By Joanne Richardson The PulseFebruary 2, 2016

Flint water crisis reminds us not to take water quality for granted

A train bridge passes over the Mississippi river in Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. — The Mississippi River remains the source of high-quality drinking water for Minneapolis, thanks to concerted efforts to keep it clean. Photographer Carlos Gonzalez, Star Tribune

Minneapolis resident and University of Minnesota student sees Flint water crisis as reminder to protect the water resources we value, take for granted.

Tags

Civil Engineering Environmental Justice United States

About the Author(s)

Issue Contents

Introduction

Introduction to Issue 23 | Connections in Practice

When Open Rivers launched in fall 2015, we made a promise to try to include at least one Indigenous voice in each issue. Since...

By Phyllis Mauch Messenger, Administrative Editor

Feature (Peer Review)

The Science in Indigenous Water Stories, Indigenous Women’s Connection to Water

Water is life. It is a familiar phrase, frequently spoken today. Even so, little thought goes into what this simple phrase means. We exist...

By By Wendy F. K’ah Skáahluwáa Todd, Arianna V. Northbird, and Chessaly E. Towne

Feature

Connecting Environment, Place, and Community

“Connections in Practice” is an appropriate theme for this issue of Open Rivers highlighting the four years’ work, since 2019, of the Humanities-led Environmental...

By Jennifer Gunn, Roxanne Biidabinokwe Gould, Becca Gercken, Christine Baeumler, Vicente M. Diaz

Feature

Learning Together: The Humanities Futures Labs

We wanted to create a new type of Indigenous humanities work for our undergraduate students while also offering a professional development opportunity for our...

By Racquel Banaszak, Caitlin Cook-Isaacson, An Garagiola, Isabel Huot-Link, and Tyler Seidel

Feature

Place and Relations Capstone: Indigenizing Education

How can we decolonize the university? For the past four years, Indigenous community members and faculty, staff, and students from the University of Minnesota’s...

By Susannah L. Smith and Carmen Petit

Feature

Where We Stand: The University of Minnesota and Dakhóta Treaty Lands

From the Authors: Reflecting on the three years since writing “Where We Stand,” the main thing that we continue to focus on is the...

By Čhaŋtémaza (Neil McKay) and Monica Siems McKay

Geographies

The College Union: Where Tradition Meets Decolonization on Campus

Higher education has undergone many changes since the first colleges in the old world came to be. Institutions of higher learning respond to societal...

By Simón Franco

In Review

Indigenous Wisdom: Re-story-ation to Resist, Resurge, and Inspire

I was fortunate to attend an in-person conversation between two Indigenous scholar-authors, Diane Wilson and Robin Wall Kimmerer, at the University of Minnesota’s Northrop...

By Florencia Pech-Cárdenas

Perspectives

Data Science in Indian Country

At the end of July 2022, some 150 individuals from across the country gathered at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities for “Data Science...

By Maudesty Merino and Nick Salgado-Stanley

Primary Sources

Collaborative Indigenous Research

Collaborative Indigenous Research is a way to repair the legacy of harmful research practices A recent disclosure from Harvard’s Peabody Museum has brought attention, yet...

By Eve Tuck

Teaching and Practice

Teaching Indigenous Epistemologies at the University of Minnesota

It has been argued that the twin ongoing and overarching crises facing students in higher education today are the urgencies of calls for justice...

By Vicente M. Diaz, Michael Dockry, Elizabeth Sumida Huaman, Thomas Reynolds, and Rebecca Webster

More Stories

We Are Water MN on exhibit in the lobby of Great Lakes Aquarium, Duluth, March 10–April 22, 2019.

We Are Water: Stories and Connections to Nibi

“What’s my relationship to water, as a woman?” Fond du Lac’s Nikki Crowe repeated the question posed to her. “Women take care of the water. Everyone in this room came from a woman, and started in the womb being carried in water, so for women, it is important for us to take care of the water.”