SOS Seminar Series Presents: Leah Shaffer and Brian Grant

Speaker: Brian Grant

Title: Decolonizing the Relational Turn in Sustainability: Walking to Unlearn and Relearn

Summary: This project explores relational sustainability research through a personal experience walking a popular wilderness trail here in Arizona that has been exposed as part of a forced removal event in 1875, known as the Yavapai-Apache Exodus. I engaged with a relational walking methodology called 'walking-with', along with arts-based methods, to create space for relating with land as an agentic being and teacher. Though I set out with academic intentions, the land guided me through a series of disruptions that invited me to see myself more clearly in relationship to land, colonization and research. 

Speaker: Leah Shaffer

Title: Icy intersections: Worldview-based decision making in Arctic frozen-commons governance under climate change

 Summary: “Frozen Commons” are landscapes of ice, snow, and permafrost that are collectively managed by Indigenous Peoples, local communities, governments, and non-local stakeholders. Multi-level governance is integral to the future of frozen commons stewardship, as effective decisions require input from many jurisdictional levels. I investigate the role of worldviews on multi-level decision-making, with a focus on how worldviews lead to conflict and consensus among rights holders and stakeholders in frozen-commons governance.