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)

↔

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"

(de la Cadena, 2015;
Druschke, 2019)

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

1. What histories & futures?

2. What other stories are at work?

3. 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)

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: