The symposium was funded and organized as part of a tribal water quality governance research project. The project works collaboratively with the Pyramid Lake Paiute and the Nez Perce Tribes to explore critical water quality issues and their governance, including ways in which space and time are understood across governing entities. Contact information for those involved can be found here.
The project received funding from the National Science Foundation and the John Calhoun Smith Memorial Fund.
In the early 2010s Kate Berry began working more on Indigenous water quality governance issues. In 2014 Kate and Teresa Cavazos Cohn started working together, along with Sue Jackson of Australia and Kenichi Matsui of Japan, as guest editor on two special issues on Indigenous water history. That same year Teresa, Kate, and Emma Norman began a collaboration working with Tribes on their issues, leadership, and innovations in water quality governance today. Shortly after, through Teresa and Kyle Powys Whyte being connected at the Tribal Climate Camp hosted by the Nez Perce Tribe and organized by the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, Kyle joined the project.
Kyle was aware that colleagues Karletta Chief and Ryan Emanuel were working to create greater connectivity across persons working in Indigenous water resources and water quality. Karletta and Ryan had been involved with a team of Indigenous hydroscientists, including Otakuye Conroy-Ben, Shandin Pete, and Raymond Torres. The team was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Integrative and Collaborative Education and Research (ICER) Grant entitled “Water in the Native World: A Symposium on Indigenous Water Knowledge and Hydrologic Science”, which was an event held in 2017 at Salish Kootenai College. When Teresa, Kate and Kyle applied for NSF funding to work on water quality governance with the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribes and the Nez Perce Tribe in 2016, they intended to support another meeting that would build on the relationship with the “Water in the Native World” team and event. They created resources for bringing together a small group to share about their work on Indigenous water quality, with a focus on the relationship between hydrologic science and governance.
Now four years later, the symposium is happening as a website that will coincide with a live event in 2021. A small group of persons representing diverse Indigenous water quality governance projects in the context of the U.S. and Canada have agreed to share their important work. This is just a start. The symposium will grow in future years, seeking to include many more diverse projects coming from everywhere in the world. Many of the materials the presenters have shared on their websites points to the larger community of persons, whether in the U.S. and Canadian contexts, or globally.
Considering Space and Time in Research with Tribes in the United States on Water Quality Governance
Kate A Berry, Teresa Cavazos Cohn, and Kyle Powys Whyte
Society for Freshwater Science Conference
May, 2021
Cavazos Cohn, T., Berry, K., Powys Whyte, K. and Norman, E., 2019. Spatio-Temporality and Tribal Water Quality Governance in the United States. Water, 11(1), p.99. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/11/1/99
Cohn, T.C., Higheagle, S., Whyte, K.P., Berry, K., Green, K., Carter, M. 2022. Chapter 5 - "We had to Jump Over, but We're Still Here": Nimiipúu Spatio-Temporalities of Water and Fish in Times of Climate Change. Editor: Sioui, M. Current Directions in Water Scarcity Research, Vol 4, 91-108 pp. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-824538-5.00005-4
Berry, K., Cohn, T.C., Whyte, KP. 2022. Space, Time and Hydrosocial Imaginaries: Water Quality Governance of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. The Professional Geographer special issue on Geographies of Imaginaries and Environmental Governance. https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2022.2075403
Tribal Water Quality Governance