policy Policy

The PulseApril 30, 2018

Oil and water: The Line 3 debate

By Elizabeth Dunbar, Dan Kraker, Cody Nelson, Julie Siple, and Bill Wareham

Enbridge Energy’s plan to replace its aging Line 3 oil pipeline across northern Minnesota promises to be one of the most contentious water policy issues in the region during 2018. This series of stories by Minnesota Public Radio reporters offers a starting point for the case.

MPR

Engagement Environmental Justice Minnesota Planning / Policy Policy

PerspectivesApril 27, 2018

One Water: A New Era in Water Management

Under the leadership of the US Water Alliance, a multi-sector coalition of leaders from more than 940 industry, government, and community organizations has joined forces to develop and advance practical solutions to the toughest water challenges facing our nation. As part of the “One Water for America” initiative, this diverse group collaborated to create the recently published One Water for America Policy Framework…

Civil Engineering Engagement Planning / Policy Policy United States

Issue Contents

Introduction

Introduction to Issue Fourteen

Climate change has virtually exploded as a subject of news reports, scientific analysis, and advocacy attention in the past six months. In November, the United States Global Change Research Program released its Fourth National Climate Assessment. Longstanding debates about the relative importance of mitigation and adaptation have further receded in urgency as this spring’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) finding that a million species are threatened with extinction have grabbed headlines worldwide.

By Patrick Nunnally, Editor

Introduction

Guest Editors’ Introduction to Issue Fourteen: Climate, Change & People

Archaeologists, by definition, are interested in using various techniques to learn about the human experience in diverse places, from ancient through contemporary times. A key part of this has been understanding human adaptation to diverse environmental and climatic changes over time, and for archaeologists, the long arc of human existence refers to at least around three million years.

By Lewis C. Messenger Jr. and Brent K. S. Woodfill

Feature

Multiple Ways of Understanding Peru’s Changing Climate

In this article, we consider how the perspectives and experiences of contemporary people facing climate change can enrich our archaeological interpretations of climate change in the past. In particular, we present an ethnographic study from highland Peru that highlights the complex and varied ways people are responding to environmental uncertainty, and explore how their perspectives and responses have led us to question and expand the narratives we construct about ancient people.

By Rebecca Bria and Doris Walter

Feature

Uncovering Amazonia

“Amazonia”—the word alone can conjure up a lot of images, some accurate and some wildly not. In truth, it has many definitions, ranging from a specific drainage basin to a tropical ecological world. For most of my childhood, such kinds of tropical “jungles” were places of peril to be avoided. The very word “Amazon” conjured up Joseph Conrad’s images from Heart of Darkness ([1899] 2015), albeit that book was about the Congo in Africa.

By Lewis C. Messenger Jr.

Feature

What’s in My Backyard? Empowering Indigenous Voices on Firefly Creek at Blue’s Bottom

All of us, regardless if we are Native or non-native, hold a specific location near and dear to our hearts. In this article, I focus on a place near and dear to my heart, exploring the history of my family’s cul-de-sac area known to my family, and much of the surrounding community, as Blue’s Bottom.

By Tianna M. Odegard

Feature

Ethnography and Archaeology of Water in the Maya Lowlands

Procuring potable water is an important factor for daily life in the semitropics, especially for contemporary populations in rural Guatemala. Seasonal subsistence practices are crucial for survival, especially regarding agriculture, droughts, and flooding. This article focuses on the Salinas de los Nueve Cerros region in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala to highlight contemporary land-use practices among the Q’eqchi’ Maya, their adaptations to flooding, droughts, and uses of different water resources.

By Alexander E. Rivas and William G. B. Odum

Geographies

Libraries Burning

The impact of climate change on archaeological and heritage sites in the Arctic region is devastating. New techniques of research and analysis are providing increasingly rich data about the long history of humans in the environment. Just as the value of these sites is being recognized more fully, the sites themselves are being destroyed by thawing permafrost, rising sea levels, and increasingly violent storms. Nowhere is this being felt more intensely than in the Arctic, which is warming two to three times as fast as the rest of the planet (Hoag 2019).

By Phyllis Mauch Messenger

In Review

Desert River Sea is a Vibrant, Compelling Tour of the Kimberley

For the past century, the curator has been the deciding factor in what is shown by museums and galleries, reassuring audiences of the importance of what they are seeing. While acknowledging other commercial and audience drivers, the centrality of curatorial decision-making has been sacrosanct. But when the curatorial team from the Art Gallery of Western Australia embarked on an epic quest to document the art of the Kimberley region in the state’s north west, they abandoned this idea of a single authorial voice in favor of a new model of partnership and exchange.

By Ted Snell

Perspectives

An Archaeologist Writes against the Anthropocene

Much of what archaeologists do is study how humans adapt to the environment. After Gordon Willey’s (1953) groundbreaking investigation into the entire history of occupation of a small valley in Peru, understanding how humans lived in and modified their environment became commonplace. Indeed, the “New Archeology” that took the American academy by storm in the 1960s and strove to make the discipline more scientific made human-environment interactions and the understanding of human-environmental relations one of its central goals...

By Brent K. S. Woodfill

Primary Sources

Water and the Preclassic Maya at El Tintal, Petén, Guatemala

As part of the 1931 Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Uaxactun expedition, geologist C.W. Cooke (1931: 286) noted, “If the bajos were restored to their former condition, the Petén would be a region of many beautiful lakes. Travel in it would be easy, for one could go from place to place by boat, with only short journeys overland, from one lake to another, across country that offers little impediment to travel at any season.” These bajos mentioned by Cooke, low-lying swampy areas prone to flooding, are spread throughout most of the northern lowlands of Petén, Guatemala, characterizing the region with seasonal and perennial wetland systems.

By Mary Jane Acuña and Carlos R. Chiriboga

Teaching and Practice

The Perils and Promise of Using Short-Term Media to Teach Long-Term Climate Patterns

A concern for climate change has burst onto the national media, scientific literatures, and other discourses over the past year. As someone who teaches in design- and natural resource-oriented fields, I feel an obligation to equip my students with critical awarenesses of the patterns, as well as a sense of what they can do, professionally and personally, to face this crisis.

By Patrick Nunnally

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