Our Land, Our Stories Project: Superfund & Indigenous land in the USA
Join us for the 14th meeting of the International Workshop on Environment, Sustainability, & Education
Our Land, Our Stories Project: Superfund & Indigenous land in the USA
Speaker: Dr. Anita Bakshi
Date: Wednesday September 15th, 2021
Time: 9-10:30am EST
This talk will present background on the history of Indigenous land and the Superfund program for highly contaminated sites in the USA. It highlights work from the second edition of the Our Land, Our Stories book project and the environmental justice story of the Ramapough Lunaape Turtle Clan and the Ringwood Mines Superfund Site. It is not possible to understand the impacts of environmental pollution through scientific data alone. This land is not just a Superfund site; it is also home and a place of memory and connection.
This book examines all layers, including the deep history of this land: not just the history of what happened - but also the history of how that history was written, and by whom it was written. It depicts the Turtle Clan community and how they were cast as "outcasts" by outsiders. This collaborative project makes space for different voices to be heard, on their own terms, and shares the intertwined story of racial and environmental injustice. Acknowledging that complicated information (historical and scientific) is difficult for readers to parse, it presents careful scholarly and archival research in tandem with visualizations. We share Ramapough stories, in their own words, and on their own terms.
Anita Bakshi is the author of Topographies of Memories: A New Poetics of Commemoration (2017, Palgrave Macmillan). Following several years in architectural practice she received her PhD in the History and Theory of Architecture from Cambridge University with the Conflict in Cities Research Programme. She now teaches at Rutgers University, Department of Landscape Architecture. Her research focuses on contested landscapes and histories, environmental justice, and the relationship between architecture and inequality. She engages in design research that explores new forms and processes of memorialization. She has published articles in Journal of Urban Design, e-flux Architecture, Journal of Landscape Architecture, Memory Studies, and International Journal of Islamic Architecture. Recent publications include Our Land, Our Stories (2019) and “Contaminated Representations.” http://anita-bakshi.
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