Introduction to Issue 21

By Laurie Moberg, Editor | April 10, 2022

Current Features

Detail From Figure 8. Point Hudson, a well-known camping spot for Indigenous individuals who were traveling to hop fields in search of work. Image courtesy of Alexandra Peck.

Mariners, Makers, Matriarchs: Changing Relationships Between Coast Salish Women & Water

Historically, Coast Salish female identity depended upon water. Waterways provided women with countless economic opportunities, fostered family ties, created plentiful food sources, and encouraged female autonomy. Even as female maritime practices changed drastically throughout the pre-colonial and colonial periods, Coast Salish women imagined new ways to maintain connections to water.

Left: Coordinators meeting at an oxbox in the river. Right: With corn growing on the left, the wildflowers in the filter strip provide valuable habitat, as well as filtering runoff from the fields. Images courtesy of Mollie Aronowitz.

Collaboration for a Common Goal

We seek to tell a story that demonstrates how combining a common goal with compromise and deliberate action leads to creative solutions and meaningful progress. Our professional backgrounds and experiences are diverse—our group includes a professional land manager, a clean water policy attorney, a conservation agronomist, and a municipal watershed manager. Through each of our personal stories, we will share examples of action-oriented strategies for improving the quality of Iowa’s land and water.

Photograph of Renita and Alyssa sitting outside Marquette Tower.

How the River Moves Us: Women Speak Their Story

As a work of social choreography, Niimikaage is meant to listen to the movement of the Mississippi River through the lives of people connected to it. Whether their story is directly connected to the river or not, water shapes the world around them.

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Harris County flood rescue. Image by Lt. Zachary West, 100th MPAD/Texas Military Department.

Floodplains and Hurricanes: Mapping Natural Disasters to Uncover Vulnerable Communities

Using GIS mapping, I can identify at-risk communities most impacted by water-related natural disasters in the Houston Metropolitan Area (HMA), which is highly susceptible to hurricanes, tropical storms, and excessive flooding. Geospatial analysis reveals that at-risk communities are not randomly distributed throughout the HMA; populations like women and children are at higher risk of disproportionate outcomes during flooding events.

Natalie Warren paddling a canoe. Image courtesy of Kelsey Daly.

On Rivers, Women, and Canoes

Open Rivers contacted Natalie Warren, author of Hudson Bay Bound: Two Women, One Dog, Two Thousand Miles to the Arctic, to talk about her memoir and the story it chronicles: a river trip by canoe with her best friend, Ann Raiho, from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay.

Mt. Stem by Digba Coker, 2022. Image courtesy of Digba Coker.

The Summit of STEM: Navigating the Uneven Terrain

Endless hours writing and analyzing samples in the lab was not the most difficult part of graduate school, however. It was walking into a class and seeing that, yet again, no one else looks like me. It was walking into a room and knowing I must fight twice as hard to disprove any underlying biases people might have of me. It was when comments were made that weren’t necessarily targeted at me, but that impacted me because I was the only black woman in the room, lecture hall, or meeting.

In Bangladesh, Rohingya women in refugee camps share stories of loss and hopes of recovery. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) UN Women/Allison Joyce.

Water as Weapon: Gender and WASH

The association between WASH services and gendered vulnerability to violence in rural locales and urban slums in developing countries has received the most study, but women everywhere are vulnerable when they lack access to, or are accessing, WASH services. All of which leaves one asking why global leaders focus on the possibility of future water-related conflict rather than respond to the very real crisis conditions in which women and girls exist now?

Kenyan women carry water buckets filled with water on their heads during World Water Day after fetching the water at one of the illegal freshwater points in Mathare slums in Nairobi, Kenya, 22 March 2019. International World Water Day is held annually on 22 March as a means of highlighting the importance of freshwater and its management. The theme for the World Water Day In 2019 is 'Leaving no one behind', highlighting whoever you are, wherever you are, water is your human right. EPA-EFE/Daniel Irungu.

Time and Trauma

Through interviews, surveys and focus group discussions with 258 households in Mathare during 2016 and 2017, I found that women faced huge challenges and trauma in collecting water. Besides the woes of finding a running tap and wasting valuable time waiting in queues, procuring water entails physical hardship that often leads to mental agony that sometimes even threatens the women’s safety.

Ann Raiho surveying the horizon. Image courtesy of Natalie Warren.

Introduction to Issue 21

We refer to the issue as “Women & Water: Calling” because collectively these articles demonstrate the ways that water calls to people, drawing women into connection and commitment to the material world and to each other.