Elizabeth Hoover on Environment, Health, and Food in a Mohawk Community, Nov. 13 @ 4

[Darren Modzelewski]

I wanted to alert you all to a great talk going on this Tuesday from 4-530.  Liz's work is at the very interesting and cutting-edge intersection of sustainability, environmental justice, and tribal sovereignty.  If you have the time, it's sure to be a great talk!!

ISSI’s Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues, the Native American Studies Program, and

the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management present:

 

Three Bodies:

Rethinking Environmental Health and Food Production in a Mohawk Community

Tuesday, November 13

4:00-5:30 pm

Wildavsky Conference Room
2538 Channing Way, Berkeley

 

Elizabeth Hoover

Assistant Professor of American Studies & Ethnic Studies, Brown University

 

With respondent:

 

Louise Fortmann

Professor of Natural Resource Sociology; Rudy Grah Chair in Forestry and Sustainable Development, University of California, Berkeley

 

 

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Environmental health conditions tied to industrial contamination, as well as lifestyle related illnesses like diabetes, are two major health concerns facing many Native American communities.  One such community is Akwesasne, a Mohawk nation downstream from one federal and two state Superfund sites, which has been the subject of over two decades of environmental health research.  In addition to fighting environmental contamination, Akwesasne has also been working to address growing rates of diabetes. This presentation draws on in-depth qualitative interviews with community members, health study participants and health care providers from Akwesasne, as well as environmental health researchers from the State University of New York at Albany, to explore community reactions to the health studies and current health conditions in Akwesasne, and their suggestions for improvement. Hoover adapts a model of three bodies to discuss how individual, social and political bodies describe levels of involvement brought into play by people to address both environmental health and conditions related to lifestyle.

 

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Elizabeth Hoover is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University, where she teaches courses about Native American environmental health, Native food movements, and American Indian museum representations. Her research focuses on the report-back of the results of environmental health studies to community members, as well as movements in Native communities to reclaim traditional foods, including gardens. She is currently involved in gardening organizations and in researching environmental health studies and group focused health interventions in the Mohawk community of Akwesasne.  Additionally, she’s working to better connect Brown University with the Native communities of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. When she’s not busy writing and teaching, Professor Hoover is gardening, beading, or fancy shawl dancing.

 

Louise Fortmann is Professor of Natural Resource Sociology and the Rudy Grah Chair in Forestry and Sustainable Development in the College of Natural Resources at University of California, Berkeley. She grew up in central Pennsylvania and received a BA in political science from Penn State and an MS in rural sociology from Cornell after which she worked for a year as a VISTA Volunteer in Cattaraugus County, NY as a welfare rights organizer. She earned a PhD in development sociology from Cornell and came to UC Berkeley in 1984. She has spent many years living and doing research on agriculture and natural resource management in east and southern Africa. Her recent research has focused on democratizing science. In her recent edited volume, Participatory Research on Conservation and Rural Livelihoods: Doing Science Together (Wiley-Blackwell 2008), civil and conventional scientists in Honduras, Indonesia, Sweden, USA, and Zimbabwe write about collaborative scientific research. Her inability to milk a cow has provided considerable amusement to villagers.

 

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Light refreshments will be served.

 

This event is free, wheelchair accessible, and open to the public. For wheelchair access please call 642-0813 one day prior to the event. 

 

For more information, call the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues at 510-642-0813 or email iss...@gmail.com.

 

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Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues

Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
University of California, Berkeley
2420 Bowditch Street
Berkeley, Ca 94720-5670

crnai.berkeley.edu
Tel: 510.642.0813 Fax: 510.642.8674

 

--
Darren Modzelewski
Ph.D Candidate, Department of Anthropology

J.D. Candidate, Berkeley Law

Fellow, Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues
Fellow, Center for Urban Ethnography
2251 College Building
UC Berkeley
Berkeley, Ca. 94720-1076