Political ecology of emotion and sacred space: The Winnemem Wintu struggles with California water policy
Abstract
Western
water policy in the United States has favored urban and agricultural
development over American Indians' needs, demonstrating little
understanding of, or concern for, the affective ecologies of landscapes.
Using a qualitative approach focusing on in-depth interviews of members
of the Winnemem Wintu tribe in California, we uncover how culturally
hegemonic meanings of natural resources and landscapes privilege the
water needs of modern development and deny the importance of Indigenous
emotional connections to sacred places by limiting access to and
protection of ancestral territories. Ninety percent of Winnemem
ancestral lands along the McCloud River were flooded in 1945 when the
Shasta Dam was completed for the federal Central Valley Project. In
2000, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation began investigating a proposal to
raise Shasta Dam to increase surface water storage capacity for
agricultural production. This proposal would destroy remaining Winnemem
sacred spaces that offer deep emotional connections crucial to
maintaining their cultural identity and ancestral memories. This paper
presents a political ecology of emotion perspective to examine the
emotional geographies associated with sacred spaces within ancestral
landscapes and related struggles against hegemonic approaches to
resource management. We argue that an investigation of sacred spaces
reveals intimate links between emotion, memory, and identity and exposes
the devastating consequence of institutional approaches to land
development that favor meanings and practices of the dominant culture
and political structure.
Keywords
- Emotional geography;
- Political ecology;
- Sacred space;
- California water policy;
- Shasta dam;
- Winnemem Wintu
- Corresponding author. Tel.:
+1 562 985 8432; fax: +1 562 985 8993.
Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
