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The image shows St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. The waterfall cascades over a wide dam, creating white water below. To the left, grassy areas and concrete structures are visible. A multi-arched bridge spans the river in the background, with trees lining its top. Tall buildings rise beyond the bridge under a partly cloudy sky, indicating a bright and sunny day.
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Owámniyomni: Still We Gather

By Kachina Yeager, Shelley Buck, and Sage Yeager. Mni Wičoni. Water is life. For many of us, water truly is synonymous with life—and not only because human life as we understand it necessitates water for survival. For me, as a Dakota person who also happens to be a poet, I think of water as a type of lineage. I can use waterways as a map that transcends borders of nationhood, of spatial and temporal constraint. In this way, water is a map of not only my life, but all those lives interwoven into the same cycle of water.

2014 flood in the Detroit metro area. Image via Flickr by Michigan State Police Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division. CC BY-ND 2.0 DEED
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Ghost Streams and Redlining

By Jacob Napieralski. In 2021, metro Detroit was hit with a rainstorm so severe that President Joe Biden issued a major disaster declaration at state officials’ request.

Nearly 8 inches of rain fell within 24 hours, closing every major freeway and causing massive damage to homes and businesses. The storm was of a severity historically seen in Detroit every 500 to 1,000 years.

Establishing the financial worth of a river’s fish is complicated when many people don’t sell the fish they catch. Image via Unsplash, by Jandira Sonnendeck.
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How much is the world’s most productive river worth?

How much is the world’s most productive river worth? Here’s how experts estimate the value of nature: Southeast Asia’s Mekong may be the most important river in the world. Known as the “mother of waters,” it is home to the world’s largest inland fishery, and the huge amounts of sediments it transports feed some of the planet’s most fertile farmlands. Tens of millions of people depend on it for their livelihoods.

University research has a legacy of doing harm to Indigenous communities. However, a new collaborative project is showing how research can be done in a better and inclusive way. (Shutterstock)
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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 again, to the need to rethink the relationships between universities and Indigenous communities. Recently, the Peabody Museum announced that it has been holding locks of hair collected throughout the 1930s from more than 700 Indigenous children forced into residential boarding schools in the U.S…

Kenyan women carry water buckets filled with water on their heads during World Water Day after fetching the water at one of the illegal freshwater points in Mathare slums in Nairobi, Kenya, 22 March 2019. International World Water Day is held annually on 22 March as a means of highlighting the importance of freshwater and its management. The theme for the World Water Day In 2019 is 'Leaving no one behind', highlighting whoever you are, wherever you are, water is your human right. EPA-EFE/Daniel Irungu.
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Time and Trauma

Through interviews, surveys and focus group discussions with 258 households in Mathare during 2016 and 2017, I found that women faced huge challenges and trauma in collecting water. Besides the woes of finding a running tap and wasting valuable time waiting in queues, procuring water entails physical hardship that often leads to mental agony that sometimes even threatens the women’s safety.