Using Engaged Rhetorical Methods
to Understand and Inform Collaborative
Decision Making about Dams and Restoration
in the Penobscot River Watershed
Doctoral Defense: April 9, 2020
Tyler Quiring, Ph.D. Candidate
Communication & Journalism
University of Maine, Orono, ME
Penobscot River:
Dams & Restoration:
Decision Making:
Rhetorical Methods:
Understand &
Inform
Spatial & temporal context
Exigence for research
Collaborative and engaged
Communication research for change
Collective processes and needs
Ongoing decolonial practices
Anatomy of a talk
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Acknowledgments
Advisor:
Dr. Bridie McGreavy
Doctoral Committee:
Drs. Nathan Stormer, Holly Schreiber, Darren Ranco, & Caroline Gottschalk Druschke
Undergraduate Research Assistants:
Brawley Benson, Nolan Altvater, Maliyan Binette, & Alexandra Smyth
Key Research Partners:
New England Sustainability Consortium's Future of Dams Project;
Penobscot Nation's Department of Natural Resources' Water Resources Program
Funders:
National Science Foundation award #IIA-1539071 to UMaine's Mitchell Center through NH EPSCoR; UMaine Research Reinvestment Fund; UMaine Graduate Student Govt.
Penobscot River Watershed
Spatial Context
- Largest watershed in Maine
(USGS Streamer map) - Penobscot Nation's homeland
- Dawnland; initial colonial contact
- Land grant (Stein, 2017); islands
- Cross-island research engagement
- Tyler also lives here (Brewer, ME)
Temporal Context
- 10-15 kya deglaciation (Kelley et al., 2011; Hooke et al., 2016)
- 10+ ky Penobscot Nation here
- ~500 ya European settlement
- 150+ ya UMaine founded
- 11 y Mitchell Center for Sustain.
- ~7 y TQ presence (Sutton, 2018)
↔
EJ: Multiple "places" and "timelines" matter
Dams and Restoration
Dams as a social & ecological concern
- Hundreds of k of dams globally
- >7k dams in NE (UNH DDC map)
- Some produce electricity & profit
- Allow for managing water flows
- Alter riverine habitats & ecologies
- Shape our experience with places
- Safety concerns, especially with age
- Federal licensing: point of decisions
Restoration as a collective response
- After ecological change (e.g., dams)
- Requires "intimate participation in the ecology" (Jordan, 1993)
- Deciding on arrangements / forms of life to prioritize (e.g., fish, people)
- "Can we return to a new past?"
- "Can we still change together?"
- Ongoing, reciprocal, unfinished, etc.
Decision Making
- To understand
- To connect
- To inform
Penobscot River Restoration
Penobscot River Restoration Project
- 20+ year collaboration
- Penobscot Nation + partners
- System of dams
- 2 dams removed
- 1 dam decommissioned
- 6 dams upgraded
- 9-2,000mi of fish habitat opened
- Increase in hydropower
- Success! ( . . . )
Photo by Joshua Royte
Future of Dams
- Second project of the New England Sustainability Consortium (NEST)
- Interdisciplinary; cross-jurisdictional
- Supporting decisions about dams
Photo by Rita Belair
Emphasizes:
- Transdisciplinary collaboration
- Community-engaged science
- Many different kinds of cultures
Rhetorical Methods
"but
not
only"
Decolonizing
- Responding to issues with ethics and consent (2018 PN-UM MOU)
- Research not on but with humans & ecologies (Christians, 2015)
- Emphasis on reciprocity and relationship-building long-term
(Kuokkanen, 2007; Smith, 2012; Kimmerer, 2013; Wildcat et al., 2014; Todd, 2016; Whyte et al., 2016; Cariou, 2018; Archibald et al., 2019; and so many others)
Digital
- Fundamentally embodied (digits), ecological and collaborative
- Rooted in ancient Indigenous hypertext practices (Haas, 2007)
- (re)assembling relationships, groups, and diverse needs and practices through collective deliberation (Grabill, 2010; Gries, 2015; Povinelli, 2016; Karrabing; Clam Cam; Awihkhikéhtαso;
and so many others)
↔
Research Questions
about PRR Success
-
What histories & futures?
-
What other stories are at work?
-
What to do w/ restoration success?
Core Projects
- Media discourse analysis
- Reciprocal case study
- Digital media documentation
Case study texts
and activities
- 1480 news articles -> 244 articles
- 15 participant interviews
- "Rapid Insight Tracking" (Bengston et al., 2009; McGreavy et al., 2017)
- Many cross-cultural dialogues
- Multiple new protocols for decolonizing research (key insight)
- Visual media archive and digital tools to manage/publish imagery
Understanding and Informing
Key insight #1
Restoration success as multiple and highly contingent in ways that partially obscure ongoing slow crises
- Multiple ontologies (Mol, 2002; Todd, 2016)
- News media emphasize technical & social success
- Different origin stories; timelines; leaderships
- Different restorative ends (hydropower; fish)
-
Success still contingent (Plec, 2007; Stormer, 2016):
- Complex machinery at Milford fish lift
- Persistent issues with water pollution, legal challenges complicate Penobscot Nation's practice of traditional subsistence fishing
- Attained successes require ongoing maintenance
Key insight #2
Heterogeneity is a crucial capacity to communicate and engage for justice in ecological networks and collaborations
- A precondition for communication/collaboration
(de la Cadena, 2015; Tsing, 2015; Haraway, 2016) - PRR social success in news media: conflict -> collab
- News' discursive flattening (ex: "environmentalists") obscures crucial differences that matter.
- FoD & PRR projects as successful because they provided ways to engage difference
- More work to be done in addressing issues of power and justice in collaborations
- Takes time, long-term conversation, many threads
Key insight #3
Building on existing protocols can support ongoing decolonizing research and university-tribal partnerships
- Customizing approaches to research with tribal members and employees (Archibald et al., 2019)
-
Exploratory University/Tribal institutional review and oversight instruments (w/ UMIRB & PTRRPB)
- Leveraging 2018 UMaine-Penobscot MOU
- Data management plan (Harding et al., 2012)
- Collaboratively-refined approach to Indigenous media documentation that prioritizes relationship-building, writing, storytelling, and reciprocity (Povinelli, 2016; Quiring et al., 2020)
Imagery by Angie Reed
Letting the River Lead:
Looking Ahead
Possibilities for Future Research
- Extending Rapid Insight Tracking to media discourse analysis
- Building on decolonizing approach to inform new projects
- Continuing to build & refine tools for media documentation
Thank you!
With support from:
Using Engaged Rhetorical Methods to Understand and Inform Collaborative Decision Making about Dams and Restoration in the Penobscot River Watershed
By Tyler Quiring
Using Engaged Rhetorical Methods to Understand and Inform Collaborative Decision Making about Dams and Restoration in the Penobscot River Watershed
How do we understand what to do with rivers and dams? How might rhetoric, the ancient study of persuasion, inform and shape this understanding as it relates to river restoration practices? Ecological approaches to rhetoric provide ways for engaging in decision making about dams and river restoration. In this presentation I will share my dissertation research, which brings media discourse analysis, reciprocal case study, and cross-cultural digital rhetoric to sites of collaborative decision making about dams and rivers in the Penobscot River watershed (Maine, USA). In this place, the prominent Penobscot River Restoration reconfigured several hydroelectric dams to improve fish passage and hydropower generation. My collaborators and I explore what needs and opportunities remain for further action here and how community-engaged rhetorical ecology can advance decolonization and social-environmental justice.