Perspectives | Open Rivers Journal

2022 / Mississippi Park Connection’s program, Kayaking While BIPOC, on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Image courtesy of Lee Vue.

PerspectivesNovember 15, 2022

Water Memories: Exploring Our Relationship With Water

By Lee Vue The beginning of my life was shaped by the vast agricultural lands of Fresno, California where my parents had immigrated from…

In Bangladesh, Rohingya women in refugee camps share stories of loss and hopes of recovery. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) UN Women/Allison Joyce.

PerspectivesMay 10, 2022

Water as Weapon: Gender and WASH

The association between WASH services and gendered vulnerability to violence in rural locales and urban slums in developing countries has received the most study, but women everywhere are vulnerable when they lack access to, or are accessing, WASH services. All of which leaves one asking why global leaders focus on the possibility of future water-related conflict rather than respond to the very real crisis conditions in which women and girls exist now?

International Legal Policy Policy International

The creek buffer that one woman farmland owner succeeded in planting on her land. Image courtesy of Carolyn Van Meter.

PerspectivesMay 10, 2022

Women Landowners and the Language of Partnership Needed for Water Quality Change

In the Midwest, women landowners are one of the most powerful populations who can effect real change in water quality. Their potential, however, has been under-recognized, and they have been largely left out of conservation outreach and education.

Agriculture Engagement Planning / Policy United States

Loose labels from Perth Museum. Image courtesy of Miriam Mallalieu.

PerspectivesFebruary 24, 2022

River / Museum

By Miriam Mallalieu The River Tay and Perth Museum sit fifteen meters apart (or nineteen paces, with a pause at the traffic lights to…

Artistic Expression Environmental History International Research

"Returning the River" by Molly Van Avery, Dameun Strange, and Michael Hoyt. Image courtesy of Michael Hoyt.

PerspectivesNovember 12, 2021

Review of Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

As the water quality coordinator for the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA) for nine years, I organized and hosted the Mississippi River Forum. A monthly informational and networking series, the River Forum was one of my more visible tasks. A fundamental organizing principle of this ongoing series was to bring together a disciplinarily diverse group of water resource practitioners and decision-makers for conversations with people beyond their typical working relationships…

Arts Environmental Justice

Climate Land Leaders are learning that soil health is needed for healthy waters. Image courtesy of Sharing Our Roots.

PerspectivesMay 26, 2021

Creating Our Water Futures

This issue of Open Rivers invites us all to envision the kind of future we hope to have with water. It encourages us to see the possibilities. By imagining the relationships we want with water, imagining the water conditions we want to see in our future, we begin to see both the challenges and potentials in our present and the steps necessary to move us to these desired and desirable water conditions…

Biological Sciences Engagement Planning / Policy United States

Darling River at Toorale National Park, New South Wales. Wikimedia: B 897 CC BY-SA 4.0.

PerspectivesDecember 7, 2020

Australia’s Legacy of Denying Water Rights to Aboriginal People

Water management in the Murray-Darling Basin has radically changed over the past 30 years. But none of the changes have addressed a glaring injustice: Aboriginal people’s share of water rights is minute, and in New South Wales it is diminishing.

Environmental Justice Indigenous Studies International Policy

The urban Mississippi River flowing by downtown Saint Paul. Image courtesy of Nattapol Pornsalnuwat.

PerspectivesMarch 4, 2020

The Urban Mississippi: Valuing Connections in a Changing Climate

By Emily Green, Bree Duever, and Amit Pradhananga Social scientists have long noted the value in humans connecting with their communities—through both social bonds…

Minnesota Policy Public Programs

Tipton Creek runs through the community that the author’s family calls home. This water winds through farmland, eventually connecting to the Iowa River, a tributary of the Mississippi River. Image courtesy of the author.

PerspectivesNovember 21, 2019

Cultivating and Stewarding a Community of “Water People”

Stewardship, then, is the dialogue we have with stakeholders about their lived experiences with the same things we are studying, developing shared language and concepts, and incorporating that knowledge into our future research and outreach activities. Over time, we all see ourselves as Water People.

Engagement Mississippi River Basin Public Programs

Sunrise at El Mirador, Guatemala. This was one of the largest cities in the Americas about 2000 years ago. Now it's located in one of the largest "virgin" forests in Central America. Image courtesy of the author.

PerspectivesAugust 1, 2019

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…

Anthropology Education International

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