The Power of Water: Critical Reflections on the Columbia River Treaty Fairhaven Auditorium Wednesday 11:30-12:50
The Columbia River Treaty is currently under renegotiation. The original Treaty was negotiated without the consent, inclusion, or consideration of the tribes and First Nations that were greatly impacted by Treaty and the subsequent hydro-power facilities. While the Columbia River tribes and First Nations had a much greater role in the renegotiation process, ultimately the Treaty signatories are the U.S. and Canadian governments. This talk explores the historical legacy of the Treaty, the impacts of antiquated and outdated legal and political structures, and the opportunities to remedy past (and ongoing) injustices.
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Speaker Bio
Dr. Emma S. Norman serves as the Department Chair of the Native Environmental Science program at Northwest Indian College, where she has been on faculty since 2002. Her writing and teaching engage with critical geographies of space, specifically decolonizing borderlands and Indigenous water governance. She is the author of Governing Transboundary Water: Canada, the United States and Indigenous communities, which won the Julian Minghi award for best book in Political Geography in 2015. In her position, Emma works alongside and with Indigenous communities to protect sacred waterways, uphold treaty trust responsibilities and open up space for multiple ways of knowing.