The Cultural Politics of Water in the Everglades and Beyond
The Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture Series
University of Rochester, 2015
Jessica R. Cattelino
"Getting the Water Right" is the motto of Everglades restoration, which is among the world’s largest and costliest ecosystem restoration projects. In Florida and globally, getting the water right is as much a social and cultural project as it is scientific or political. In this 2015 Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture, Jessica Cattelino builds from ethnographic research in the Everglades to explore the cultural politics of water. Examining how Everglades residents—including Seminole and non-Seminole farmers and ranchers, water managers, and environmentalists—value water, she considers the distinctive forms that nature takes in settler colonial societies like the United States. In the United States, nature and indigeneity are co-produced with uneven effects. Only by unsettling the non-analogical processes that link indigeneity with nature can we "get the water right" in the Everglades and beyond.
For the third installment of the multimedia feature of the HAU-Morgan Lectures Initiative brings you Professor Cattelino’s 2015 Morgan Lectures in video format. See link below for the transcript of the lectures.
READ AND DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT OF THE LECTURE HERE
Jessica R. Cattelino is Associate Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. Her work centers on indigenous sovereignty, environment, economy, and American public culture. Her book, High stakes: Florida Seminole gaming and sovereignty (Duke University Press, 2008), examines the cultural, political, and economic stakes of tribal casinos for Florida Seminoles. Her current research explores the cultural value of water in the Florida Everglades, with focus on the Seminole Big Cypress Reservation and the nearby agricultural town of Clewiston.
THE HAU-MORGAN LECTURES INITIATIVE
A HAU AND UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER COLLABORATION
