Issue Seventeen (Fall 2020) of Open Rivers was created in connection with the Mellon Environmental Stewardship, Place, and Community Initiative. As part of the first year of this work, Christine Taitano DeLisle worked with Open Rivers staff to help us imagine, coordinate, and create work that could be a resource both for people engaged in the Initiative work moving forward and a broader audience interested in Indigenous epistemologies and methodologies.

The work in this issue focuses on the interrelatedness of Indigenous ways of knowing and what we call the “environment” in Western modes of thinking. We titled this issue “Relationality” to highlight this connectedness. Many of the pieces in this issue offer an implicit challenge: how might our ways of engaging environmental challenges change if we considered ourselves as related, if we considered the “natural world” as other-than-human relatives? How might this interconnectedness impact our relationships with the world around us and with each other?

Issue Contents

• Introduction to Issue Seventeen
  BY LAURIE MOBERG, MANAGING EDITOR
   
• Feature
  Where We Stand: The University of Minnesota and Dakhóta Treaty Lands
  BY ČHAŊTÉMAZA (NEIL MCKAY) AND MONICA SIEMS MCKAY
   
• Feature
  Rattlesnake Effigy Mound Ancestors Still Teaching
  BY JIM ROCK
   
• Feature
  Indigenizing Environmental Thinking
  BY WAZIYATAWIN, ROXANNE BIIDABINOKWE GOULD, CLEMENT LOO, SAMANTHA MAJHOR, SARA ČERNE, BONNIE ETHERINGTON, ANDREW M. FREIMAN, AGLÉŠKA COHEN-RENCOUNTRE, ADAM W. COON, SARAH PEELE, WENDY F. SMYTHE, CHRISTINE TAITANO DELISLE, AND BECCA GERCKEN
   
• Feature
  Navigating Indigenous Futures with the Mississippi River
  BY VICENTE M. DIAZ, MICHAEL J. DOCKRY, G.-H. CRYSTAL NG, VIRAJITA SINGH, DANIEL F. KEEFE, KATIE JOHNSTON-GOODSTAR, ROXANNE BIIDABINOKWE GOULD, JIM ROCK, AND CHRISTINE TAITANO DELISLE
   
• Feature
  Navigating Indigenous Futures Gallery
  BY VICENTE M. DIAZ, MICHAEL J. DOCKRY, G.-H. CRYSTAL NG, VIRAJITA SINGH, DANIEL F. KEEFE, KATIE JOHNSTON-GOODSTAR, ROXANNE BIIDABINOKWE GOULD, JIM ROCK, AND CHRISTINE TAITANO DELISLE
   
• Geographies
  Sky Watchers, Earth Watchers, and Guardians of the Former and Future Garden
  BY JIM ROCK
   
• In Review
  Woven Ways of Knowing
  BY MAHIN HAMILTON
   
• Perspectives
  Australia’s Legacy of Denying Water Rights to Aboriginal People
  BY LANA D. HARTWIG, NATALIE OSBORNE, AND SUE JACKSON
   
• Primary Sources
  Environmental Stewardship, Place, and Community: A Reading List
  BY CHRISTINE TAITANO DELISLE, LAURIE MOBERG
   
• Teaching And Practice
  On Teaching The Relentless Business of Treaties
  BY BECCA GERCKEN AND KEVIN WHALEN