EnviroThursday Fall 2023
Presentations take place at 12 noon, Olin-Rice Room 250
September 7, 2023
4:45-5:45 p.m., Olin-Rice 250
“The Seed Keeper: A Conversation with Author Diane Wilson”
Winner of the 2022 Minnesota Book Award in Fiction
A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakota family’s struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most.
Native women have protected indigenous seeds for many generations as both a food supply and as carriers of culture and stories. Wilson wrote The Seed Keeper as a way to honor Native women and their commitment to keeping indigenous seeds safe for future generations. As a gardener as well as through her work with Native organizations, Wilson has helped preserve and restore indigenous seeds for the last twenty years.
Diane Wilson is a Dakota writer. Her memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program. Her nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life, was awarded the 2012 Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado. Awards include the Minnesota State Arts Board, a 2013 Bush Foundation Fellowship, a 2018 AARP/Pollen 50 Over 50 Leadership Award, and the Jerome Foundation. Wilson has served as the Executive Director for Dream of Wild Health and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance. She is a descendent of the Mdewakanton Oyate and enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation.
This event is supported by the Macalester Native and Indigenous (MNI) Initiative.
September 14, 2023
No EnviroThursday
September 21, 2023
“Environmental Studies Faculty Research Showcase”
Ever wonder how professors spend their summers? Join us for this special EnviroThursday, during which members of the Environmental Studies Faculty will each take 5 minutes to talk about their recent or ongoing research projects. We will leave plenty of time for questions and conversation with the audience.
September 28, 2023
No EnviroThursday
October 5 2023
No EnviroThursday – Study Away session for majors and minors
October 12, 2023
No EnviroThursday – Check out the 2023 International Roundtable
October 19, 2023
No EnviroThursday
October 26, 2023
No EnviroThursday – Fall Break
November 2, 2023
No EnviroThursday – ES Majors and Minors lunch
November 9, 2023
November 16, 2023
Location: JBD Lecture Hall, Campus Center
“Paul Bunyan and Settler Colonial Green/Whitewashing of Indigenous Environments”
Speaker: Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles, Assistant Professor of Geography, University of Victoria
The American legend of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe, has underpinned popular folk narratives about the development of the United States, particularly in the Upper Midwest, for over a century. The larger-than-life lumberjack is commemorated across the United States with statues, monuments and other spaces dedicated to honoring him and his ‘role’ in shaping the geographies of frontier America.
However, the legacy of Paul Bunyan has a darker side–it serves to obscure the real-life dispossession and destruction of environments and spaces in which Indigenous peoples have inhabited and have had relationships with dating to before colonization.
Building off of the work done by Nik Nerburn in his ‘zine’ In The Shadow Of Paul Bunyan (2014), this talk traces the history of the legend of Paul Bunyan and places it alongside settler colonial development and environmental degradation, bringing these histories into conversation with awareness (or lack thereof) surrounding historical and contemporaneous Indigenous relationships to land and environment, particularly in Northern Minnesota. By doing this, they build the argument that the ways that the settler state rhetorically constructs its own environments and geographies serves as a ‘whitewashing’ and elimination of Indigenous environments and geographies, which is part and parcel of settler colonialism.
Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria. A citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, their work focuses on critical Indigenous geographies, and the ways in which Indigenous nations contend with climate crisis. They are the principal investigator of the Geographic Indigenous Futures Collaboratory, one of Western Canada’s first Indigenous geographies focused labs. Smiles holds a bachelor’s degree in Geography from St. Cloud State University, a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota Duluth, and a PhD in Geography from The Ohio State University, where they also spent a year as a President’s Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of History.
This event is supported by the Macalester Native and Indigenous (MNI) Initiative.