good afternoon Brandeis excited to see
you ah I’d like to invite you to close
your eyes and think of a place that you
love it could be your home your backyard
a neighborhood or maybe it’s somewhere
you haven’t been in quite a while
but think of a physical location what
smells do you associate with this place
what sounds is it hot or cold or maybe
it changes from season to season why is
this place special to you and who would
you be without this place please open
your eyes
today I’d like to share with you a story
about how I came to discover a sense of
belonging to this place it’s the Rocky
Mountains especially the region on the
border of the United States and Canada
an area known as the crown of the
continent which gets its name because
water here can flow into one of three
oceans the Arctic the Atlantic or the
Pacific and it’s an area that’s
celebrated for its rich biodiversity and
intact ecological processes and I grew
up an hour and a half away from this
place in a small town well a small city
called Lethbridge Alberta which has a
population of about 80,000 people and
it’s on the traditional territory of the
Blackfoot peoples growing up in
Lethbridge I felt like an outsider it’s
a pretty rural agricultural place and
when I graduated from Universal I
desperately wanted to get as far away as
possible from here it was in the
prairies and I thought why not go to the
east coast why not check out Halifax
Nova Scotia so I ended up enrolling at
Dalhousie University and started my
studies and in turn
National Development and environmental
sustainability and really started to
enjoy my time on the East Coast but the
holidays rolled around and I ended up
going back to Alberta to visit my family
and friends and we went snowshoeing and
downhill skiing and I realized that I
had taken for granted the place that I
was from in fact I surprised myself in
feeling that I didn’t want to return to
the East Coast I wanted to stay at home
so I started plotting my return and the
next year I transferred to the
University of Lethbridge to finish my
undergraduate studies and in the summers
I started working in Waterton Lakes
National Park and Waterton is a mountain
park in Canada but it shares a border
with Glacier National Park in Montana
and one of my first jobs in the park was
working at the visitor entrance gate
collecting entrance fees and welcoming
visitors into the park and I would I was
able to ride my bike to and from the
gate it was one of the activities I
enjoyed doing I used this trail here in
the photograph but there was also a lot
of other activities I enjoyed like fly
fishing and hiking with friends and it
was through all of this movement through
the landscape that I started to develop
a sense of belonging to this place when
I graduated from the University of
Lethbridge I had the opportunity to work
in Waterton as an interpretive guide and
I developed and delivered interpretive
programs for park visitors and one of my
assignments was to learn more about the
history of place names in Waterton
places like Vimy Peak which I soon found
out were named after significant events
and people from World War one and this
got me to thinking what are places and
people from Europe doing on as names of
mountain peaks and waterways in the
Rockies of North America well I learned
that the people who made the maps of
Waterton were men of European descent
who were in the area in
early 1900s carrying their heavy
equipment up Peaks and and making
measurements but it made me start to
wonder what was Waterton before it was a
park and what is silenced in water tins
history so if we think back to the place
that you love I want to ask you a
question
what stories go untold here as I
continued to reflect on these questions
I thought about the courses I took at
the University of Lethbridge that taught
me about First Nations or indigenous
history in Canada and I reflected on the
troubling past of the exclusion and
dispossession of indigenous peoples from
surrounding Waterton Lakes National Park
in between Lethbridge my hometown and
the park boundaries are to First Nations
communities the bikini nation and the
blood tribe both are members of the
Blackfoot Confederacy and they share the
same language Blackfoot and a similar
set of traditions but as I looked around
Waterton I saw very few Blackfoot place
names and as I looked around at my
co-workers I saw very few people who
were not euro Canadian like me there are
very few First Nations working in the
park all of this inspired me it
motivated me in fact to go back to
school because I was really frustrated
and wanted to know more about how I
could make a difference I ended up here
in Boston at Brandeis University and I
am doing a master’s in socio-cultural
anthropology and it’s here that I am
designing I designed and delivered
designed and implemented a research
project that brought me back to the
Rockies and in the Rockies I talked to
people about their perspectives on land
use management issues and protected
areas in the region and it’s through my
research that I’m interested in
interrupting in justices
and dominant narratives about places so
this is me this summer back in the
Rockies doing some field work there is
power in allowing a place to nourish
your sense of self and it got me to
thinking if more people connected to the
places that they loved perhaps more
places in the world would be cared for I
one day hope to return to the Rockies
and continue to engage in its complex
history and learn more about its
ecological processes and challenge the
dominant narratives about this place I
hope today my journey in coming to
understand how important places are to
our involvement in our communities has
inspired you to reflect on your
relationship to the places you love
thank you [Applause]
you ah I’d like to invite you to close
your eyes and think of a place that you
love it could be your home your backyard
a neighborhood or maybe it’s somewhere
you haven’t been in quite a while
but think of a physical location what
smells do you associate with this place
what sounds is it hot or cold or maybe
it changes from season to season why is
this place special to you and who would
you be without this place please open
your eyes
today I’d like to share with you a story
about how I came to discover a sense of
belonging to this place it’s the Rocky
Mountains especially the region on the
border of the United States and Canada
an area known as the crown of the
continent which gets its name because
water here can flow into one of three
oceans the Arctic the Atlantic or the
Pacific and it’s an area that’s
celebrated for its rich biodiversity and
intact ecological processes and I grew
up an hour and a half away from this
place in a small town well a small city
called Lethbridge Alberta which has a
population of about 80,000 people and
it’s on the traditional territory of the
Blackfoot peoples growing up in
Lethbridge I felt like an outsider it’s
a pretty rural agricultural place and
when I graduated from Universal I
desperately wanted to get as far away as
possible from here it was in the
prairies and I thought why not go to the
east coast why not check out Halifax
Nova Scotia so I ended up enrolling at
Dalhousie University and started my
studies and in turn
National Development and environmental
sustainability and really started to
enjoy my time on the East Coast but the
holidays rolled around and I ended up
going back to Alberta to visit my family
and friends and we went snowshoeing and
downhill skiing and I realized that I
had taken for granted the place that I
was from in fact I surprised myself in
feeling that I didn’t want to return to
the East Coast I wanted to stay at home
so I started plotting my return and the
next year I transferred to the
University of Lethbridge to finish my
undergraduate studies and in the summers
I started working in Waterton Lakes
National Park and Waterton is a mountain
park in Canada but it shares a border
with Glacier National Park in Montana
and one of my first jobs in the park was
working at the visitor entrance gate
collecting entrance fees and welcoming
visitors into the park and I would I was
able to ride my bike to and from the
gate it was one of the activities I
enjoyed doing I used this trail here in
the photograph but there was also a lot
of other activities I enjoyed like fly
fishing and hiking with friends and it
was through all of this movement through
the landscape that I started to develop
a sense of belonging to this place when
I graduated from the University of
Lethbridge I had the opportunity to work
in Waterton as an interpretive guide and
I developed and delivered interpretive
programs for park visitors and one of my
assignments was to learn more about the
history of place names in Waterton
places like Vimy Peak which I soon found
out were named after significant events
and people from World War one and this
got me to thinking what are places and
people from Europe doing on as names of
mountain peaks and waterways in the
Rockies of North America well I learned
that the people who made the maps of
Waterton were men of European descent
who were in the area in
early 1900s carrying their heavy
equipment up Peaks and and making
measurements but it made me start to
wonder what was Waterton before it was a
park and what is silenced in water tins
history so if we think back to the place
that you love I want to ask you a
question
what stories go untold here as I
continued to reflect on these questions
I thought about the courses I took at
the University of Lethbridge that taught
me about First Nations or indigenous
history in Canada and I reflected on the
troubling past of the exclusion and
dispossession of indigenous peoples from
surrounding Waterton Lakes National Park
in between Lethbridge my hometown and
the park boundaries are to First Nations
communities the bikini nation and the
blood tribe both are members of the
Blackfoot Confederacy and they share the
same language Blackfoot and a similar
set of traditions but as I looked around
Waterton I saw very few Blackfoot place
names and as I looked around at my
co-workers I saw very few people who
were not euro Canadian like me there are
very few First Nations working in the
park all of this inspired me it
motivated me in fact to go back to
school because I was really frustrated
and wanted to know more about how I
could make a difference I ended up here
in Boston at Brandeis University and I
am doing a master’s in socio-cultural
anthropology and it’s here that I am
designing I designed and delivered
designed and implemented a research
project that brought me back to the
Rockies and in the Rockies I talked to
people about their perspectives on land
use management issues and protected
areas in the region and it’s through my
research that I’m interested in
interrupting in justices
and dominant narratives about places so
this is me this summer back in the
Rockies doing some field work there is
power in allowing a place to nourish
your sense of self and it got me to
thinking if more people connected to the
places that they loved perhaps more
places in the world would be cared for I
one day hope to return to the Rockies
and continue to engage in its complex
history and learn more about its
ecological processes and challenge the
dominant narratives about this place I
hope today my journey in coming to
understand how important places are to
our involvement in our communities has
inspired you to reflect on your
relationship to the places you love
thank you [Applause]
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