Joanne Richardson

Figure 8: Scenes near Vicam, Rio Yaqui. In early September 2010, the floodgates to the Novillo Dam (Sonora) were opened due to an overflow, which allowed the Hiak Vatwe to flow into the dry river course. The resulting landscape sparked the imagination and conversations about what the flow of the Hiak Vatwe must have looked like prior to the construction of the three dams.

FeatureOctober 26, 2017

Rio Yaqui—The Hiak Vatwe: The Transformation of a Cultural Landscape

In 2017, an ecological, cultural, and public health crisis is unfolding in northwestern Sonora, Mexico in which Yaqui people face daily challenges to access clean drinking water where noxious elements litter an endangered cultural landscape…

Activists at the Native Nations Rise protest rally against the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines in Washington, D.C. via Indianz Com, Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

PerspectivesOctober 26, 2017

Why is water sacred to Native Americans?

The Lakota phrase “Mní wičhóni,” or “Water is life,” has become a new national protest anthem. It was chanted by 5,000 marchers at the Native Nations March in Washington, D.C. on March 10, and during hundreds of protests across the United States in the last year. “Mní wičhóni” became the anthem of the almost year-long struggle to stop the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline under the Missouri River in North Dakota.

Anthropology Engagement North America

American landscape painter Thomas Cole captured in his famous painting, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, what social anthropologist Paul Connerton described in his book, 'The Spirit of Mourning', as 'a tranquil sublimity,' a sublimity Cole connected to a 'silent energy of nature.' Landscapes, especially those dominated by rivers, have distinct aural characteristics that scholars have both highlighted and perhaps overlooked. Image via Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

In ReviewOctober 26, 2017

Listening to a River: How Sound Emerges in River Histories

Peter Coates asks us, in “The Strange Stillness of the Past: Toward an Environmental History of Sound and Noise,” why environmental historians don’t delve more into sound and noise as they seek information about the past.

Education History International

A map of Tianjin dated 1899. The Northern Grand Canal, Southern Grand Canal, Daqing River, Ziya River, and Yongding River merged into the Haihe in Tianjin. The walled city was to the southwest of the confluence.

FeatureOctober 26, 2017

River Conservancy and the Undetermined Future of the Port of Tianjin, 1888-1937

Across the last several decades of China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644-1912), and China’s first republic (1912-1949), on the banks of a river connecting Tianjin with the sea, the most important seaport of North China in the early twentieth century was built, thanks to the consistent efforts of river conservancy…

History International Research

Select covers from the Rivers of America book series.

FeatureOctober 26, 2017

Watershed Colonialism and Popular Geographies of North American Rivers

Rivers have long been the subject and vehicle for compelling stories. As physical features that tie natural and human history, rivers in narratives have hidden as much as they’ve revealed by naturalizing cultural practices and human values…

History Research United States

highly detailed true-color image shows the stark eastern edge of the Zambezi floodplain. To the left of the edge, water covers everything. Deep blue channels wind among green, shallowly flooded plains. To the right of the edge, the land is dry. The city of Kasane is perched confidently along the edge of the flood plain.

Teaching and PracticeOctober 26, 2017

Grasping Water Summer Institute Reading List

The following bibliography of book chapters and articles is the reading list that circulated to participants in the 2016 Grasping Water Summer Institute. Each participant read as many of these items as possible before the Institute.

Education History International

Fishing at Celilo Falls, early twentieth century. Image courtesy of The Oregon Encyclopedia.

GeographiesOctober 26, 2017

“C-ing” the River: from Companionship to Control to…Catastrophe or Compromise?

What humanity needs to do in the coming decades is back off. In our quest for comfort, consumption, stability, and security in our lives, we have done too much with the earth.

Engagement Environmental History United States

The Yangtze River. The construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the largest in the world will displace 1.5 million people and submerge cities, towns and villages, the collective total exceeding over a 1000 along a 700km stretch on China's longest river. Chongqing, China. 2000.

FeatureOctober 26, 2017

The Vanishing

In 1999, I read in a newspaper about the contentious Three Gorges Dam project. China’s leaders had a grand vision of transforming the Yangtze River into the biggest artificial lake in the world in an attempt to control recurring floods and to generate an estimated 10 percent increase in hydropower energy…

Arts Engagement International

Whanganui River, New Zealand by Jason Pratt, via Flickr.

IntroductionOctober 26, 2017

Introduction to Issue Eight

A year ago June, when the Grasping Water Institute was wrapping up, I reflected on how interesting it was to hear thoughtful, incisive talks about rivers I had never heard of, from people whose work I did not regularly follow. “It would be great,” I thought, “if some of these folks could be persuaded to write for us.” The results are in front of you…

The Whanganui River, seen here, is now a person under New Zealand law. Photographer Alex Indigo, via Flickr, CC BY-ND.

PerspectivesOctober 26, 2017

When a river is a person: from Ecuador to New Zealand, nature gets its day in court

In the early 2000s, the idea of giving legal rights to nature was on the fringes of environmental legal theory and public consciousness. Today, New Zealand’s Whanganui River is a person under domestic law, and India’s Ganges River was recently granted human rights. In Ecuador, the Constitution enshrines nature’s “right to integral respect”.

International Legal Policy