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Crew excavating eroding house at Walakpa in 2017. Image courtesy of the Walakpa Archaeological Salvage Project.
Geographies

Libraries Burning

By Phyllis Mauch Messenger. For much of the planet, 2023 was the warmest year on record, and the 12 warmest years have all been documented since 2005.[i] The repercussions of this warming pattern, of undeniable climate change, are both dauntingly real and not yet fully knowable, both immediately problematic and also intensifying over time.

The article republished here demonstrates a commitment to action and hope in the face of climate change. In 2019, Phyllis Mauch Messenger detailed the work of several archaeological projects across the Arctic region focusing on salvaging materials long held in permafrost landscapes that are at risk due to warming temperatures.

Detail from The Keeyask Dam site on the Nelson River, 2019. Image courtesy of Aaron Vincent Elkaim.
In Review

Stories to the Surface: Revealing the Impacts of Hydroelectric Development in Manitoba

By Caroline Fidan Tyler Doenmez. Manitoba, although known as one of Canada’s prairie provinces, is arguably more defined by its waterways. One story tells that the very name “Manitoba” was born from water, derived from the Cree words Manitou, “Great Spirit,” and wapow, “sacred water,” to describe the sound of waves crashing against an island on Lake Manitoba (Sinclair and Cariou 2011, 4–5). The Red and Assiniboine Rivers, two prominent entities of movement and memory, meet in the heart of the province’s capital city of Winnipeg. The northward-flowing Red River empties into Lake Winnipeg, the tenth-largest freshwater lake in the world. The northern area of the province is dappled and threaded with thousands of lakes, abundant rivers, and watersheds. It is here, in the north, that water has been harnessed and commodified as a source of energy by Manitoba Hydro for the past six decades. Today, according to provincial and Manitoba Hydro websites, a staggering 97 percent of electricity generated in Manitoba is derived from hydropower (Manitoba Hydro 2023a, 9).

The main Tamar crossing at Saltash, engraved from a painting by J. M. W. Turner around 1830.
Feature (Peer Review)

A Fluid Border: The River Tamar and Constructed Difference in Travel Writing of Cornwall

The Tamar is a relatively modest river. With a length of just 61 miles, and an average discharge at the upper tidal limit of just 807 cubic feet per second, it is dwarfed by other British rivers such as the Severn and the Thames. But despite its small scale, the Tamar has a heightened cultural significance: for more than a thousand years it has served as the border between the bulk of England to the east and Cornwall—a region with some distinct quasi-national characteristics—to the west. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century travel writers’ accounts of crossing this border have tended to construct the Tamar as a site of absolute transition from familiarity to otherness—a construction which has at times intersected with (and arguably informed) the emergence of modern identities of difference from within Cornwall.

Sunset at Governor’s Landing overlooking Amistad Reservoir. Image by Seth Dodd/NPS.
Feature (Peer Review)

Not a Border, But a Path: Swimming Across the Rio Grande

On a cool November day, I floated in the middle of Amistad Reservoir, a lake formed by a dam on the Rio Grande. I was swimming from the United States to Mexico and back, a ten-mile round trip. From the middle, I could see two of the widely spaced buoys that mark the path of the river under the reservoir, one on either side of me; up on the dam, I could see two flags waving in the wind, one for each country. But in the water itself, there was no way to tell if I was in the United States or Mexico, no line to mark the boundary between the two nations. My body floated in both countries and in neither. There was no border; there were only the water and the sky.

Detail of boats on the Salween river-border with Thai flags. Image courtesy of Zali Fung.
Geographies

When the Border is a River: A Journey Along the Salween River-Border

Rivers might appear to be a natural or even an expedient way to demarcate political borders. Yet rivers are always in flux as flows of water, sediments, and fish and aquatics shift with the rains and tides. For rivers to serve as borders, individuals, communities, and governments engage in a range of efforts, such as erecting walls, fences, or signs, underlining the reality that borders are actively constructed through contested sociopolitical processes and in everyday life.

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.
Primary Sources

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.

Detail of a mixed-media haiku created by Benjamin at the Metamorffosis Festival, Bangor, UK.
Teaching and Practice

Creative Connections with Rivers: A Toolkit for Learning and Collaboration

We are three people who draw on research and practice to create arts-based learning, engagement materials, and interventions with and for diverse audiences. We purposefully integrate and apply different artistic methods in non-artistic disciplines, such as ecology and environmental conservation, physics, climate science, and human health. We came to know each other and work together through a four-year project that was awarded to the lead author and focused on rivers in a fragmented world. Our project had local and global foci on rivers, and many of the activities, including those shared in this article, were designed with and for people in the United Kingdom but with a view that the ideas could be adapted and applied in other contexts.

Detail of the cover of Harry Saddler's book 'A Clear Flowing Yarra.'
In Review

Seals, Swimmers, Bat Carers

Author Harry Saddler’s book on Melbourne’s Yarra River is an engaging account of his years exploring its native species and human communities. He acknowledges the river’s First Nations name of Birrarung, writing with a boyish enthusiasm. At times I felt his emotion jumping out of the pages, almost channelling David Attenborough’s passion for species and the environment…

Robin Wall Kimmerer and Diane Wilson in conversation. Photo: Rebecca Slater, by Rebecca Studios.
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 Auditorium on May 17th, 2022 (Kimmerer and Wilson 2022). In this column, I share part of my reflections and stories as an Indigenous scientist inspired by Robin and Diane’s conversation, specifically Robin’s emphasis on the importance of healing our relationships with the land and nonhuman relatives, and the need for “Re-story-ation” of the land. As I understand it, re-story-ation means to return our stories to the land and to remember how to hear the stories the land tells…