Field Notes Volume X

Field Notes10 CAT CARKNER

Field Notes

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Contents

Letter from the Editors LEA JOSEPH and EVA SAYN-WITTGENSTEINTEIN

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2

URBAN NARRATIVES

When You’re Green You’re Growing: Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities CAT CARKNER

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Sejong: A Comparative View into the New Administrative City’s Successes, Failures, and Anticipated Challenges JIM MEJINO

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(UN)NATURAL

Land Cover and Groundwater Stress ABBI BARAN

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Where Are BIXI Bike Stations Located and Why? AVA KLEIN

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Rising Heat and Draining Peat: Anthropogenic Impacts on Northern Peatland Landscapes and Their Consequences for Global Climate Forcing ISABEL STRACHAN

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DISPOSSESSION

Um hapi qaa’öniwti: The Reclamation of Maize as a Sacred Food Across Turtle Island THALIA NEEBE

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Understanding Health Outcomes from Indigenous Perspectives: Systematic Review of the Influence of Indigenous Foodways on Health MAREN ROESKE

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Canadian Indigenous Cartography as Colonial Resistance ELINOR ROSENBERG

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Colophon

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Letter from the Editors

When You’re Green You’re Growing: Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities

Field Notes

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Dear Readers, We are honoured to be the editors of the first print edition of Field Notes since 2019. It has quickly become a cliché to begin a foreword with a reference to the ongoing pandemic, but its impact cannot be overstated. The articles featured in this edition of Field Notes are a credit to their writers not just for their quality, but the context in which they were produced.

We are very proud to present a selection of articles that are provocative and nuanced, with critical engagement and precision on a wide variety of topics which capture the broad spectrum of just what geography is and can be. Three themes were developed over the course of the editing process to highlight the similarities and differences in our writer's perspectives--and within the discipline itself. The first, Urban narratives, investigate the discourses that surround cities: How do stakeholders advocate for their needs? What are the meanings of picturesque new city renderings? What are the ideologies that shape these visions of utopia? (Un)natural encompasses both physical and human geography by exploring aspects of both the built and natural environment alike, contending with the social construction of this built-natural dichotomy.

Lastly, we selected a collection of papers centred on dispossession. As geographers, we are in a unique position to interrogate the social and environmental mechanisms and consequences of so-called Canada through scholarship. These papers present varying reparative and critical positions on issues of Indigenous rights and ownership and the colonial violence that is dispossession. We hope this edition paints a picture of McGill's geography in all its multiplicity.

Thank you to our writers and editors that worked tirelessly on this project to bring their impactful and engaging work to life for the journal.

Thank you to our excellent graphic designer, Giulia Caruana. Finally, we are grateful to our readers for supporting not just Field Notes, but the next generation of geographers.

LEA JOSEPH and EVA SAYN-WITTGENSTEIN Editors-in-Chief

When You’re Green You’re Growing: Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities When You’re Green You’re Growing: Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities

CAT CARKNER

Field Notes

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ABSTRACT

Green urbanism, or the practice of creating sustainable built environments, is increasingly regarded as essential for any global city. Concern about ‘greening’ the city occurs at a time of much speculative urbanism, where city-makers are constantly looking to make their urban projects as profitable as possible. As such, there has been a conflation of the two urban phenomena. The present paper investigates the rising prevalence of ‘greenwashed’ green cities, those that selectively highlight positive dimensions about the city’s environmental impact, whilst hiding the negative dimensions. My main argument is that green urbanism has been harnessed as a tool of speculative urbanism by city-makers and is used to bolster economic development and corporate images, rather than provide eco-friendly structures. I contextualize this argument with a case study of Forest City, a luxury new ‘green’ master-planned city being built in the special economic zone of Iskandar, Malaysia. I will demonstrate that Forest City is greenwashed rather than truly green, as its greenness is directed towards generating clout and foreign capital at the cost of the local environment.

INTRODUCTION

1 Sarah Moser, “Forest city, Malaysia, and Chinese expansionism.” Urban Geography 39, no. 6 (2018): 936, https://doi.org /10.1080/02723638.2017 .1405691.

2 Moser, “Forest city”, 936; Sin Yee Koh, Yimin Zhao, and Hyun Bang Shin, “The Micropolitics of Speculative Green Urbanism at Forest City, Iskandar Malaysia.” Papers in Urbanisation, Planning and Development 21, no. 1 (2021): 1.

Given the environmental ills of urban life, how can rising urbanization be reconciled with climate action? Around the world, a growing number of ‘green’ cities position themselves as the answer to this question, offering investors an opportunity to enjoy the amenities of a smart and modern city whilst mitigating their environmental impact. These green cities are tied to ‘green urbanism’, the practice of creating built environments that benefit both humans and the environment. Often, the greenness of green cities is visually reinforced with tree-lined boulevards and blooming gardens. The most notable green city is Malaysia’s Forest City, a new master-planned city that has been under construction since 2014 within Iskandar, a Malaysian Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for regional economic development.1 The project is a joint venture between Chinese developers and the local government and will be four times the size of Central Park.2 Developers have doubled down on emphasizing Forest City’s greenness, promoting it primarily

When You’re Green You’re Growing: Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities

3 “Forest City Vertical Greenery System- Green & Smart”, Forest City CGPV, accessed March 21, 2021b, https://www. forestcitycgpv.com/aboutforest-city/green-smart.

4

Ibid.

5 Dushan Pjevovic, “Cities and Climate Change: Power Games and Greenwashing Through Transnational Urban Networks” (Masters Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2015), 32.

6 Marit Rosol, Vincent Beal, and Samuel Mossner, “Greenest cities? The (post-)politics of new urban environmental regimes.” Environment and Planning A 49, no. 8 (2017): 1711, https://doi. org/10.1177%2F030851 8X17714843.

7 Peter Newman and Anne Matan, Green Urbanism in Asia: The Emerging Green Tigers (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., 2013), 7.

8 Eugene McCann, “Mobilities, politics, and the future: Critical geographies of green urbanism.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 49, no. 8 (2017): 1820. https://doi. org/10.1177%2F030851 8X17708876.

as a “green and smart” city, featuring a ‘forest-like environment’ with vertical greenery crawling up the sides of buildings.3 Forest City’s website also boasts of its sustainability, making promises of ‘smart water, waste, and energy’ technology.4 However, when observed critically, alleged green cities such as Forest City are not as eco-friendly as they seem.5 In a global speculative market, many city-makers are more interested in the economic benefits of promoting greenness, rather than the environmental ones.

My main argument is that green urbanism has been harnessed as a tool of speculative urbanism by city-makers and is used to bolster economic growth and corporate images rather than provide eco-friendly urban developments. This results in ‘greenwashed’ green cities, which promote select environmentally friendly aspects of the city to appeal to foreign investors and capital whilst hiding their negative environmental impacts. I contextualize my argument with a case study of Forest City, a new green city project that has been greenwashed by the speculative green urbanism of city-makers.

This paper is divided into four sections. First, I survey the existing literature concerning speculative green urbanism and greenwashing in the context of cities. Second, I explain how ‘greenwashed’ cities are the products of speculative green urbanism. Thirdly, I investigate the local and foreign actors behind Forest City’s ‘green’ aesthetic, concluding that speculative green urbanism is being used by all parties, albeit for different reasons. Finally, I suggest that Forest City has been ‘greenwashed’ by speculative green urbanism, highlighting the hidden environmental impacts and selective greening of the project.

LITERATURE REVIEW A growing body of literature discusses the degradation of the meaning behind the ‘green city’, having gone from symbolizing an obvious commitment to sustainability to being an ‘empty signifier’ that “can mean almost anything”.6 According to Newman & Matan, green urbanism refers to settlements that are “smart, secure, and sustainable,” and often notably filled with greenery.7 Though originally rooted in visions of ecological preservation and meeting social needs, McCann argues that in the competitive neoliberal economy, both state and private actors covet the title of the ‘greenest’ city, looking to leverage green urbanism for economic growth.8 Indeed, there is money to be made by going green.

Rosol, Beal and Mossner (2017, 1711) identify the “emergence of a proper economic sector centered around green urbanism” where city-makers have realized the transformative

CAT CARKNER

Field Notes

power of greening the city to attract the upper classes and foreign investment.9 It is also acknowledged that the commodification of green urbanism, a ‘socio-spatially selective process’, usually fails to benefit local deprived areas or disadvantaged populations, favoring the business of global elites.10 Over the past decade, city-makers have tied green urbanism to speculative urbanism, which refers to a land development regime where the production of the built environment specifically aims to produce quick returns on often-risky investments such as masterplanned cities.11 Koh, Zhao and Shin argue that city-makers, identifying the global economic interest in ‘green cities’, now adopt green urbanism to increase the speculative value of their projects in a type of ‘speculative green urbanism’.12 There is a large body of literature on greenwashing, which refers to the efforts an organization takes to be perceived as more environmentally responsible than they are, deliberately hiding condemning information from the public.13 Scholars have applied greenwashing theory to the rising number of ‘green’ cities across the world.14 Tateishi argues that, given rising global demand for eco-friendly products and services, “real estate developers employ greenwashing strategy in order to avoid or mitigate green pressures, and increase attractiveness and competitiveness of their project by reaching at green demands”.15 Pjevovic explains this phenomenon, arguing that presenting progressive environmental policies is now a necessary condition for a city to attract capital and young professionals, as an increasing number of individuals want to align themselves with sustainability.16 Mention of speculative green urbanism is often left out of the academic ‘greenwashing’ discussion, although the concepts seem inextricably combined.

Building on recent critical scholarship of urban greening, the present essay synthesizes the existing literature on speculative urbanism, green urbanism, and greenwashing.

While Koh, Zhao, and Shin advance the argument that speculative green urbanism is at play at Forest City, they have a relatively narrow scope concerning speculative green urbanism’s origins.17 They primarily focus on the transfer of China’s ‘ecological civilization’ aesthetic to its Malaysian new-city projects to attract Chinese investment.18 I want to situate Forest City’s greenwashing in the broader context of a world that increasingly expects ‘green’ or sustainable promises from real estate developments. While previous literature has confronted greenwashing, and the economic motives behind creating the ‘greenest’ city, scholars have yet to apply this specific concept to Forest City.19 Moser and Avery come close, offering a critical assessment of the economic and geopolitical motives behind Forest City’s urban greening, but stop short of discussing greenwashing.20 So, this essay presents a fresh perspective

7 9 Rosol, Beal, and Mossner, “Greenest Cities?”, 1714.

10 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 7.

11

Ibid, 7.

12

Ibid, 7.

13 Eigo Tateishi, “Craving gains and claiming “green” by cutting greens? An explanatory analysis of greenfield housing developments in Iskandar Malaysia.” Journal of Urban Affairs 40, no. 3 (2017): n.p. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 07352166.2017.1355667.

14

Ibid.

15 Eigo Tateishi, ““Greenwashing and Capitalist Production of Urban Space: A case study of Iskandar Malaysia” (Master’s Thesis, Lund University, 2015), 4.

16 Pjevovic, “Cities and Climate Change”, 19.

17 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 24.

18

Ibid, 6.

19 Pjevovic, “Cities and Climate Change”, 19; Rosol, Beal, and Mossner, “Greenest Cities?”, 1711; Tateishi, “Craving Greens”.

20 Sarah Moser and Emma Avery, ““The multi-scalar politics of urban greening in Forest City, Malaysia.” Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 60 (2021): 4, https://doi. org/10.1016/ j.ufug.2021.127068.

When You’re Green You’re Growing: Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities

21 Chien Shiuh-Shen, “Chinese eco-cities: A perspective of landspeculation-oriented local entrepreneurialism.”

China Information 27, no.2 (2013): 173, https://doi. org/10.1177%2F0920203 X13485702; Frederico Cugurullo, “Urban ecomodernisation and the policy context of new ecocity projects: Where Masdar City fails and why.”

Urban Studies 53, no.11 (2016): 14, https://doi.org/ 10.1177%2F00420980155 88727.

22 Moser and Avery, “Multi-scalar”, 3; McCann, “Mobilities”, 1820.

23 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”,1.

24 Shiuh-Shen, “Chinese eco-cities”, 176.

25

Ibid, 177.

26

Ibid, 179.

27 Cugurullo, “Urban eco-modernisation”, 2430.

28 Ibid, 2430; “Home Page”, Masdar - A Mubadala Company, accessed March 21, 2021, https://masdar.ae/.

on greenwashing and speculative green urbanism, identifying that the latter produces the former, and that both concepts are at play in new green cities such as Forest City.

SPECULATIVE GREEN URBANISM GIVES WAY TO GREENWASHING As scholars have argued, green urbanism is increasingly being used as an economic development strategy that has more to do with bringing in revenue than saving the planet.21 Often, customers are willing to pay more for ‘green’ real estate, which appeals to notions of sustainability and health.22 City-makers, wanting to maximize the speculative value of their projects, are therefore incentivized to engage in green urbanism. I follow Koh, Zhao, and Shin’s argument that city-makers have used speculative urbanism to hijack green urbanism, thereby creating a new form of speculative green urbanism.23 However, I wish to build on their argument and identify the product of such speculative green urbanism: greenwashed cities.

In new green cities, speculative urbanism primarily seeks to capitalize on a green economy, rather than deliver sustainable cities.24 This is evident in China, where the state’s commitment to ‘ecological civilization’, the goal of sustainable social and environmental reform, has worked in tandem with increasing market environmentalism to produce a wave of new green cities.25 Developers are dually incentivized to capitalize on green cities: they can align themselves with the goals of the state and attract potential investors who are especially interested in such projects. Promotions for these projects often feature lush greenery and energy-conserving home appliances. However, many new green cities are built in the peripheries of China, without public transit connecting them to neighboring municipalities.26 While these green cities may attract many eco-conscious investors, their remoteness will likely introduce large highways and increased motor traffic to the area. In effect, these cities have been greenwashed by city-makers engaging in speculative green urbanism. Developers highlight their project’s adherence to ecological civilization and sustainability to attract potential investors whilst hiding their high-carbon implications.

Masdar City, a new master-planned green city in Abu Dhabi, further demonstrates how speculative urbanism has appropriated green urbanism to produce greenwashed cities.

Cugurullo argues that the plans for the ‘alleged eco-city’ are not motivated by studies of the surrounding biophysical environment “but rather [by] market analyses”; the project’s developers speculate that a green city will be the most attractive to investors in a market increasingly concerned with clean tech-

CAT CARKNER

Field Notes

nology and sustainability.27 While Masdar City faces environmental challenges such as securing sustainable water and energy supply chains, these issues are ignored by developers in favor of further promoting it as one of the world’s “most sustainable urban communities”.28 The contrast between Masdar City’s green, eco-friendly marketing and its unsustainable use of resources consolidate it as greenwashed.

In this section, I have brought together two concepts that are gaining traction in urban studies but have yet to be fully connected: speculative green urbanism and greenwashing. I propose that oftentimes, speculative green urbanism is now the motivating force behind the transnational trend of new green cities, thus producing greenwashed cities rather than sustainable ones. Within the current economic environment, one of market environmentalism, ‘greening’ the city is attractively profitable. Greenwashing new city projects allows city-makers to capitalize from the popular green image in an act of speculative urbanism while hiding practices that remain unsustainable and harmful to the environment.

INVESTIGATING THE MOTIVES BEHIND A ‘GREEN’ FOREST CITY In previous sections, I established that green city rhetoric is often a form of speculative urbanism used by city-makers to market greenwashed cities. The concept of green cities has been perverted by city-makers looking to foster economic growth instead of providing sustainable urban solutions. I now seek to situate Forest City, a Malaysian new-city project which claims to be a “smart and green futuristic city”, as one of these greenwashed cities born of speculative green urbanism.29 Forest City is developed by Country Garden PacificView Sdn Bhd (CGPV), a joint venture between the Country Garden Group (CGG), a Chinese property developer, and the Malaysian-government-backend Esplanade Danga 88 Sdn Bhd (EDSB).30 CGPV regularly interacts with the Iskandar Regional Development Agency (IRDA), a branch of the local government, to oversee Forest City’s construction.31 In this section, I demonstrate how the IRDA and the CGPV, the primary actors behind Forest City’s development, employ speculative green urbanism to the project, compromising its ‘greenness’.

Recognizing that the green economy has become very profitable, urban actors are not only trying to monetize greenness, but competitively establish their cities as the ‘greenest’ to reap the largest share of the rewards.32 It is evident that the IRDA is among those urban actors coveting the title of ‘greenest’. In 2014, the IRDA established the Green Accord Initiative Award (GAIA) in Iskandar, Malaysia.33 The GAIA is supposed

9 29 Forest City CGPV, “Green & Smart”.

30 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”,1.

31

Ibid, 9.

32 Rosol, Beal, and Mossner, “Greenest Cities?”, 1711.

33 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 12-13.

When You’re Green You’re Growing: Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities

34

Ibid, 13.

35 “HOME”, CGG, accessed March 21, 2021, https://en.bgy.com.cn/ index.aspx.

36 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 14.

37 Ibid, 16; Moser and Avery, “Multi-scalar”, 2.

38

Ibid, 2.

to promote and reward sustainability in the built environment.

Koh, Zhao, and Shin suggest that the IRDA uses the GAIA to emphasize the higher green standard of Iskandar’s real estate developments compared to those of their global competitors to attract foreign investment.34 This demonstrates that the IRDA is engaging in speculative green urbanism when it comes to the SEZ’s new developments. The GAIA has two reinforcing purposes: to incentivize developers to create ‘green’ projects such as Forest City, and to situate Iskandar as having the greenest cities, most ripe for investment.

As a subsidiary of CGG, CGPV benefits from having a parent company with clout. CGG is a well-established developer in the eyes of many Chinese, easily identifiable due to its marketing emphasis on green urbanism and smart cities.35 Mr. Yang Guoqiang, the founder of CGG, insists that there be “green everywhere you can see” in CGG developments.36 This ‘green everywhere’ notion is best encapsulated by the vertical greening of CGG’s headquarters in Shunde, China (see Figure 1). Recent scholarship suggests that the reproduction of CGG’s vertical greening in Forest City (Figure 2) is a strategic marketing and branding move on CGPV’s part.37 By transplanting CGG’s distinctive ‘green everywhere’ aesthetic and smart technology to Forest City, CGPV attracts CGG’s existing Chinese customer base, who trust and recognize the allure of this kind of green urbanism and smart technology. Moser and Avery identify Forest City’s urban greening as “potentially highly profitable to Chinese property developers” such as the CGG, “as it is calculated to attract particular demographics of Chinese nationals” including retirees or young families.38 Consequently, CGPV benefits from the business of these Chinese consumers in Forest City, and CGG can further consolidate its ‘green and smart’ brand. In this way, the greenness of Forest City is a vehicle for branding and business, and any environmental benefits are a bonus to successful economic development.

Figure 1 Image of CGG’s headquarters, exemplifying their distinct vertical greening. The Edge Communications, untitled, 2019, photograph, CGG’s Chinese headquarters, https://www. theedgemarkets.com/ article/country-gardenholdings-sees-688-jumpnet-profit)

CAT CARKNER

Field Notes

Figure 2 Mockup of Forest City’s vertical greenery, reminiscent of CGG’s headquarters. Forest City CGPV, untitled, Forest City, Iskandar Malaysia, https://www. forestcitycgpv.com/ about-forest-city/greensmart

Both the IRDA and the CGPV have caught onto the economic potential of exploiting green urbanism within new city projects. Subsequently, speculative green urbanism has been employed by the local Malaysian state and the CGPV, albeit for different economic motives. Through the GAIA, the IRDA seeks to position Iskandar Malaysia’s developments such as Forest City as ‘greener’ than those of its global competitors to attract more investment; the CGPV utilizes the ‘green and smart’ rhetoric of Forest City to profit from CGG’s existing Chinese customer base and charge a price premium on their development. Thus, the development process of Forest City is one premised on speculative green urbanism, a perversion of the original green city ethos. In the next section, I will demonstrate how the CGPV and the IRDA’s uses of speculative green urbanism have greenwashed Forest City.

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When You’re Green You’re Growing: Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities

39

CGG, “HOME”.

40 Moser, “Forest City”, 935.

41 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 10.

42 Mohammad Hossain, Mazlan Hashim, Japar Zakarai, and Aidy Muslim, “Assessment of the impact of coastal reclamation activities on seagrass meadows in Sungai Pulai estuary, Malaysia, using Landsat data (1994-2017).”

International Journal of Remote Sensing 40, no.9 (2019): 3599, https://doi.or g/10.1080/01431161.201 8.1547931.

43 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 18.

44 Moser and Avery, “Multi-scalar”, 2.

45 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 22.

46

Ibid, 22.

47 Rosol, Beal, and Mossner, “Greenest Cities?”, 24.

48 Joseph Williams, “ “EVALUATING MEGAPROJECTS: THE CASE STUDY OF FOREST CITY IN JOHOR, MALAYSIA.” Cambridge: Malaysia Sustainable Cities Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2016), 48, https://malaysiacities.mit. edu/sites/default/files/ documents/Williams.pdf.

49 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 20.

50

Ibid, 21.

GREENWASHED: THE ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS OF FOREST CITY CGG’s website proudly boasts that the firm pioneers the phenomenon of smart green cities, having “brought modernization to over 300 cities, which improves life quality of indigenous people and beautifies cities’ landscapes”.39 Meanwhile, the consequences of Forest City’s land reclamation, poorly maintained construction workers’ camps, and exclusivity tell a different story, having proven detrimental for local Malaysians.

Forest City will sit upon four reclaimed islands dredged from the Malay Peninsula of the Johor Strait.40 Because its construction site spans an area rich with seagrass and marine life, the fishing-based livelihoods of many local Malaysians are threatened by Forest City.41 In a longitudinal study spanning 1994-2017, Hossain et. al, found that similar land reclamation projects in Johor had devastated local seagrass meadows.42 Therefore, to create the ‘green’ Forest City, which advertises the perfect combination of the environment and technology, existing ecosystems and indigenous ways of life are being destroyed. Like in Masdar City, the water supply chain of Forest City also raises local concern. Government officers say that as developers rapidly introduce more people into Iskandar Malaysia, it gets increasingly difficult to plan and distribute water to everyone.43 As the state of Johor experiences a surge in droughts, the water-intensive nature of Forest City’s lawns and sparkling swimming pools seem blatantly environmentally insensitive.44 Other Malaysians report that due to Forest City’s construction, local villages have been experiencing electricity disruptions and dangerously increased traffic.45 Moreover, Forest City’s construction workers’ camps, situated near the villages, further stress water supply and have continuous waste-disposal issues, dirtying the local environment.46 While upsetting, these injustices are not unusual. The benefits of speculative green urbanism are seldom distributed equitably. Rosol et al. underscore the fact that green infrastructure and technologies are frequently materialized to benefit the speculative investor, “oftentimes to the detrimental exclusion of local populations who are left to bear the negative costs of such ‘green’ pursuits”.47 With basic units priced at RM 500,000 (approx $152,500 CAD), Forest City is inaccessible for most Malaysian locals, whose median annual salary is around RM 55,000.48 In fact, 98.54% of Forest City’s phase 2-10 units were sold to foreign buyers, speaking to the project’s target consumer base of international elites.49 Interviewing local Malaysian youth about their first impressions of Forest City, Koh, Zhao, and Shin report that some expressed feelings of alienation from the green city, and worried that it threatened their existing way of life.50 The evidence of green-

CAT CARKNER

Field Notes

washing in Forest City is overwhelming: behind the advertised vertical green facades and smart energy condominiums are the local Malaysians and construction workers who bear the brunt of the project’s environmental impacts but are excluded from enjoying it.

Forest City is greenwashed rather than truly green, as its greenness is directed towards generating speculative clout and foreign capital at the cost of the local environment. Forest City’s eco-friendly promises of low carbon emissions and carless streets do little to offset the new environmental issues that it creates.51 Through land reclamation and the cultivation of an exclusive ‘green and smart’ city, the natural ecosystems that local livelihoods depend on are being threatened. Moreover, the camps of construction workers brought into Iskandar Malaysia by developers place both the workers and locals in unsustainable predicaments. Behind the glitz and glamour of Forest City’s mockups and eco-rhetoric hides the unsustainable exploitation of the local environment and the destruction of traditional ways of life.

CONCLUSION In an era of speculative urbanism and an increasingly ‘eco-conscious’ global economy, urban trends such as the green city must be critically examined. Despite their sustainable, eco-friendly rhetoric, many so-called ‘green cities’ are merely greenwashed, with their negative environmental impacts being swept under the rug by city-makers. These are acts of speculative green urbanism, where city-makers try to leverage a project’s ‘greenness’ to attract capital and raise real estate values. Branding a city as green has a twofold economic benefit for city-makers: developers can profit off their brand’s association with greenness, and local governments can compete for international investment in the emerging green economy.

Forest City embodies a ‘green’ city that is truly greenwashed; behind the exclusive city’s aesthetically placed trees and vertical greening lies a local population watching the destruction of their local environment. City-makers engaging in speculative green urbanism have hijacked the original sustainable ethos of new green cities and green urbanism; the only green that developers are seeing is money. 

13 51 “Community - Design & Concept | Forest City’’, Forest City CGPV, accessed March 21, 2021, http://forestcitycgpv.com/ community.

When You’re Green You’re Growing: Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities

BIBLIOGRAPHY CGG. 2021. “HOME.” Accessed March 21, 2021. https://en.bgy.com.cn/index.aspx.

Chew, Rachel. 2019. “Country Garden Holdings sees 68.8% jump in net profit.” The Edge Malaysia, accessed March 21, 2021. https://www.theedgemarkets.com/ article/country-garden-holdings-sees-688-jump-net-profit.

Cugurullo, Federico. “Urban eco-modernisation and the policy context of new eco-city projects: Where Masdar City fails and why.” Urban Studies 53, no. 11 (2016): 2417-2433. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0042098015588727.

Forest City CGPV. 2021a. “Community - Design & Concept | Forest City.”Accessed March 21, 2021. http://forestcitycgpv.com/community.

Forest City CGPV. 2021b. “Forest City Vertical Greenery System - Green & Smart.”

Accessed March 21 2021. https://www.forestcitycgpv.com/about-forest-city/ green-smart.

Hossain, Mohammad, Mazlan Hashim, Japar Zakaria, and Aidy Muslim. 2019.

“Assessment of the impact of coastal reclamation activities on seagrass meadows in Sungai Pulai estuary, Malaysia, using Landsat data (1994-2017).” International Journal of Remote Sensing 40, no. 9 (2019): 3571-3605. https://doi. org/10.1080/01431161.2018.1547931.

Koh, Sin Yee, Yimin Zhao, and Hyun Bang Shin. 2021. “The Micropolitics of Speculative Green Urbanism at Forest City, Iskandar Malaysia.” Papers in Urbanisation, Planning and Development 21, no. 1 (2021): 1-29.

Masdar. 2021. “Home Page.” Accessed March 21, 2021. https://masdar.ae/.

McCann, Eugene.“Mobilities, politics, and the future: Critical geographies of green urbanism.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 49, no. 8 (2017): 1816-1823. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0308518X17708876.

Moser, Sarah. 2018. “Forest city, Malaysia, and Chinese expansionism.” Urban Geography 39, no. 6 (2018): 935-943. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2017.140 5691.

Moser, Sarah, and Emma Avery. “The multi-scalar politics of urban greening in Forest City, Malaysia.” Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 60 (2021):1-5. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.ufug.2021.127068.

Newman, Peter, and Anne Matan. Green Urbanism in Asia: The Emerging Green Tigers. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Coo, 2013. https://doi. org/10.1142/8596.

Pjevovic, Dushan. “Cities and Climate Change: Power Games and Greenwashing Through Transnational Urban Networks” (Master's Thesis, The University of British Columbia, 2015) 1-34. https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0355224

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Field Notes

Rosol, Marit, Vincent Beal, and Samuel Mossner. “Greenest cities? The (post-)politics of new urban environmental regimes.” Environment and Planning A 49, no.8 (2017): 1710-1715. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0308518X17714843.

Shiuh-Shen, Chien.“Chinese eco-cities: A perspective of land-speculation-oriented local entrepreneurialism.” China Information 27, no. 2 (2013): 173-196. https:// doi.org/10.1177%2F0920203X13485702.

Tateishi, Eigo. “Greenwashing and Capitalist Production of Urban Space: A case study of Iskandar Malaysia.” (Master's Thesis, Lund University, 2015) 1-94.

Tateishi, Eigo.“Craving gains and claiming “green” by cutting greens? An explanatory analysis of greenfield housing developments in Iskandar Malaysia.” Journal of Urban Affairs 40, no.3 (2017): 370-393. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0735 2166.2017.1355667.

Williams, Joseph. “EVALUATING MEGAPROJECTS: THE CASE STUDY OF FOREST CITY IN JOHOR, MALAYSIA.” Cambridge: Malaysia Sustainable Cities Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2016). https://malaysiacities.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Williams.pdf.

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Sejong: A Comparative View into the New Administrative City’s Successes, Failures, and Anticipated Challenges

JIM MEJINO

Field Notes

17

ABSTRACT

Putrajaya’s sister city, Sejong is a new administrative city located 120 km from Seoul in the centre of South Korea with a similar vision and function. Much like its sister city, many government offices have been moved to Sejong to address the intense congestion that plagues Seoul.

This paper will comparatively discuss how the two cities take different approaches to placemaking, population management, and urban transportation in order to meet similar needs and assess their successes and failures.

INTRODUCTION

1 Youngsang Kwon, Sejong Si (City): are TOD and TND Models Effective in Planning Korea’s New Capital, in Cities, (2015), 242-257; Jeongmuk Kang, A Study of the Future Sustainability of Sejong, South Korea’s Multifunctional Administrative City, Focusing on Implementation of Transit Oriented Development, (2012); Hee Sun Choi and Alan Reeve, Legal Identity in the Form-Production Process, Using as a Case Study the Multifunctional Administrative City Project (Sejong) in South Korea, in Urban Design International, (2015), 66-78.

2 Kwon, Sejong Si (City), 3.

Sejong is a new administrative capital located 120 km south of Seoul in the heart of South Korea with a bold strategy to move government offices out of Seoul in order to reduce the intense congestion and pollution that plagues Seoul. By building a new city in the centre of the country away from the Seoul Metropolitan Area, the government hopes to spread the population and industries from Seoul and promote more balanced development in the country as a whole.

Little has been published to date on the City of Sejong itself. Scholarship on Sejong has generally been focused on discussions of the master plan and the built form, particularly its ring- shaped axis, the public transit system, and its urban aesthetic.1 Research beyond the city as a physical entity such as discussions of the social and cultural aspects of the city are largely unexplored. Because the city is still under development, conditions are subject to change, and it is therefore difficult to make conclusions about the city. There is, however, merit to a focused study of Sejong as it is “the first grand urban planning project for South Korea in the twenty-first century and provides opportunities to showcase South Korea’s expertise in planning and constructing new towns”.2 Discussion of current issues and speculation of future challenges can provide useful insight not only for Sejong as an individual city but also as a model for future projects in South Korea.

This paper discusses key themes in the Sejong City project while drawing comparison to its sister city, Putrajaya, as a new city development with a similar vision and function. The first section will discuss Sejong’s Local Identity and its effect on the built form. The second section will discuss Sejong’s unique Family Planning Policies and how they aim to address the broader national issue of declining fertility. And finally, the third section will discuss Sejong’s Public Transit System and its anticipated challenges and shortcomings.

Sejong: A Comparative View into the New Administrative City’s Successes, Failures, and Anticipated Challenges

3 Sarah Moser, New Cities: Opportunities, Visions and Challenges Cityquest KAEC Forum 2013 Summary and Analysis Report, (2014).

4 Adam Cutts, New Cities and Concepts of Value: Planning, Building and Responding to New Urban Realities, (2016).

5 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “Spotlight on four Korean Cities”, in Urban Transport Governance and Inclusive Development in Korea, (2017), 95.

6 Multifunctional Administrative City Construction Agency (MACCA), Sejong Korea: Multifunctional Administrative City, (2014).

7 Sarah Moser, “Putrajaya: Malaysia’s New Federal Administrative Capital”, in Cities, (2010), 285-297.

8 Sarah Moser, “Putrajaya: Malaysia’s New Federal Administrative Capital”, in Cities, (2010), 291.

BACKGROUND Putrajaya began development in 1995 with the intent to move government ministries out of Kuala Lumpur to decrease congestion and consolidate them into one location to increase efficiency. Putrajaya was designed to be a well-planned, aesthetically pleasing, and environmentally friendly new capital that is meant to foster a sense of Malaysian national identity.3 Sejong, Putrajaya’s sister city, is being developed with similar a similar vision and function in mind. The city is located 120km south of Seoul in the heart of South Korea and is designed to be the new hi-tech, eco-friendly administrative capital of South Korea.4 Seoul constitutes only 0.6% (605.2km2) of South Korea’s territory, and yet it is home to one-fifth of the population (10 million), and almost half (25 million) if you consider the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA).5 It is clear that development is South Korea is incredibly uneven with the population highly concentrated in Seoul’s urban area. In response to this, government offices including the Prime Minister’s office as well as nine ministries and 36 government agencies have been moved to Sejong to reduce congestion in Seoul and promote more balanced development in South Korea.6 LOCAL IDENTITY: URBAN IMAGINARY AND REALITY Putrajaya has a distinct urban aesthetic, albeit an unexpected one. The city’s architecture draws on Islamic motifs for inspiration. What is surprising is the particular sect of Islam that Putrajaya has chosen to emulate. Malaysia is a Muslim majority country with a vernacular architectural style that is known for its wood carving and building methods, but that is not the aesthetic that designers have employed in Putrajaya.7 Instead, the city’s design turns towards the Middle East for inspiration.

Putrajaya’s architecture is characterized by domes, arches, and geometric patterns that are common in the Middle East.

By blending “High Islamic” aesthetics and hi-tech architecture, Putrajaya projects the state’s vision of Malaysia as a progressive Muslim nation.8 Putrajaya’s local identity is contradictory. The city is part of a larger state building project meant to promote the image of a Muslim nation, but instead of turning towards its own local Islamic architectural traditions, Putrajaya alternatively looks towards Islamic styles from other countries to form the base of its state project. Despite these mixed influences, Putrajaya’s Islamic architecture sends the clear message that the city is founded on an Islamic national identity.

Unlike Putrajaya, Sejong lacks a clear concept of place and local identity. This is not to say that Sejong is totally devoid

JIM MEJINO

Field Notes

of cultural symbolism. The city was named after King Sejong the great who is remembered for creating hangul, the Korean writing system and all of the streets in Sejong are to be named from words of exclusively Korean origin.9 The use of language in place names makes it clear that Sejong’s placemaking strategy is to foster a sense of uniquely Korean identity. Where the development falls short is in the tangible aspects of the city. Planning documents and promotional material such as those from the Multifunctional Administrative City Construction Agency lack any sense of a unique Korean aesthetic and instead present a more generic globalized style.10 Choi and Reeve examine this tension between local place identity and the homogenization of urban form due to globalization. They argue that for planners of new cities, the challenge is “to reconcile locally informed place-making, with an ideological imperative to be globally significant”.11 By conducting surveys with planning officials as well as current and potential residents of Sejong, they found that planners and residents alike preferred designs that conform to the existing topography as well as street patterns and architecture that resembles those found in the old districts of Seoul. Choi and Reeve argue that features like these would better represent a Korean place-identity because they are rooted in local, social, and historical context.12 This finding is in stark contrast to Sejong’s built form.

Instead of adapting to the existing topography, developers levelled the land and instead of drawing on vernacular styles, buildings in Sejong embody a more homogenized “global” aesthetic. Interviews with planning officials reveal that decision makers saw local identity as part of the city’s image and brand rather than “something that might influence design and development”.13 Despite a positive response to a vision of Sejong that is inspired by local culture, Sejong’s planners do not see the cultivation of place-identity through locally informed architecture as an important factor in urban design.

Putrajaya’s aesthetic emerged from contradictory intentions. The city is part of a state building project that aims to rebrand Malaysia as a progressive Muslim country, and yet it draws on aesthetics from other countries for inspiration rather than cultivating a sense of identity from its own local styles. The rationality behind this may be confusing, but what is clear is that Putrajaya is able to create a distinct sense of place identity through its built form. Sejong, however, does not. Drawing on local culture is not seen as a relevant consideration when designing the built form of the city. It is instead reduced to a marketing strategy to promote the city’s brand.

Choi and Reeve conclude that new cities distance themselves from local culture that is seen as outdated in favour of following global trends. In the struggle between globalized homogeneity and local identity, a homogenous urban form wins out.

19 9 Jeongmuk Kang, A Study of the Future Sustainability of Sejong, South Korea’s Multifunctional Administrative City, Focusing on Implementation of Transit Oriented Development, (2012); Youngsang Kwon, Sejong Si (City): are TOD and TND Models Effective in Planning Korea’s New Capital, in Cities, (2015), 242-257.

10 Multifunctional Administrative City Construction Agency (MACCA), Sejong Korea: Multifunctional Administrative City, (2014).

11 Hee Sun Choi and Alan Reeve, Legal Identity in the Form-Production Process, Using as a Case Study the Multifunctional Administrative City Project (Sejong) in South Korea, in Urban Design International, (2015), 68-69.

12 Choi and Reeve, 75-76.

13

Choi and Reeve, 74.

Sejong: A Comparative View into the New Administrative City’s Successes, Failures, and Anticipated Challenges

14 Department of Statistics Malaysia, Federal Territory of Putrajaya at a Glance.

Retrieved from Department of Statistics Malaysia, (2018).

15 Statistics Korea, 2017 Population and Housing Census, (2017).16 Pjevovic, “Cities and Climate Change”, 19.

16 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “Spotlight on four Korean Cities”, in Urban Transport Governance and Inclusive Development in Korea, (2017).

17 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Fertility Rates, (2022).

18 Statistics Korea, Final Results of Birth Statistics in 2017, (2017).

19 Isabella Steger and Sookyung Lee, “A New Capital Built from Scratch is an Unlikely Utopia for Korean Families”, in Quartz, (2018).

FAMILY PLANNING POLICIES: SUBVERTING BROADER TRENDS Despite starting development a decade earlier than Sejong, Putrajaya continues to struggle to attract residents. Putrajaya’s target population is 350,000 but as of 2018 its population sits at 90,000.14 Unlike its sister city, Sejong has a population of almost 300,000 as of 2017, well on its way to its 2030 goal of 500,000. 15 Sejong’s growing population is surprising considering that the opposite is observed at the national level. Figure 1 shows that South Korea has the lowest fertility rate amongst OECD countries.16 According to the OECD, a fertility rate of two is considered the minimum for sustaining a population, so Korea’s low fertility is huge cause for concern.17 Strikingly, according to Statistics Korea, Sejong has the highest fertility rate in the country at 1.67 children per woman. Sejong’s fertility rate is higher than the national average at 1.05 whereas Seoul holds the lowest birthrate in the country at 0.84 children per woman.18 Steger and Lee attribute this phenomenon to Sejong’s family friendly environment and policies.19 Many young families are attracted to the city’s low cost of living and abundant green spaces. In addition, Sejong’s policies are geared towards the wellbeing of new mothers. The local government runs a facility called the Happy Mom Centre which “provides a range of mental and physical support services for pre- and

Figure 1 Fertility Rates of OECD Countries (OECD, 2016)

JIM MEJINO

Field Notes

post-natal needs, and offers services for fathers too, such as cooking classes”.20 The government also offers other maternity services such as “assigning a caregiver to support new moms for 10 days after birth at a heavily subsidized rate, which includes childcare assistance and food preparation. The city also provides classes on lactation and childcare. In addition to the central Happy Mom facility, each apartment complex also has its own daycare center”.21 In addition to these maternity services, Sejong city also awards 1.2 million KRW to every couple for each child they have to further encourage residents to have children.22 Moving to Sejong to start a family is not without its disadvantages though. Relocating is costly and the financial burden of moving on top of the cost of having children may prove too high for some families. Despite this, Sejong boasts the highest population growth in the country and likewise, the city’s reputation as a family friendly city continues to grow.23

21 20 Isabella Steger and Sookyung Lee, “A New Capital Built from Scratch is an Unlikely Utopia for Korean Families”, in Quartz, (2018), 6.

21

Steger and Lee, 6.

22

Steger and Lee, 7.

23 Statistics Korea, 2017 Population and Housing Census, (2017).

24 Ross King, “ReWriting the City: Putrajaya as Representation”, in Journal of Urban Design, (2007), 117-138.

Figure 2 Fertility Rates in Korea (Steger & Lee, 2018)

TRANSIT ORIENTED DESIGN: LOOKING AHEAD Putrajaya’s master plan is typical of a master planned new capital. Like many capital cities (Brasilia, Washington, Canberra), Putrajaya boasts a grand linear axis around which everything else is organized. The 4.2km stretch of pavement bisects the city and connects the Prime Minister’s office to the convention centre.24 Sejong radically deviates from this trend. Unlike other capital cities Sejong’s master plan rejects a ceremonial axis and instead features a circular axis.25 Instead of concentrating functions around a central business district which causes congestion during peak hours, Sejong will have a large central park. Key functions such as government offices, universities,

25 Jeongmuk Kang, A Study of the Future Sustainability of Sejong, South Korea’s Multifunctional Administrative City, Focusing on Implementation of Transit Oriented Development, (2012); Youngsang Kwon, Sejong Si (City): are TOD and TND Models Effective in Planning Korea’s New Capital, in Cities, (2015), 242-257.

Sejong: A Comparative View into the New Administrative City’s Successes, Failures, and Anticipated Challenges

Figure 3 Locations of Sejong’s Facilities and Central Park (MACCA)

26 Youngsang Kwon, Sejong Si (City): are TOD and TND Models Effective in Planning Korea’s New Capital, in Cities, (2015), 242-257.

27 Sarah Moser, “Putrajaya: Malaysia’s New Federal Administrative Capital”, in Cities, (2010), 285-297 28 Youngsang Kwon, Sejong Si (City): are TOD and TND Models Effective in Planning Korea’s New Capital, in Cities, (2015), 242-257.

29 Jeongmuk Kang, A Study of the Future Sustainability of Sejong, South Korea’s Multifunctional Administrative City, Focusing on Implementation of Transit Oriented Development, (2012).

30 Youngsang Kwon, Sejong Si (City): are TOD and TND Models Effective in Planning Korea’s New Capital, in Cities, (2015), 242-257.

and medical centres will be distributed along the ring axis as shown in Figure 3. By decentralizing key functions, planners hope to prevent the congestion patterns observed in cities with a more centralized morphology. This decentralization of institutions also reflects Sejong’s ideology of democracy and balanced development where the decentralized design parallels the decentralization of administrative functions away from Seoul.26 Putrajaya’s master plan includes an extensive public transportation system in order to prevent the traffic and pollution that plagues Kuala Lumpur. However, this planning has failed to meet people’s needs. Putrajaya is heavily reliant on cars because the wide streets and lack of shade in Malaysia’s hot climate make the city unwalkable.27 Sejong’s master plan, if executed well, may be able to avoid replicating this problem.

Sejong’s ring road has been criticized for being inefficient compared to the simplicity and efficiency of a grid system, but planners hope to improve efficiency by carefully designing around the circular axis.28 Along with the six facilities, Sejong’s master plan includes 21 communities and several bus terminals that are to be dispersed along the ring road. The city will have a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system that runs along the ring road to facilitate quick travel around the loop and easy access to the city’s facilities.29 Each of the 21 communities will be centred on or adjacent to one of the bus terminals to allow easy access to the BRT system. Each neighbourhood will be built with New Urbanist principles in mind with a 400m radius to ensure walkability, key facilities in each community such as schools, health centres, and commercial districts, and innercity bus systems that will connect to the BRT stations.30

JIM MEJINO

Field Notes

The master plan is commendable not only for its Transit Oriented Development (TOD) but also its Traditional Neighbourhood Development (TND). The design not only addresses issues of congestion and reliance on cars by promoting public transit but also anticipates how residents will use public transit.

It takes into consideration not only how residents will access the transit system but also how they will access their neighbourhoods more broadly. The design however, is not without its flaws. The OECD identifies a potential issue with a road network that is centred around a ring-shaped road.31 Because the city’s functions are scattered throughout the city instead of concentrated in the middle, public transit in Sejong would be less efficient than a city with a grid system. The OECD speculates that this anticipated inefficiency may result in increased fare prices which may in turn decrease quality and frequency and consequently, lower ridership. On the other hand, the OECD notes that the same design also discourages car use which may instead increase demand for public transit and therefore, increased quality and supply of services.32 Because the infrastructure has yet to be built, there is plenty of room for the project to stray from the master plan and reproduce the car-centric reality in Putrajaya. However, if Sejong’s public transit system is successful in reducing the dominance of cars in the city and meeting its residents’ needs, it may become a model for future developments both in South Korea and internationally.

CONCLUSION Sejong and Putrajaya are cities similar in their vision and function. By comparing the two cities, this paper identifies that where their differences lie are in their successes and failures.

Where Sejong fails to cultivate a sense of unique place-identity, Putrajaya paints a vivid self portrait of a new nation with a progressive Muslim image. Where Putrajaya struggles to meet population goals, Sejong creates policy that not only attracts residents but also subverts a national trend in declining fertility. The two cities’ approach to public transit as a solution to congestion also offers insight to how they might differ.

At this stage, it is unclear whether Sejong will continue to develop exactly according to the master plan or if it will deviate in response to unforeseen challenges. Because the city is still under construction, research is limited by the information gathered from planning documents and observation of the parts of the city that are complete. More research will be needed in the future to determine how successful Sejong is both as a city and as a tool to promote more balanced national development. 

23 31 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “Spotlight on four Korean Cities”, in Urban Transport Governance and Inclusive Development in Korea, (2017).

32

OECD, 120.

Sejong: A Comparative View into the New Administrative City’s Successes, Failures, and Anticipated Challenges

BIBLIOGRAPHY Choi, Hee Sun, and Alan Reeve. 2015. "Legal Identity in the Form-Production Process, Using as a Case Study the Multifunctional Administrative City Project (Sejong) in South Korea." Urban Design International 66-78.

Cutts, Adam. 2016. "New Cities and Concepts of Value: Planning, Building and Responding to New Urban Realities." New Cities Foundation. March. https:// newcities.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/03/PDF-New-Cities-and-Concepts-of-Value- CityquestKAECForum2015.pdf.

Department of Statistics Malaysia. 2018. "Federal Territory of Putrajaya at a Glance."

Department of Statistics Malaysia, Official Portal. https://www.dosm.gov.my/ v1/index.php?r=column/cone&menu_id=bkJnUlk2WXUyT0h VWm5IZXlubERjUT09 .

Kang, Jeongmuk. 2012. "A Study of the Future Sustainability of Sejong, South Korea's Multifunctional Administrative City, Focusing on Implementation of Transit Oriented Development." Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet Portal. November 21. http://www.diva- portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A571211&dswid=7644.

King, Ross. 2007. "Re-Writing the City: Putrajaya as Representation." Journal of Urban Design 117-138.

Kwon, Youngsang. 2015. "Sejong Si (City): are TOD and TND Models Effective in Planning Korea's New Capital." Cities 242-257.

MACCA, Multifunctional Administrative City Construction Agency. 2014. "Sejong Korea: Multifuntional Administrative City." National Library of Korea. www. nl.go.kr/app/nl/search/common/download.jsp?file_id=FILE-00008486286.

Moser, Sarah. 2014. "New Cities: Opportunites, Visions and Challenges Cityquest KAEC Forum 2013 Summary and Analysis Report." New Cities Foundation. https://newcities.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/06/PDF-CityquestKAECForum-Report-Sarah-Moser.pdf.

Moser, Sarah. 2010. "Putrajaya: Malaysia's New Federal Administrative Capital."

Cities 285- 297.

OECD. 2016. "Fertility Rates." OECD Data. https://data.oecd.org/pop/fertility-rates. htm.

—. 2022. "Fertility Rates." OECD Data. March 25. https://data.oecd.org/pop/fertilityrates.htm#indicator-chart.

OECD. 2017. "Spotlight on four Korean Cities." In Urban Transport Governance and Inclusive Development in Korea, by OECD, 93-127. Paris: OECD.

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Field Notes

Statistics Korea. 2017. "2017 Population and Housing Census." Statistics Korea. http:// kostat.go.kr/portal/eng/pressReleases/8/7/index.board?bmode=read&bSeq=&aSeq= 370993&pageNo=1&rowNum=10&navCount=10&currPg=&sTarget=title&sTxt=.

—. 2017. "Final Results of Birth Statistics in 2017." Statistics Korea. August 22. http:// kostat.go.kr/portal/eng/pressReleases/1/index.board?bmode=read&aSeq=370670.

Steger, Isabella, and Sookyung Lee. 2018. "A New Capital Built from Scratch is an Unlikely Utopia for Korean Families." Quartz, June 20.

25

Land Cover and Groundwater Stress

ABBI BARAN

Field Notes

27

ABSTRACT

Groundwater is an important global resource which constitutes 30% of Earth’s freshwater.1 As withdrawals from aquifers increasingly contribute to global water supply, we must be cognizant of the risks facing global aquifers to sustainably manage them for future generations.

Human alterations to land cover parameters have significant effects on recharge to aquifer systems. Based on the separations of the 37 largest aquifers systems into stress regimes by Richey et al.,2 I have calculated the percent of land covers and urban land cover using data from the USGS and created an Irrigation Index using surface water irrigation data from the FAO. I found that the proportions of the land cover between stress regimes show crucial differences in the amount of forest, other vegetation, and cropland. Aquifer systems facing aquifer stress have the highest urban land cover percentages and high Irrigation Indices. Land cover is also an important control on artificial recharge to “fossil” aquifers.

INTRODUCTION 1 Shiklomanov, Igor A. “World freshwater resources. Water in crisis: a guide to the world’s fresh water resources.”

Clim. Change 45 (1993): 379-382.

2 Richey, Alexandra S. et al. “Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE.” Water resources research 51, no. 7 (2015a): 5217-5238.

3 Shiklomanov. “World freshwater resources.”

4 Richey, Alexandra S. et al. “Uncertainty in global groundwater storage estimates in a Total Groundwater Stress framework.” Water resources research 51, no.

7 (2015b): 5198-5216.

5-11

See page 28.

Groundwater is commonly reported to comprise 30% of global freshwater.3 Storage estimates range from 7x106 to 23x106 km3.4 Groundwater is found in soil and rock pore spaces nearly everywhere in the world as shallow, local aquifers and in aquifers spanning thousands of kilometers and up to hundreds of meters deep.5 Many of the world’s largest aquifers are transboundary and require international efforts to sustainably manage. Withdrawals from aquifer systems have increased exponentially since the mid 20th century.6 At the beginning of the 21st century, withdrawals were estimated at 600-800 km3/ year.7 Groundwater use contributes significantly to irrigation in the world’s most important food producers: the U.S., China, and India. Approximately 40% of water for irrigation is pumped from the ground.8 Groundwater is often used as a backup water source in the dry season and during drought, when aquifer systems are already stressed by reduced recharge.9 Aquifer depletion is an unavoidable consequence of high withdrawal rates. In the U.S., the average depletion rate was ~25km3/year in the last decade.10 Overextraction leads to land subsidence, saltwater intrusion, reduced streamflow, and prohibitively expensive pumping costs.11 Groundwater stress

Land Cover and Groundwater Stress

5 Richts, Andrea et al. “WHYMAP and the groundwater resources map of the world 1: 25,000,000.” In Sustaining groundwater resources, pp. 159-173. Springer, Dordrecht, 2011 6 Konikow, Leonard F. Groundwater depletion in the United States (19002008). Reston, Virginia: US Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey, 2013.

7 Siebert, Stefan, Verena Henrich, Karen Frenken, and Jacob Burke. “Update of the digital global map of irrigation areas to version 5.” Rheinische FriedrichWilhelms-Universität, Bonn, Germany and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy (2013); Konikow, Leonard F., and Eloise Kendy.

“Groundwater depletion: A global problem.”

Hydrogeology Journal 13, no. 1 (2005): 317-320.

8 Siebert, Stefan, Jacob Burke, Jean-Marc Faures, Karen Frenken, Jippe Hoogeveen, Petra Döll, and Felix Theodor Portmann. “Groundwater use for irrigation–a global inventory.” Hydrology and earth system sciences 14, no. 10 (2010): 1863-1880.

9 Richey et al.

“Quantifying renewable groundwater” 10 Konikow.

Groundwater Depletion 11 Alley, William M. “Another water budget myth: The significance of recoverable ground water in storage.” (2007); Konikow. Groundwater Depletion

12 Falkenmark, Malin, and Mats Lannerstad.

“Consumptive water use to feed humanity-curing a blind spot.” Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 9, no. 1/2 (2005): 15-28.

indicators are often used to determine the risks facing aquifer systems and to develop sustainable management practices.

Water stress calculations use a simple use to availability ratio.12 For groundwater, withdrawals constitute use and annual recharge is the availability. 13 Other methods consider total aquifer storage as availability14, or the area of water use compared to the surface area of the aquifer as in a groundwater footprint model.15 All methods find that stress between aquifers is asymmetrical. While some aquifers are estimated to be up to 90% depleted by the end of the century16, some have limited withdrawals, and others show artificial recharge due to changing climatic factors and/or irrigation water additions.17 There are increasingly complex relationships between surface- and groundwater withdrawals and recharge, meaning that withdrawals may not be an acceptable proxy for aquifer depletion in groundwater stress studies. Richey et al. defined aquifer stress as modeled aquifer recharge over the trend in aquifer storage derived from satellite-based data.18 This study included a limited evaluation of the effect of anthropogenic land uses on the stress of aquifers, mostly to explain the differences between their remote-sensing approach and the traditional withdrawal statistics method.

The pathways and sources of groundwater recharge have been altered by human-caused land cover change.

Current land cover can be understood as a final state of land cover change. Therefore, land cover can help explain altered recharge patterns which contribute to aquifer stress. Agriculture and urban environments are the two main anthropogenic land cover changes.19 These environments have profound effects on how water moves through the atmosphere-surface-ground system. In this study, I will determine the percent of landcover over a selection of the most important aquifer systems and explore the relationships between the stress regimes, as determined by Richey et al., and land covers.20 I will also compare the stress regimes with irrigation patterns and the density of artificial surfaces over the surface extent of these aquifers. I hope to provide insights on the consequences of altered groundwater recharge for future sustainable groundwater use.

METHODS Groundwater of various depth and availability underlies most of Earth’s land area21. I chose to consider only the most significant underground water stores in accordance with the study

by Richey et al., which defined the stress regimes of the 37 largest aquifers.22 A global hydrogeological map from WHYMAP is compiled from local and regional groundwater extent stud-

ABBI BARAN

Field Notes

29

Table 1 Definitions of Aquifer Stress

ies23. I downloaded the shapefile containing the spatial extent of the study aquifers and prepared the layer for the analysis by projecting the data into WSGS 1984.

Richey et al. defined aquifer stress as the trend in aquifer storage derived from satellite-based data over modeled aquifer recharge.24 The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) is a joint effort between the United States and Germany which measures gravity anomalies on Earth by quantifying the irregularities in the orbits of twin satellites25. The anomalies can be used to determine Earth’s water storage as water is heavy and abundant; the movement of water causes fluctuations in the Earth’s mass distribution and, therefore, the gravity field. They removed the contribution from surface water components using multiple models26. The aquifer storage trend is the average annual change over the study period from January 2003 to December 2013 in mm/year. Recharge is the average annual natural recharge modeled using the Community Land Model version 4.0 in mm/year. This model considers an unconfined aquifer layer which can predict negative recharge. The recharge values are not representative of the true recharge occurring within the aquifer system, rather the estimated recharge based on known parameters.

Stress values can be positive or negative. Positive values arise when the storage trend and recharge are positive or when both measures are negative. Negative recharge occurs where capillary rise is the dominant mechanism over the aquifer, such as in hot and dry climates27. Negative stress values occur when either recharge or the storage trend is negative.

Therefore, the aquifer stress value alone is not very explanatory. For my analysis, I divided the 37 study aquifers into four stress regimes defined by the Richey et al.: Unstressed, Overstressed, Variable Stress, and Human-Dominated Variable Stress.28 The stress regimes are defined in Table 1. I joined the dataset from Richey et al. which contained the depletion and recharge rates for each aquifer to the aquifer polygons.

I then created a field to store the stress regime of each aquifer based on the sign (positive or negative) of the storage trend and the recharge rate. There are 13 Unstressed aquifers in the dataset, 8 Overstressed, 13 with Variable Stress,

13 Richey et al.

“Quantifying renewable groundwater stress.”

14 Richey et al.

“Uncertainty in global groundwater storage.”

15 Gleeson, Tom, Yoshihide Wada, Marc FP Bierkens, and Ludovicus PH Van Beek. “Water balance of global aquifers revealed by groundwater footprint.” Nature 488, no.

7410 (2012): 197-200.

16 Richey et al.

“Uncertainty in global groundwater storage.”

17 Abdelmohsen, Karem, Mohamed Sultan, Mohamed Ahmed, Himanshu Save, Baher Elkaliouby, Mustafa Emil, Eugene Yan, Abotalib Z. Abotalib, R. V. Krishnamurthy, and Karim Abdelmalik. “Response of deep aquifers to climate variability.” Science of the Total Environment 677 (2019): 530-544. ; Goncalves, Julio et al. “Quantifying the modern recharge of the “fossil” Sahara aquifers.”

Geophysical Research Letters 40, no. 11 (2013): 2673-2678.

18 Richey et al.

“Uncertainty in global groundwater storage.”

19-28

See pages 30-31.

Land Cover and Groundwater Stress

Table 2 Aquifer Regimes Data

19 Sharp, John M. “The impacts of urbanization on groundwater systems and recharge.” AQUA mundi 1, no. 3 (2010).

20 Richey et al.

“Uncertainty in global groundwater storage.”

21 Richts et al.

“WHYMAP and the groundwater resources map.”

22 Richey et al.

“Uncertainty in global groundwater storage.”

23 Richts et al.

“WHYMAP and the groundwater resources map.”

and 3 with Human-Dominated Variable Stress. The names, stress regimes, storage trends, and average recharge rates are presented in Table 2. A map of the study aquifers, categorized by stress regimes is included as Figure 1.

Land cover data is available at the global scale from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Land cover is defined as the biophysical attributes of the land surface 29. The Global Land Cover Classification (GLCC) was made using various sources of satellite imagery and a sophisticated hierarchical classification procedure. Each pixel is 1km2 and is assigned one of eleven classes based on the dominant land cover type within the pixel area 30.The dataset also includes the percent of each landcover within the pixels. Raster statistics are accessible using the Spatial Analyst toolbox. GIS software is capable

ABBI BARAN

Field Notes

of geometrically determining which pixels lie within the aquifer polygons. I used the zonal histogram tool to calculate the percentage of each land cover type within the spatial extent of the study aquifers. I calculated the average percentage of each land cover type for each regime and rescaled the values to 100%.

To visualize the relationships between urban areas and stress regimes, I mapped urban areas and determined the percentage of artificial surfaces over each aquifer separated by stress regime. I then calculated the percent of artificial surfaces for each study aquifer. I first summed the percentage of impermeable surfaces of every pixel for each aquifer, then divided by the count of pixels multiplied by 100. The equation is detailed below. I conditionally selected pixels that are more than 25% covered by artificial surfaces using the GLCC to display along with the percent artificial surfaces over each aquifer in Figure 2.

31

Figure 1: Map of Aquifers

by Stress Regime

24 Richey et al.

“Uncertainty in global groundwater storage.”

25 Greicius, Tony, and Hartono, Naomi. “Grace Earth Missions”. NASA Jet Propulsions Laboratory.

Retrieved December 8, 2021, from https://www. jpl.nasa.gov/missions/ gravity-recovery-andclimate-experiment-grace.

26 Richey et al.

“Quantifying renewable groundwater stress.”

27 Goncalves et al.

“Quantifying the modern recharge.”

28 Richey et al.

“Quantifying renewable groundwater stress.”

I performed a similar process using a global irrigation dataset.31 The pixel values represent the hectares of surface water irrigated cropland within each 5-minute pixel. I calculated an Irrigation Index (II) by dividing the sum of hectares within each aquifer by the geometric area of the aquifer polygon, see equation below. Figure 3 is a map of the Irrigation Indices of the study aquifers separated by stress regime.

29 Lambin, Eric F., Billie L. Turner, Helmut J. Geist, Samuel B. Agbola, Arild Angelsen, John W. Bruce, Oliver T. Coomes et al.

“The causes of land-use and land-cover change: moving beyond the myths.”

Global environmental change 11, no. 4 (2001): 261-269.

30

See page 33.

Land Cover and Groundwater Stress

RESULTS

(Top) Figure 2: Map of Urban Areas and Percent of Urban Land Cover over Aquifers by Stress Regime

(Bottom) Figure 3: Map of Irrigation Indices of Aquifers by Stress Regime

Each pixel in the GLCC is classified into one of eleven land cover types: Artificial-Surfaces, Cropland, Grassland, Forest, Shrubland, Herbaceous-Vegetation-Aquatic-or-Regularly-Flooded, Mangroves, Sparse-Vegetation, Bare-Soil, Snowand-Glaciers, and Waterbodies. The 37 study aquifers each had a different composition of the land cover types. The average composition for the four stress regimes were quite different. Figure 4 shows the average proportions of land covers for each stress regime. Figures 5-8 show the percentages for each of aquifers separated by stress regime.

ABBI BARAN

Field Notes

The Unstressed aquifers (Figure 5) are primarily Forest.

They have significant Grassland and Cropland land covers.

Three aquifers’ most common land cover is Cropland, while five are dominated by non-forest vegetated land covers or Bare-Soil. This stress regime has the greatest proportion of Forest and combined “naturally” vegetated land covers.

Unstressed aquifers are found on every continent, especially in the far North and in remote regions.

The Overstressed aquifers (Figure 6) are dominated by Bare-Soil and Sparse-Vegetation. Only one of the aquifers has significant Cropland, and two are covered by Grassland and Shrubland. These aquifers are in arid to semi-arid areas with both sparse and densely populated regions.

The Variable stress aquifers (Figure 7) are dominated

by Cropland. Four aquifers are primarily vegetated and two are covered by mostly Bare-Soil. Many of these aquifers have some “land cover” by Waterbodies. This likely means that they are overlain by many small lakes or follow coastlines. This regime has much greater proportions of Artificial-Surfaces than the others. They are present on every continent in primarily densely populated areas.

The Human-Dominated Variable stress regime (Figure 8) has fewer aquifers. They are dominated by different proportions of Grassland, Shrubland and Cropland. These aquifers are located only in Southern Africa and North America in relatively dry, temperate climates.

The proportions of land cover types for the aquifers within each stress regime are generally similar, while the average land cover compositions between stress regimes appear significantly different. Although I did not run a statistical analysis, I will continue into the discussion with the assumption that the differences are significant.

The pixels with 25% or more artificial surfaces are concentrated in North America, Europe, and Eastern China, and are scattered throughout South Asia and Australia. The aquifers with the greatest urban percentages are therefore located in these regions. Four of the five aquifers with greater than 5% “urban” areas belong to the Variable Stress regime, The fifth is Unstressed. None of the Overstressed or Human-Dominated Variable Stress aquifers have greater than 1% artificial surfaces.

The Irrigation Index ranges from 0 to over 600,000. Larger IIs (Irrigation Index) indicate that there is a higher density of surface water irrigation over the aquifer. The greatest IIs occur in aquifers belonging to the Overstressed and Variable stress regimes. Some aquifers of the other stress regimes also have high IIs. Very low IIs are in remote regions, in the north, and in dense forests. North African and Middle Eastern aquifers have IIs greater than 2,000.

33 30 Richts et al.

“WHYMAP and the groundwater resources map.”

31 Siebert, Stefan, Verena Henrich, Karen Frenken, and Jacob Burke.

“Update of the digital global map of irrigation areas to version 5.”

Rheinische FriedrichWilhelms-Universität, Bonn, Germany and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy (2013).

Land Cover and Groundwater Stress

Figure 4: Average Land Cover Percent by Stress Regime

Figure 5: Percent of Land Covers for Unstressed Aquifers

ABBI BARAN

Field Notes

35

Figure 6: Percent of Land Covers for Overstressed Aquifers

Figure 7: Percent of Land Covers for Variable Stress Aquifers

Land Cover and Groundwater Stress

Figure 8: Percent of Land Covers for HumanDominated Variable Stress Aquifers

DISCUSSION A water balance, such as the equation below, makes evident the effect of altering the land surface on the amount of recharge.32

Every element to the right of the equation is determined by the land cover. Even precipitation may be influenced by certain land covers.33 Groundwater recharge is the excess water available after all surface elements have met their needs.

Therefore, a change in the land cover can significantly alter the patterns of recharge to the aquifer. This is most obvious in the Human-Dominated Variable stress regime, although surface parameters impact recharge for all aquifers. Capil-

ABBI BARAN

Field Notes

lary rise dominates this stress regime. Modifications to the land surface and altered climatic factors have created artificial recharge to these aquifers. Unnatural recharge to fossil aquifers has been documented in other aquifer systems as well.34 Precipitation above the long-term average can be a primary factor; Richey et al. noted a wet period in the early 2010s which may have contributed to increased recharge.35 Whether this increase is caused by normal weather fluctuations, or is related to human-caused climatic changes, is unknown. Deforestation can also increase the water available for recharge. Greater rooting depth and water requirements for trees than for other vegetation types decreases the soil water available to infiltrate to groundwater even if infiltration rates are enhanced by organic matter in forest soils.36 The Grassland and Shrubland over these aquifers may have partially replaced removed forest. Excess water may also be available from inefficiencies in surface water irrigation.37 The aquifers in this regime with cropland have IIs greater than 2,000 meaning that irrigation excess may be an addition to the groundwater store. As water quality of artificial recharge may be lower38, the water in these aquifers may not be suitable for increased use even as the possibility of sustainable management emerges alongside newly positive recharge.

The change in groundwater storage is a combination of the total recharge minus the sum of discharge and human withdrawals; this is termed capture. According to the foundational paper by Thies39, a resilient groundwater system can reduce baseflow to prevent withdrawals from changing the total storage of the aquifer. A resilient groundwater system may cause its combined surface water-groundwater system to be non-resilient by reducing water available downstream for aquatic ecosystems and human water requirements. Baseflow is an important contributor to low flow of rivers in the dry season without which the pattern of discharge is significantly changed from the natural state.

Aquifer systems with natural recharge can be resilient.

Withdrawals from Unstressed aquifers can be increased while facilitating sustainable management practices due to their resilience. These aquifers underlie rainfed cropland and many are in remote regions with low population densities; increased withdrawals from these aquifers are not necessary to sustain these populations. Variable Stress is caused by withdrawals which exceed capture. Either withdrawals are greater than recharge or the baseflow was not reduced, causing measurably decreased aquifer storage. The Variable Stress aquifers can be sustainably managed by reducing withdrawals below capture.

The Variable stress regime has the greatest proportion of artificial surfaces and the highest Irrigation Indices.

Water enters the groundwater system through various sources

37 32 Finch, J. W. “Estimating direct groundwater recharge using a simple water balance model–sensitivity to land surface parameters.” Journal of Hydrology 211, no. 1-4 (1998): 112-125.

33 Ellison, David, Cindy E. Morris, Bruno Locatelli, Douglas Sheil, Jane Cohen, Daniel Murdiyarso, Victoria Gutierrez et al. “Trees, forests and water: Cool insights for a hot world.”

Global environmental change 43 (2017): 51-61.

34 Goncalves et al.

“Quantifying the modern recharge.”

35 Richey et al.

“Uncertainty in global groundwater storage.”

36 Allen, Alistair, and Deborah Chapman.

“Impacts of afforestation on groundwater resources and quality.” Hydrogeology Journal 9, no. 4 (2001): 390-400.

37 Grogan, Danielle S., Dominik Wisser, Alex Prusevich, Richard B. Lammers, and Steve Frolking. “The use and re-use of unsustainable groundwater for irrigation: a global budget.”

Environmental Research Letters 12, no. 3 (2017): 034017 38 Grogan et al.

“The use and re-use of unsustainable groundwater.”

39 Theis, Charles V. “The source of water derived from wells.” Civil Engineering 10, no. 5 (1940): 277-280.

40 Lerner, David N. “Groundwater recharge in urban areas.” Atmospheric Environment. Part B. Urban Atmosphere 24, no. 1 (1990): 29-33.

Land Cover and Groundwater Stress

41 Grogan et al.

“The use and re-use of unsustainable groundwater.”

42 Lerner. “Groundwater recharge in urban areas.”

43 Sharp. “The impacts of urbanization.”

44 Lerner. “Groundwater recharge in urban areas.”

45 Sharp. “The impacts of urbanization.”

46 Goncalves et al.

“Quantifying the modern recharge.”

and pathways.40 Both urban environments and surface-water irrigated agriculture increase the sources and pathways of groundwater recharge. Surface water irrigation provides an additional input to groundwater as irrigation inefficiencies increase soil moisture and contribute to groundwater recharge.41 Although direct recharge in urban environments is limited by the predominance of impermeable surfaces, overall recharge rates are increased.42 Leakage from water supply systems and storm sewers is a significant contributor to groundwater in developed cities. Leakage from water supply systems can be as great as 50% and not below 10%.

Increased porosity beneath urban areas enables water to enter the aquifer systems more easily.43 Over-irrigation of lawns and greenery can infiltrate into groundwater. Urban recharge rates between 100-300 mm/year are common, though the quality of urban groundwater is often poor.44 This water can contaminate the connected aquifer system. High urban water tables can cause basement flooding and infrastructure instability.45 Increased groundwater storage may not be strictly positive.

Fossil aquifers with negative recharge have no capacity for resilience; any mining from these aquifers is a permanent removal of water. The Overstressed aquifers will be depleted if groundwater extractions are not halted. There are no possibilities for sustainable management of these aquifer systems.

Unfortunately, this seems unlikely as these aquifers are in dry regions, where access to freshwater for households and agriculture from other sources is limited. Oasis irrigation is the main withdrawal from North African overstressed aquifers.46 Due to high temperatures, most of the water will evaporate away and little will be left to recharge groundwater from what is withdrawn.

CONCLUSION This project leaves many questions unanswered. The apparent relationships between the dominant land covers and stress regimes does not prove that there is a connection between aquifer stress and land surface changes. Even if we assume that the land cover differences are statistically significant, they may be responsive to a compounding variable or else the connection is too complex to be understood without further field research. The data also presented several additional limitations. The GLCC pixels are too coarse to represent the actual land cover makeup completely and accurately over the aquifers. The land cover types are also limited to the eleven provided classes. The irrigation data only represents the surface water irrigation over the aquifer. Where groundwater irrigation is a significant withdrawal from groundwa-

ABBI BARAN

Field Notes

ter, stress will also be higher and limited artificial recharge from surface water sources will not be sufficient to offset the extraction.

This project builds on the understandings of local recharge processes which enable sustainable management of the world’s aquifer systems. Land cover types that increase groundwater recharge and groundwater storage may not be strictly positive. Unnatural and unintended recharge may be contaminated, which can reduce the overall quality of aquifer systems. This can increase the costs associated with groundwater withdrawals. Often groundwater is thought to have high quality, though this will not be the case in areas where agriculture or urban areas have artificially increased groundwater recharge with poor quality water. Due to the complex nature of water circulation and the significant alterations to the sources and pathways of groundwater recharge on highly modified land surfaces, it is important to consider the impacts of land cover change on groundwater processes and stress. 

39

Land Cover and Groundwater Stress

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abdelmohsen, Karem, Mohamed Sultan, Mohamed Ahmed, Himanshu Save, Baher Elkaliouby, Mustafa Emil, Eugene Yan, Abotalib Z. Abotalib, R. V. Krishnamurthy, and Karim Abdelmalik. "Response of deep aquifers to climate variability." Science of the Total Environment 677 (2019): 530-544.

Allen, Alistair, and Deborah Chapman. "Impacts of afforestation on groundwater resources and quality." Hydrogeology Journal 9, no. 4 (2001): 390-400.

Alley, William M. "Another water budget myth: The significance of recoverable ground water in storage." (2007).

Alley, William M., Richard W. Healy, James W. LaBaugh, and Thomas E. Reilly.

"Flow and storage in groundwater systems." science 296, no. 5575 (2002): 1985-1990.

Döll, Petra, Kristina Fiedler, and Jing Zhang. "Global-scale analysis of river flow alterations due to water withdrawals and reservoirs." Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 13, no. 12 (2009): 2413-2432.

Ellison, David, Cindy E. Morris, Bruno Locatelli, Douglas Sheil, Jane Cohen, Daniel Murdiyarso, Victoria Gutierrez et al. "Trees, forests and water: Cool insights for a hot world." Global environmental change 43 (2017): 51-61.

Falkenmark, Malin, and Mats Lannerstad. "Consumptive water use to feed humanity-curing a blind spot." Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 9, no. 1/2 (2005): 15-28.

Ferguson, Grant, Mark O. Cuthbert, Kevin Befus, Tom Gleeson, and Jennifer C. McIntosh. "Rethinking groundwater age." Nature Geoscience 13, no. 9 (2020): 592-594.

Finch, J. W. "Estimating direct groundwater recharge using a simple water balance model–sensitivity to land surface parameters." Journal of Hydrology 211, no. 1-4 (1998): 112-125.

Gleeson, Tom, Yoshihide Wada, Marc FP Bierkens, and Ludovicus PH Van Beek.

"Water balance of global aquifers revealed by groundwater footprint."

Nature 488, no. 7410 (2012): 197-200.

Goncalves, Julio, Jade Petersen, Pierre Deschamps, Bruno Hamelin, and O. Baba‐Sy. "Quantifying the modern recharge of the “fossil” Sahara aquifers." Geophysical Research Letters 40, no. 11 (2013): 2673-2678.

Greicius, Tony, and Hartono, Naomi. “Grace - Earth Missions”. NASA Jet Propulsions Laboratory. Retrieved December 8, 2021, from https://www.jpl.nasa. gov/missions/gravity-recovery-and-climate-experiment-grace.

ABBI BARAN

Field Notes

Konikow, Leonard F. Groundwater depletion in the United States (1900-2008).

Reston, Virginia: US Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey, 2013.

Lambin, Eric F., Billie L. Turner, Helmut J. Geist, Samuel B. Agbola, Arild Angelsen, John W. Bruce, Oliver T. Coomes et al. "The causes of land-use and land-cover change: moving beyond the myths." Global environmental change 11, no. 4 (2001): 261-269.

Lerner, David N. "Groundwater recharge in urban areas." Atmospheric Environment.

Part B. Urban Atmosphere 24, no. 1 (1990): 29-33.

Margat, Jean, and Jac Van der Gun. Groundwater around the world: a geographic synopsis. Crc Press, 2013.

Richey, Alexandra S., Brian F. Thomas, Min‐Hui Lo, John T. Reager, James S. Famiglietti, Katalyn Voss, Sean Swenson, and Matthew Rodell. "Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE." Water resources research 51, no. 7 (2015a): 5217-5238.

Richey, Alexandra S., Brian F. Thomas, Min‐Hui Lo, James S. Famiglietti, Sean Swenson, and Matthew Rodell. "Uncertainty in global groundwater storage estimates in a Total Groundwater Stress framework." Water resources research 51, no. 7 (2015b): 5198-5216.

Richts, Andrea, Wilhelm F. Struckmeier, and Markus Zaepke. "WHYMAP and the groundwater resources map of the world 1: 25,000,000." In Sustaining groundwater resources, pp. 159-173. Springer, Dordrecht, 2011.

Sharp, John M. "The impacts of urbanization on groundwater systems and recharge."

AQUA mundi 1, no. 3 (2010).

Shiklomanov, Igor A. "World freshwater resources. Water in crisis: a guide to the world’s fresh water resources." Clim. Change 45 (1993): 379-382.

Siebert, Stefan, Verena Henrich, Karen Frenken, and Jacob Burke. "Update of the digital global map of irrigation areas to version 5." Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, Germany and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy (2013).

Siebert, Stefan, Jacob Burke, Jean-Marc Faures, Karen Frenken, Jippe Hoogeveen, Petra Döll, and Felix Theodor Portmann. "Groundwater use for irrigation–a global inventory." Hydrology and earth system sciences 14, no. 10 (2010): 1863-1880.

Theis, Charles V. "The source of water derived from wells." Civil Engineering 10, no.

5 (1940): 277-280.

41

Where Are BIXI Bike Stations Located and Why?

AVA KLEIN

Field Notes

43

ABSTRACT

BIXI, a popular bike sharing company in Montreal, has bicycle sharing stations all across the island. While these bicycle shares have become commonplace in the warmer months of the city, the company is forced to take away stations in colder months, when cycling rates drop. In this case, knowledge on prime locations for bike sharing stations is key for BIXI to continue serving cyclists during off-peak months. This paper embodies the role of the BIXI company, using GIS tools to understand what demographic characteristics correlate to BIXI stations, and how this knowledge can be used to find prime locations if BIXI needs to reduce their 660 stations to 100. First, buffer and overlay tools with BIXI stations and census data finds that characteristics such as population density, proximity to the downtown core, and possibly one-person households, correlate to bike share use. Next, using this knowledge, ArcGIS’s location-allocation tool is used to find 100 prime locations.

Three ‘prime location’ maps are thus generated as useful suggestions for the BIXI company to use when deciding what bike stations to keep, remove, or add, during off-peak months. This research hopes to gain a better understanding of how BIXI decides the location of their bicycle stations and what factors may be considered when installing bike

INTRODUCTION

1 “Qui Sommes-Nous?,” BIXI Montréal, accessed March 25, 2021, https:// www.bixi.com/fr/quisommes-nous.

2 “Open Data,” BIXI Montréal, accessed March 25, 2021, https://www.bixi. com/en/page-27.

The bike sharing company, BIXI, has become increasingly popular throughout Montreal, with a network of more than 8000 bikes and 660 stations1. With BIXI, people can rent a bike to traverse the city and then park their bike in an equivalent bike dock when done. While BIXI stations can be found all over the island of Montreal, the company does not explain their motive for locating and concentrating bike stations in certain areas of the city over others. Understanding prime locations for bike stations is key for when BIXI is forced to suspend service in colder months, as bike station usage drops.2 This paper thus has two objectives. First, I use buffer and overlay analysis to examine demographic characteristics for Montreal, Laval, and part of Longueuil, to infer what characteristics BIXI may use to decide where they will situate bike stations for widespread use.

Second, location allocation analysis is conducted based on

Where Are BIXI Bike Stations Located and Why?

3 Ipek N. Sener, Naveen Eluru, and Chandra R. Bhat, “Who Are Bicyclists?

Why and How Much Are They Bicycling?,” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 2134, no. 1 (2009): 63-72, https://doi. org/10.3141/2134-08.

4 Snehanshu Banerjee et al., “Optimal Locations for Bikeshare Stations: A New GIS Based Spatial Approach,” Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives 4 (2020): 1-11, https:// doi.org/10.1016/j. trip.2020.100101.

5 “Census Profile, 2016 Census Montréal,” Statistics Canada, October 27, 2021, https://www12.statcan.gc. ca/census-recensement/ 2016/dp-pd/prof/details/ page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1= CMACA&Code1=462&Geo 2=PR&Code2=01&Data= Count&SearchText= Montreal&SearchType =Begins&SearchPR=01 &TABID=1&B1=All. 6 Sener et al., “Who Are Bicyclists?,” 63-71.

7

Ibid, 65.

8

Ibid, 63.

9 Yang Yang, Lan Jiang, and Zili Zhang, “Tourists on Shared Bikes: Can Bike-Sharing Boost Attraction Demand?,” Tourism Management 86 (2021): 1-11, https:// doi.org/10.1016/j. tourman.2021.104328.

two of these characteristics in order to visualise the locations of optimal bike stations when BIXI’s 660 stations are reduced to 100. Location allocation determines the best locations to serve a selected clientele. This paper draws on research from Senner and Banerjee who use similar GIS tools to determine common demographic characteristics of cyclists and optimal locations for bike shares, respectively.3 4 This research hopes to gain a better understanding of how BIXI decides the location of their bicycle stations and what factors may be considered when installing bike stations.

METHODOLOGY Part 1: Overlay of demographic information The demographic factors considered come from the 2016 Census and include: Population Density Per Square Kilometre, Average Age, Median Total Income in 2015 Among Recipients ($), One-Person Households, Bicycle Use as Main Mode of Commuting to Work.5 The five choropleth maps below (figure 1-5) show each respective characteristic overlaid with BIXI’s bike sharing stations. Through visual analysis, I observed whether any of these considered variables correlate with the placement of BIXI stations.

The rationale for examining these five characteristics comes from Senner’s study, which similarly looked at specific characteristics of cyclists in cities in Texas, USA.6 Population density was chosen with the assumption that the more densely populated an area, the more likely people will use active transportation. For average age, I expected that census areas with a younger average age are more likely to use bike stations as younger groups tend to be more environmentally conscious, able-bodied and use biking for daily activities over merely exercise.7 Income level was found to be an important factor in bike share usage with higher-income people biking more than their lower-income counterparts.8 Further, I hypothesise that higher concentrations of one-person households are more likely to correlate with bike share locations because those who live alone may not need to rely on a car to transport multiple people.

Moreover, tourism may be another factor influencing the location of bike sharing stations. Yang et al. found that bike-sharing stations were positively correlated to tourism in Chicago, Illinois,9 and due BIXI’s drastic dip in bike sharing uses from the summer months to the fall,10 it seems as though BIXI similarly caters on tourism. Therefore, proximity to the downtown core may affect where BIXI stations are located. To determine whether BIXI stations cater to the downtown core, I created a buffer around two major points within downtown Montreal:

AVA KLEIN

Field Notes

Sherbrooke Street & Frontenac Street, and Sherbrooke Street & Aylmer Street. In order to determine how far the buffer should be, I relied on a report by Savage from Statistics Canada which looked at commuting distances from places of residence to places of work in the largest census metropolitan areas in Canada.11 Savage found that the median distance to commute to work in Montreal is 8.6 km in 2016, which was rounded up to 10 km for this analysis.12 Part 2: Location Allocation based on demographic data According to the BIXI Open Data page,13 the number of purchases and short term access to bike stations dropped from 83,901 to 15,525 from July to November 2021– about an 80% drop. Using the main demographic predictors of bike station location from Part 1, I use the location allocation tool in ArcGIS–a tool to find optimal locations for facilities based on service demand– to find the prime locations for 100 stations.

This could be relevant during a transitional month period, such as the fall, where fewer tourists are in the city and weather conditions discourage some from cycling. The rationale for this section is to embody the role of the BIXI company, using one or two of the characteristics that appear to correlate with bike station usage to determine prime locations for BIXI stations in off-seasons. In order to conduct this location allocation I used bike lanes as the analysis network with a search tolerance of 10,000 metres. I used the centroid of census tracts as the demand points.

MAPS AND DISCUSSION (See pages 46-55) Projection: UTM 1983, 18N.

45 10

“Open Data.”

11 Katherine Savage, “Results from the 2016 Census: Commuting within Canada’s Largest Cities,” Government of Canada, Statistics Canada, May 29, 2019, https://www150. statcan.gc.ca/n1/ pub/75-006-x/2019001/ article/00008-eng.htm.

12

Ibid.

13

“Open Data.”

Where Are BIXI Bike Stations Located and Why?

Figure 1

AVA KLEIN

Figure 2

Field Notes

47

Where Are BIXI Bike Stations Located and Why?

Figure 3

AVA KLEIN

Figure 4

Field Notes

49

Where Are BIXI Bike Stations Located and Why?

Figure 5

AVA KLEIN

Figure 6

Field Notes

51

Where Are BIXI Bike Stations Located and Why?

Figure 7

AVA KLEIN

Figure 8

Field Notes

53

Where Are BIXI Bike Stations Located and Why?

DISCUSSION Part 1 The main driver of BIXI station locations appears to be proximity to the downtown core. Nearly all of the bike stations are within these two 10 km buffers on Sherbrooke street with the exception of five in Laval and six in the eastern end of the island. Population density (figure 5) and those who bike to work (figure 4) also appear to be directly and strongly aligned with BIXI bike stations. These two results support my initial hypotheses. While the densest areas of one-person households do appear to be concentrated near BIXI stations, there are census tracts that have a high concentration of one-person households and no bike sharing stations, so the relationship between this variable and BIXI locations is less clear (figure 1). It is interesting, however, that the stations in Laval and the eastern end of the island that fall outside the 10 km Sherbrooke buffer are also within the census areas that have high concentrations of one-person households. This further suggests that perhaps one-person households are using bike stations or are living in areas more conducive to bike shares.

Total median income appears to be a moderately strong predictor of BIXI stations, however this finding goes against my inference that bike stations are located in higher income areas. In fact, it appears that the majority of bike stations are located in lower-to-mid income areas (figure 3). Lower average age groups (26-37; 37-40) appear to be correlated to bike shares as well (figure 2).

Part 2 To determine the prime 100 bike stations, I conducted two location allocations: one with predictors that clearly dictate BIXI’s bike share location decisions, and one with predictors that may not be considered by BIXI but potentially should be. Since population density aligned strongly with BIXI bike stations, this characteristic was used in reducing 660 BIXI bike stations to 100. Figure 6 shows the prime locations for BIXI stations which would serve the most populated census tracts. The second location allocation I conducted (figure 7) was based on one-person households, as bike stations were less correlated with this demographic. When reduced to 100 bike stations, the demand weight is 310224 households, serving 450 census tracts out of 673. Figure 8 illustrates two alternative bike station locations that I proposed, based on one-person household density. After running the location allocation analysis, both my candidate facilities were chosen and improved the demand weight from 310224 to 313000 households and added four

AVA KLEIN

Field Notes

additional census tracts that were able to access bike stations.

These two proposed bike stations may be effective for the BIXI company if they decided to use one-person households as a factor for choosing station locations.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE RESEARCH This project sought to understand what drivers are at play when the BIXI bike company chooses the locations of their bike stations. I found that high population density, high concentrations of people who bike to work, younger age groups, low median income, and one-person households all seem to align with BIXI bike sharing stations at various levels. The strongest correlation, through visual analysis, is proximity to the downtown core.

This paper only touched on five demographic variables in relation to BIXI stations. Future branches from this study could examine several other demographic variables such as education, gender, as well as perceptions of biking and bike sharing systems, quality of bike routes in areas and level of traffic. There are clearly several factors at play that determine where companies such as BIXI decide to locate their bike stations.

Through this research, my hypothesis that BIXI caters to stations for professionals working downtown and tourists visiting the city, appears to be supported. Future research questioning the effectiveness of locating BIXI stations so close to the downtown core could be another branch of research from this paper. What communities are being left out from BIXI’s vision? What communities could benefit from BIXI stations and are they being served? While this paper looked at what demographics BIXI is catering towards, with this knowledge, future research could build and question whether these communities are the most in need of bike sharing stations in Montreal.



55

Where Are BIXI Bike Stations Located and Why?

DATA All data was downloaded in a .csv form but presented in google sheets for the purpose of readability.

BIXI Bike station point data https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yU56aB2t0qTYENffAolZlR-xToMwCfZDk1xP8z1kOs U/edit?usp=sharing Demographic Choropleth data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aTAvkP9-0AbyytphoXPnEm8GQgPJ0Bt81nO_MK48QDA/edit#gid=285064734

AVA KLEIN

Field Notes

BIBLIOGRAPHY Banerjee, S., Kabir, M. M., Khadem, N. K., & Chavis, C. (2020). Optimal locations for bikeshare stations: A new GIS based spatial approach. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 4, 100101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. trip.2020.100101 Government of Canada, S. C. (2019, August 9). Census Profile, 2016 Census Montréal [Census metropolitan area], Quebec and Quebec [Province]. Census Profile, 2016 Census - Montréal [Census metropolitan area], Quebec and Quebec [Province]. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/ dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Ge o1=CMACA&Code1=462&Geo2=PR&Code2=24&SearchText=Montreal&SearchType=Begins &SearchPR=01&B1=All&TABID=1&type=0.

Mueller, N., Rojas-Rueda, D., Cole-Hunter, T., de Nazelle, A., Dons, E., Gerike, R., Götschi, T., Int Panis, L., Kahlmeier, S., & Nieuwenhuijsen, M. (2015). Health impact assessment of active transportation: A systematic review. Preventive medicine, 76, 103–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2015.04.010 Open Data. BIXI Montréal. (n.d.). https://www.bixi.com/en/page-27.

Qui sommes-nous? BIXI Montréal. (n.d.). https://www.bixi.com/fr/qui-sommes-nous.

Savage, K. (2019, May 29). Results from the 2016 Census: Commuting within Canada’s largest cities. Statistics Canada. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/ pub/75-006-x/2019001/article/00008-eng.htm.

Senner, I. N., Eluru, N., & Bhat, C. R. (2009). Who are Bicyclists? Why and how much are they Bicycling? Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2134(1), 63–72. https://doi.org/10.3141/2134-08 Yang, Y., Jiang, L., & Zhang, Z. (2021). Tourists on shared bikes: Can bike-sharing boost attraction demand? Tourism Management, 86, 104328. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.tourman.2021.104328

57

Rising Heat and Draining Peat: Anthropogenic Impacts on Northern Peatland Landscapes and Their Consequences for Global Climate Forcing

ISABEL STRACHAN

Field Notes

59

ABSTRACT

Despite comprising only 3% of Earth’s total surface area, peatlands store approximately half of the global atmospheric carbon dioxide stock1. This has significant consequences in regulating global carbon feedback mechanisms, and ultimately climate as a result. Given the global increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere as a result of anthropogenic activities since the onset of the industrial revolution, the question of what role peatlands will play in the global carbon budget moving forward remains a relevant area for research.

Anthropogenic warming of peatlands distributed among the vulnerable Boreal and Subarctic regions poses a great threat to their capacity as a global carbon sink and the possibility of long-term environmental change. In addition to carbon, arctic peatlands in particular are important stores of other potent greenhouse gases, notably methane and nitrous oxide, with the consequence of further emissions under rapidly warming conditions. Further, the biogeochemical control stabilized by the presence of sphagnum moss in northern peatland ecosystems may be undermined under a rapidly warming arctic and subarctic.

How the degradation of peatlands as a whole will shift from a sink to a potential source of greenhouse gases in the coming century without the implementation of mitigation strategies implies a potential reversal in this once important climate-cooling negative feedback mechanism.

1 Nancy B. Dise, “Peatland Response to Global Change,” Science 326, no. 5954 (June 2009): pp. 810-811, https://doi.org/10.1126/ science.1174268, 810.

2 Jens Leifeld and Lorenzo Menichetti.

“The Underappreciated Potential of Peatlands in Global Climate Change Mitigation Strategies.”

Nature communications 9, no. 1 (2018): 1-7.

3-4

See page 60.

INTRODUCTION Peatlands are widely distributed across the planet, found primarily in boreal and temperate ecosystems and to a lesser extent in the tropics2. Their range largely reflects the Last Glacial Maximum, initiated by warmer growing seasons and enhanced primary productivity in deglaciated landscapes3.

These histosols, or organic soils, develop where local conditions favor an accumulation of organic material combined with large precipitation such that decayed organic matter exceeds the rate of decomposition4. The largest system is found in the Western Siberia Lowlands, with other important peatland locations spread across Northern Europe, North America and Pata-

Rising Heat and Draining Peat: Anthropogenic Impacts on Northern Peatland Landscapes and Their Consequences for Global Climate Forcing

3 Paul J Morris et al.

“Global Peatland Initiation Driven by Regionally Asynchronous Warming.”

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 19 (2018): 4851-56.

4 Dise, “Peatland Response,” 810.

5 Morris, “Global Peatland Initiation,” 4851.

6 Dise, “Peatland Response,” 810 7

Ibid.

8

Ibid.

9 Leifeld and Menichetti.

“The Underappreciated Potential of Peatlands,” 2.

10 Tobi A. Oke and Heather A. Hager. “Plant Community Dynamics and Carbon Sequestration in Sphagnum-Dominated Peatlands in the Era of Global Change.” Global Ecology and Biogeography 29, no. 10 (2020): 1610-20 11 Vincent Jassey et al.

“Above‐and Belowground Linkages in Sphagnum Peatland: Climate Warming Affects Plant‐Microbial Interactions.” Global Change Biology 19, no. 3 (2013): 811-23.

12 Jassey. “Above‐and Belowground Linkages,” 812.

13 Yehui Zhong et al.

"Effects of Water Level Alteration on Carbon Cycling in Peatlands."

Ecosystem Health and Sustainability 6, no. 1 (2020): 1806113.

14 Dise, “Peatland Response,” 811 15

Ibid.

gonia5. The accumulation of organic matter in peatlands is largely a function of their waterlogged conditions, with very slow decomposition rates allowing for decayed organic matter to accumulate6. This process of delayed anaerobic decomposition releases the potent greenhouse gas methane, though its role in long-term atmospheric carbon storage counteracts the short-lived methane emissions, creating a net cooling effect7.

While comprising only 3% of total land surface cover, peatlands are responsible for storing up to half as much carbon as found as carbon dioxide found in the atmosphere8. Despite this, peatlands are degrading their ability to retain the carbon they have accumulated for thousands of years. The processes of warming, changing precipitation patterns, and draining of these histosols all pose threats to shifting land cover towards grasslands or shrublands, thereby reducing their capability to act as a global carbon sink. Presently, anthropogenic activities are draining or mining roughly 10% of global peatlands, creating carbon loss pathways and releasing significant amounts of nitrous oxide in the process9. These, in turn, have the potential to see peatlands shift from a net sink to a net source of greenhouse gases in the near future, with further ramifications as a positive global warming feedback mechanism. Further, climate warming is projected to shift the dominant vegetative cover of northern peatlands, ultimately undermining their characteristic ability to sequester carbon10. Notably, peatlands characterised by the presence of sphagnum mosses store the most carbon out of any terrestrial ecosystem11. Under accelerated warming conditions, the biogeochemical cycling traditionally stabilized by the mosses will be undermined, with the potential for positively feedback towards global warming12.

RESULT Undisturbed peatlands act as important net sinks for atmospheric carbon dioxide globally. Presently, peatlands store roughly 20-30% of the Earth’s total stock of soil organic carbon, with boreal peatlands in particular having sequestered approximately 270 to 547 Gt of carbon since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM)13. This ability to sequester carbon has, however, declined over the course of the past 1,000 years owing to shifts in climate that have led to greater flooding14. This trend is likely to continue, given that peatland distribution is highly concentrated in the boreal and subarctic Northern Hemisphere, where the process of warming is accelerated15. Over the course of the next century, it is predicted that the boreal forest and tundra are likely to see upwards of a 5°C temperature increase16. Warming, combined with other anthropogenically-driven climatic effects such as changing precipitation

ISABEL STRACHAN

Field Notes

patterns and an increase in extreme weather events, is likely to amplify this reduction in carbon sequestration capacity.

Peatlands are widely distributed across Subarctic and Boreal regions, creating a variation between perennially frozen and unfrozen soils. The influence of rising temperatures differs between these two landscapes, though in either case it acts as a catalyst for complex carbon and methane interactions between the surface and the atmosphere. For perennially frozen peatlands, the melting of the peat in combination with rising temperatures is likely to amplify the waterlogged nature of these landscapes, creating ripe conditions for anaerobic decomposition and subsequent accelerated methane emissions (Figure 1)17. In unfrozen peat, typically found towards the south of the Boreal region, the primary risk is increased wildfires brought on by periods of drought leading to increased aerobic decomposition, ultimately increasing carbon dioxide emissions (Figure 1)18. While it has been suggested that the higher temperatures may promote peat accumulation and associated carbon sequestration, this could be offset by a nutrient deficit in these regions that may undermine any attempt at negatively contributing to the greenhouse gas climate feedback19. In either case, the warming at northern latitudes is projected to, first, reduce the capacity of the peatland landscapes to sequester carbon, and ultimately become a source of net emissions of carbon dioxide and methane (Figure 1).

61 16 Philip Camill and James Clark. “Climate Change Disequilibrium of Boreal Permafrost Peatlands Caused by Local Processes.” The American Naturalist 151, no. 3 (1998): 207-22.

17 Charles Tarnocai.

“The Impact of Climate Change on Canadian Peatlands.” Canadian Water Resources Journal 34, no. 4 (2009): 453-66.

18 Tarnocai. “The Impact of Climate Change,” 461.

19 Tarnocai. “The Impact of Climate Change,” 263.

20

Ibid, 462.

Figure 1 Potential emission and/or carbon sequestration pathways under warming temperatures in frozen and unfrozen peatlands20.

Rising Heat and Draining Peat: Anthropogenic Impacts on Northern Peatland Landscapes and Their Consequences for Global Climate Forcing

21 Carolina Voigt et al.

“Increased Nitrous Oxide Emissions from Arctic Peatlands after Permafrost Thaw.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 24 (2017): 6238-43.

22 Voigt et al. “Increased Nitrous Oxide Emissions,” 6238.

23

Ibid.

24

Ibid, 6241.

25 Jassey. “Above‐and Belowground Linkages,” 812.

26 Lilli Zeh et al.

“Vascular Plants Affect Properties and Decomposition of Moss-Dominated Peat, Particularly at Elevated Temperatures.”

Biogeosciences 17, no. 19 (2020): 4797-813.

27 Oke and Hager. “Plant Cmmunity Dynamics,” 1611.

28

Ibid.

29

Ibid.

30

Ibid, 1613.

31 Zeh et al. “Vascular Plants,” 4798.

Further, arctic peatland landscapes are underlain by significant stocks of nitrogen. Under warming conditions, more than 67 billion tons of nitrogen may become more readily available to be decomposed and emitted as the potent greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide21. As the permafrost melts, the organically fixed nitrogen undergoes mineralization, forming ammonium and nitrate, leading to the processes of nitrification and denitrification that produce the nitrous oxide emitted by these soils22. With a radiative forcing 300 times stronger than carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide poses a significant threat as a catalyst for further global-warming-related consequences23.

This greenhouse gas contribution is in addition to the already outstanding emissive potential of the global carbon and methane stocks present in permafrost. Though further investigation is required to determine how the role of soil moisture, vegetation, and local hydrology will either speed up or slow down mineralization and nitrification, it has been proposed that dried peat will release more nitrous oxide under aerobic conditions24.

This, combined with the long-term steady influx to the atmosphere brought about by a gradual thawing of the permafrost, has the potential to contribute positively to radiative forcing alongside carbon and methane emissions.

Moreover, the effects of climate change are likely to lead to a shift in northern peatland vegetation structure, which will result in compromised carbon sequestration ability. Sphagnum mosses, a dominant vegetation of peatland landscapes, engineer strict conditions to regulate biogeochemical cycles and carbon feedbacks25. Under warming temperatures, landscapes are projected to see a decrease in sphagnum moss cover, shifting towards shrub-dominated vegetation26. This would be particularly disruptive to the global carbon budget, given that sphagnum accounts for roughly 50% of carbon in northern peatlands27. Traditionally, the rate of carbon sequestration in peatlands is regulated by sphagnum, whose ability to maintain waterlogged, acidic and anoxic conditions ensures the slow rates of decomposition28. However, the coupled effects of anthropogenic climate warming and N-deposition are projected to lower water table levels, compromising these conditions29. This lowered water table and greater peat aeration brought about by rising temperatures are expected to stimulate microbial activity and increase the rate of decomposition in northern peatlands, thus creating conditions for the emergence and dominance of vascular plants30. A systematic change in vegetation cover poses the risk of releasing the stored organic carbon as carbon dioxide, ultimately undermining the characteristic ability of peatlands to sequester carbon altogether31.

While anthropogenic emissions related to industry strongly contribute to the acceleration of climate change, the process of draining peatland landscapes for agricul-

ISABEL STRACHAN

Field Notes

ture, forestry, or extraction also poses a significant threat to carbon storage in peatlands. Carbon is lost through these processes via peat oxidation, leaching of carbon into the soil profile, or through combustion from peat fires32. Globally, draining peatlands has resulted in a loss of 80.8 GtC, lowering the water table of peatlands in the process33. Current estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from degraded peatlands are approximately 1.3 to 1.91 GtCO2 per year, corresponding to 2.6-3.8% of total anthropogenic emissions34. In Europe, more than half of peatlands have already been drained for agriculture or forestry35. Drained peatlands also release significant amounts of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas with a powerful radiative forcing capacity36. In order to mitigate these emissions, several strategies have been proposed, notably the preservation of peatlands and rewetting. While protecting intact peatlands poses an opportunity to slow down the emissive potential of draining, the process of rewetting peatlands presents the opportunity to reverse it37. Restoring these degraded peatlands has the potential to significantly reduce the carbon dioxide emitted annually from these ecosystems, all via a cost-efficient means38. Excluding temperate organic soils, the process of rewetting has been deemed successful in restoring peatlands as net carbon sinks39. Going forward, when combined with a significant reduction of N2O relative to drained histosols, the rewetting method is an optimistic and viable solution.

DISCUSSION Should peatland exploitation continue, we are on track to see a positive global soil greenhouse gas balance before the end of the century40. This, in combination with the projected 5°C warming of vulnerable subarctic regions as a result of anthropogenic emissions, may lead to irreversible limitations on carbon sequestration in peatlands41. Moving forward, environmental management and restoration of peatlands will be critical to counteract the effects of climate change. Further commercial exploitation and drainage has the potential to degrade valuable ecosystem services established by peatland ecosystems, including climate regulation and water purification42. That being said, the process of peatland restoration is a viable option to counteract the projected net greenhouse gas emissions. Given that it requires 3.4 times less nitrogen as compared to soil carbon sequestration, in addition to using less land, peatland restoration may prove to be an efficient long-term mitigation strategy43. While other strategies may be effective in reducing further emissions, it is only through integrating peatland

63 32 Leifeld and Menichetti. “The Underappreciated Potential of Peatlands,” 2.

33 Yehui Zhong et al.

“Effects of Water Level Alteration on Carbon Cycling in Peatlands.”

Ecosystem Health and Sustainability 6, no. 1 (2020): 1806113.

34 Florian Humpenöder et al. “Peatland Protection and Restoration Are Key for Climate Change Mitigation.” Environmental Research Letters 15, no.

10 (2020): 104093.

35 Zhong et al. “Effects of Water Level Alteration,” 2.

36 Leifeld and Menichetti. “The Underappreciated Potential of Peatlands,” 2.

37 Humpenöder et al.

“Peatland Protection and Restoration,” 2.

38

Ibid, 7

39 David Wilson et al. “Greenhouse Gas Emission Factors Associated with Rewetting of Organic Soils.” Mires and Peat 17 (2016).

40 Leifeld and Menichetti. “The Underappreciated Potential of Peatlands,” 5.

41 Camill and Clark.

“Climate Change Disequilibrium,” 207.

42 Kai Kimmel and Ülo Mander. “Ecosystem Services of Peatlands: Implications for Restoration.” Progress in Physical Geography 34, no.

4 (2010): 491-514.

43 Leifeld and Menichetti. “The Underappreciated Potential of Peatlands,” 1.

Rising Heat and Draining Peat: Anthropogenic Impacts on Northern Peatland Landscapes and Their Consequences for Global Climate Forcing

44

Ibid, 5

45 Humpenöder et al.

“Peatland Protection and Restoration,” 8.

restoration that organic soils may yield a net sink for greenhouse gases44.

CONCLUSION Climate change and anthropogenic disturbances to peatlands pose significant threats to their status as net greenhouse gas sinks. Anthropogenic emissions, coupled with the amplification of positive greenhouse gas feedbacks in peatland ecosystems, have the potential to permanently alter the global carbon budget, leaving lasting environmental impacts. Rapid warming has heightened consequences for Boreal and Subarctic landscapes, where increased melting and shifting vegetation may further intensify climatic forcing. Without implementing significant peatland restoration measures, the vulnerable histosols would become a net source of carbon dioxide for the remainder of the century45. The lasting impacts of a reversal to this once important negative climate feedback are inevitable and require further global consideration of peatland restoration as a leading climate change mitigation strategy. 

ISABEL STRACHAN

Field Notes

BIBLIOGRAPHY Camill, P. & Clark, J. (1998). Climate change disequilibrium of boreal permafrost peatlands caused by local processes. American Naturalist . 151(3), 207-222.

Dise, N.B. Peatland Response to Global Change. (2009). Science . 326(5954), 810-811.

Humpenöder, F. et al. (2020). Peatland protection and restoration are key for climate change mitigation. Environmental Research Letters . 15(10) Jassey, V.E.J. et al. (2013). Above- and belowground linkages in Sphagnum peatland: climate warming affects plant-microbial interactions. Global Change Biology.

19(3), 811-823.

Kimmel, K. & Mander, U. (2010). Ecosystem services of peatlands: Implications for restoration. Progress in Physical Geography-Earth and Environment. 34(4), 491-514.

Leifeld, J. & Menichetti, L. (2018). The underappreciated potential of peatlands in global climate change mitigation strategies. Nature Communications. 9(1701).

Morris, P.J. et al. (2018). Global peatland initiation driven by regionally asynchronous warming. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 115(19), 4851-4856 Oke, T.A. & Hager, H.A. (2020). Plant community dynamics and carbon sequestration in Sphagnum-dominated peatlands in the era of global change. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 29(10), 1610-1620.

Tarnocai, C. (2009). The Impact of Climate Change on Canadian Peatlands. Canadian Water Resources Journal. 34(4), 453-466.

Voigt, C. et al. (2017). Increase nitrous oxide emissions from Arctic peatlands from permafrost thaw. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 114(24),6238-6243.

Wilson, D. et al. (2016). Greenhouse gas emission factors associated with regretting of organic soils. Mires and Peat . 17(4), 1-28.

Zeh, L. et al. (2020). Vascular plants affect properties and decomposition of moss-dominated peat, particularly at elevated temperatures. Biogeosciences . 17(9), 4797-4813.

Zhong, Y.H., Jiang, M. & Middleton, B.A. (2020). Effects of water level alteration on carbon cycling in peatlands. Ecosystem Health and Sustainability . 6(1), 1-29.

65

Um hapi qaa’öniwti: The Reclamation of Maize as a Sacred Food Across Turtle Island

THALIA NEEBE

Field Notes

67

ABSTRACT

Maize has been a staple food within Indigenous cultures across Turtle Island for thousands of years, but has more recently become a “colonized” plant of industrial agriculture within the broader so-called American landscape. The Hopi Nation and the Six Nations that make up the Haudenosaunee Confederacy have maintained deep ties with maize as a relative throughout their histories, even in the face of these colonial changes. By tracing maize’s existence through the creation stories within these communities, modern-day agricultural practices, and community-based reclamation work, we can see ongoing efforts to disengage from the industrialization of traditional and critical food systems. In turn, this work reflects the broader power of food sovereignty and self-determination across Turtle Island.

INTRODUCTION 1 Blake, Michael. Maize for the Gods: Unearthing the 9,000-Year History of Corn. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2015., 17-21.

2

Blake, 28-33, 46-51.

3 Ferdman, Roberto.

“How Corn Made Its Way into Just about Everything We Eat.” Washington Post, 2015. https:// www.washingtonpost. com/news/wonk/ wp/2015/07/14/howcorn-made-its-way-intojust-about-eve rythingwe-eat/.

4 Ferdman, “How Corn Made Its Way into Just about Everything We Eat.” 5 Kimmerer, Robin Wall. “Corn Tastes Better on the Honor System.” Emergence Magazine, 2020. https:// emergencemagazine. org/feature/corn-tastesbetter/.

The story of maize is long and complex, encompassing hundreds of histories, geographies, and cultures. Western scientific research in the fields of archeology, botany, and ecology tell us that maize and its creation began over 9,000 years ago in what is now known as Oaxaca, Mexico. It is a descendant of a grass called teosinte, which Indigenous communities in the region began to selectively plant and propagate for generations until a more “modern” form of maize spread northward as people moved and traded1. However, the origin stories and lifeways of many Indigenous communities across Turtle Island are tied intimately to this humble grain. Maize has been a part of these communities and nations since time immemorial, often centered in explanations of creation. Maize as a staple food has allowed for the movements and migrations of people, and the establishment of societies for thousands of years2.

Today, what is more commonly known as corn is “virtually inseparable from the [standard] American diet”3, and subsequently “American” culture as a whole. Even though corn effectively pervades every aspect of the industrialized food system, less than ten percent of corn grown in the U.S. is eaten directly by people – and most of this percentage enters our diet through high fructose corn syrup4. The other ninety percent is fed to livestock, and utilized in the production of ethanol5. Corn, in many ways, not only has been colonized itself,

Um hapi qaa’öniwti: The Reclamation of Maize as a Sacred Food Across Turtle Island

6 Pollan, Michael.

Overabundance of corn and its effect on the economy, 2003. https://michaelpollan. com/interviews/ overabundance-of-cornand-its-effect-on-theeconomy/.

7 Baker, Lauren. Corn Meets Maize: Food Movements and Markets in Mexico. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2013, 11.

8 Kimmerer, “Corn Tastes Better on the Honor System.”

but has become a tool of the colonization of our collective diet, as stated by author Michael Pollan6. This dichotomy between the spiritually sacred maize, which is at the center of various Indigenous lifeways and diets across Turtle Island, and corn, the industrially farmed, genetically-modified foodstuff viewed only as a source of energy, is great. Further investigation is required into how this staple plant transformed from a spiritual provider into a colonized – and colonizing – plant on behalf of colonial “America”, and what many Indigenous communities today are doing to reclaim maize as a meaningful foodway and relative.

I intend to explore these inquiries, drawing specifically on the Hopituh-Shi-Nu-Mu (Hopi) Nation and the Six Nations that make up the Rotinonhsonnih (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy. From this exploration, I argue that the continued reclamation of maize as a dietary and cultural staple within certain Indigenous communities highlights the growing efforts to disengage from the industrialization and genetic modification of critical food systems (when and where possible). In the same way, it also showcases the persistence of Indigenous food sovereignty and self-determination work across Turtle Island.

In order to look deeply at this topic, the first section of this paper describes the sacred connections to maize in the origin stories and cultural practices of the Hopi Nation and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The second section addresses how cultural connections to maize have been disrupted and contradicted by modern, industrialized agriculture on a broader scale. Lastly, the third section provides examples of how these communities and nations are reclaiming their connections to maize, culturally-based agriculture, and each other.

I wish to note that I will be making an intentional distinction between maize and corn in this paper. In writing about sacred plants and food sovereignty, semantics are critical to address. My deliberate decision is influenced by the work of others (see Baker7 and Kimmerer8), and I thank them for broadening my awareness. In this paper, “maize” will symbolize the food that nourishes deep cultural and spiritual connections for many Indigenous communities, alongside providing necessary sustenance, while “corn” will symbolize the industrialized, corporatized, and minimized version of the foodstuff utilized solely for consumption.

POSITIONALITY STATEMENT First and foremost, I am a settler on stolen land. I reside at different times of the year on the unceded lands of the Kanien’ke-

THALIA NEEBE

Field Notes

há:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the unceded lands of the Pennacook and Pequawket peoples, in addition to other Abenaki communities of the Wabanaki Confederacy.

I have the privilege to move freely on these lands that are not my own, lands that continue to be colonized and taken from their stewards. I have the ability to attend university, and to publish my work in a journal.

In regards to this specific exploration of maize, my Mexican ancestors have been connected to it in ways that I am disconnected from. This part of my own history is not as known to me as I would like it to be, and is definitely an influential factor in me being interested in the cultural significances of maize. I come to this work from the perspective of someone who wants to learn more about efforts to reconnect with maize and other sacred plants. At the same time, I do not identify as Indigenous, and so my sense of connection must be appropriately focused and I must work actively to not take up the space that is not for me.

In regards to the origin or creation stories and farming practices I share in this paper, I have no claim to these cultural connections. I am no “authority” in regards to this information in any capacity, so I thank those who have shared this knowledge so that I can access it and share it within my own writing, while also recognizing that these are examples of a few perspectives among many within these communities and nations. Additionally, I want to acknowledge that these recounts are shortened due to space constraints and certain points are emphasized specifically to address the connections to maize.

MAIZE’S PRESENCE IN ORIGIN STORIES AND COMMUNITY CULTURAL PRACTICES Hopi Nation Maize has been the basis of Hopi lifeways for over a millennium. It is viewed as much more than a food item; it is a sentient being, as well as a prayer offering, a teacher, a relative, a parent, and a child. Their origin story says that the clans that would become the Hopi people approached Maasaw, the Guardian Spirit, after they entered the Fourth World and asked for permission to settle in what is now called Arizona9. Maasaw told the clans that they could settle there, provided that they follow his lifeway, which he said would be difficult. All he gave to the people for them to start their lives there was a small ear of blue maize, a gourd of water, a bag of seeds, and a planting stick. When Maasaw gave them the blue maize, he said, “here is my life and spirit. This is what I have to give to you.”10 As the

69 9 Wall, Dennis, and Virgil Masayesva, “People of the Corn: Teachings in Hopi Traditional Agriculture, Spirituality, and Sustainability.” The American Indian Quarterly 28, no. 3 (2004): 435–53. https://doi.org/10.1353/ aiq.2004.0109., 436.

10 Wall and Masayesva, “People of the Corn”.

Um hapi qaa’öniwti: The Reclamation of Maize as a Sacred Food Across Turtle Island

11 Colwell, Chip, T.J. Ferguson, and Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma, eds.

“The Genetic Diversity of Hopi Corn.” In Footprints of Hopi History Hopihiniwtiput Kukveni’at, 2018. https://muse.jhu. edu/book/57477/., 157.

12 Black, Mary E. “Maidens and Mothers: An Analysis of Hopi Corn Metaphors.” Ethnology 23, no. 4 (October 1984): 279. https://doi. org/10.2307/3773505., 280.

13 Wall and Masayesva, “People of the Corn”, 451-452.

14 Wall and Masayesva, “People of the Corn”, 436.

15 Wall and Masayesva, “People of the Corn”, 439.

16 Wall and Masayesva, “People of the Corn”, 446.

Hopi followed his way, the clans learned the values of hopivötskwani – which loosely translates to “the Hopi path” – and thus grew to value compassion, reciprocity, humility, and stewardship of the life-sustaining world11. The clans learned how to plant, nurture, and protect the maize they had been given, which was hardy and sturdy in order to survive in the climate of the region. The origin of the Hopi as a people is directly tied to the existence of maize; if Maasaw had no maize to give to the clans, the Hopi might never have been able to stay.

This extremely interconnected beginning has led to rituals, ceremonies, and the Hopi way of life being centered largely around maize. It is used as a significant milestone marker for different points in a persons’ life. When a child is born, a Corn Mother (which is a fully grown ear of white maize) is placed with it for twenty days following birth. Children are also given a Corn Mother to hold close to them when they have their ceremonial transition into adulthood. A father might make a speech in honor of his son’s transition, first saying “Um hapi qaa’öniwti”, or “you truly have become corn”12. Similarly, Cornmeal is laid out to create a guiding path for a person’s departing spirit after they pass away13. Hopi communities recognize that people and maize have a completely symbiotic relationship. Maize is simultaneously a mother and a child to the community, in the same way that members of the community are simultaneously mothers and children to the maize. As Masayesva and Wall mention, “[Maize] is the Mother in the truest sense – the people take in the [maize] and the [maize] becomes their flesh, as mother’s milk becomes the flesh of the child”14. At the same time, the community protects it and assists it in growing to maturity, as corn needs a human hand to help it along.

The maize growing practices that have been passed down through generations of Hopi farmers are not only based on agricultural efforts – there is a significant emphasis on ritual and ceremony to provide for the health of the maize, and to ask for a bountiful harvest. Women specifically maintain the seed knowledge of the different varieties, and they wish the seeds well before they are sent out to be planted. During the growing period, you can often hear farmers singing to their plants, as Elder Victor Masayesva Sr. recalls. He says that the songs energize the plants and help them grow, and it is another form of showing respect to them for contributing part of their lives to ensure Hopi survival15. When the maize is brought home at harvest time, the women of the family greet each ear of corn and thank it for providing food for the family.

Eventually, once the season has passed, community members lay the stalks down to rest in the fields, a further demonstration of the recognition that maize is given16. The Hopi Nation is intimately connected to the life cycle and value of maize, which has been understood since time immemorial.

THALIA NEEBE

Field Notes

Haudenosaunee Confederacy Maize also plays a central role in the creation story for the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. In the beginning, there was a woman known as Sky Woman who was pregnant, and lived in the Sky World17. As pregnant women often do, Sky Woman had a craving for a tea made from the roots of the Tree of Life. However, the beings of Sky World were told to not disturb the Tree of Life. When Sky Woman’s husband went to dig to the roots of the tree in order for her to have the tea, it is said that Sky Woman fell through the hole made by dirt falling away from the tree roots into the world below. As she fell, she grasped at seeds from around the Tree and got a handful.

After other occurrences, she was deposited onto the back of the turtle who agreed to support her. Creatures of all sorts tried to retrieve earth from below the water, but the creature who eventually succeeded was the muskrat. Sky woman danced in a counter-clockwise direction, which helped the earth and the turtle’s back grow into the land.

Eventually, Sky Woman gave birth to a daughter, who had twins of her own, yet Sky Woman’s daughter died in childbirth.

Sky Woman buried her daughter, and from her daughter’s body grew the sacred plants maize, beans, and squash, as well as tobacco and the medicine of wild strawberries18. Just as with the Hopi beginnings, maize is intimately tied with the beginnings of life on earth in the Haudenosaunee origin story.

In ways similar to the Hopi maize teachings, Haudenosaunee values are reflected not only in the importance of maize to culture, but also through the specific communal cultivation practices and ceremonies that take place to celebrate its seasonal arrival. The use of mound agriculture represents the interdependence of the Three Sisters on one another, as well as the reciprocal relationship between the community and the plants. As a traditional Corn Grower from Onondaga Nation mentions, the maize plant is seen as the leader of the Three Sisters19. It is the first plant to stand up strong and tall, meaning it is a support system for the beans and squash (which they reciprocate). She articulates that Elders have said to look to the gardens for information – if there’s trouble with the maize, that could signify trouble within community leadership20. Maize is more than a food item; rather, it is an important leader, teacher, and provider. Maize, and more broadly the Three Sisters, represent a communal interdependence. The gardens and agriculture have always been communal. Individuals who grow and farm know to plant for those unable to do it for themselves, and that the result of the harvest will be shared amongst everyone21. Ceremonies are also centered around its life cycle; the planting, care, harvest, and eating of the first green corn are all fundamental ways of marking seasons and time22. As is the case in the Hopi Nation, maize is deeply entwined with almost

71 17 Haudenosaunee Creation Story as Retold by Kay Olan (Ionataíe:was), 2014. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=qV5sGEneGCM; “Kanienkehá:ka Creation Story – Adapted from a Story by Ionataié:was, Mohawk Storyteller.”

Mohawk Language Custodian Association – Kontinonhstats, 2016. http://www. kanehsatakevoices. com/wp-content/ uploads/2017/04/ CREATION_-as-told-byKANIENKEH AKA-womanstoryteller-FINAL2April-13.pdf.

18 “Kanienkehá:ka Creation Story – Adapted from a Story

by Ionataié:was; Mt. Pleasant, Jane. Traditional Iroquois Corn: Its History, Cultivation, and Use. NRAES 179.

Ithaca, NY: Natural Resource, Agriculture, and Engineering Service, Cooperative Extension, 2010.

19 Bleir, Garet.

“Indigenous Corn Keepers Are Helping Communities Recover and Reunite with Their Traditional Foods.” Intercontinental Cry, 2019. https:// intercontinentalcry.org/ indigenous-corn-keepersare-helping-communitiesrecover-and-reunite-wit h-their-traditional-foods/.

20 Bleir, “Indigenous Corn Keepers”.

Um hapi qaa’öniwti: The Reclamation of Maize as a Sacred Food Across Turtle Island

21 Bleir, “Indigenous Corn Keepers”.

22 Xavier, Adrianne Lickers. “Longhouse to the Greenhouse.” In Food Leadership, edited

by Catherine Etmanski, 3–16. Rotterdam: SensePublishers, 2017. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-94-6351050-9_1.

23 Mt. Pleasant, Traditional Iroquois Corn, 18.

24 Ferdman, “How Corn Made Its Way into Just about Everything We Eat.” 25 Xavier, “Longhouse to the Greenhouse”, 10.

26 Xavier, “Longhouse to the Greenhouse”, 8.

27 Kimmerer, “Corn Tastes Better on the Honor System”.

all aspects of Haudenosaunee life; however, in both cases, the increasing commodification of maize as a foodstuff has caused a large movement away from traditional agricultural methods and the rituals involved.

THE GROWTH AND CONTRADICTIONS OF INDUSTRIALIZED CORN PRODUCTION As described in detail above, maize has been a staple food and spiritual sentient being for many Indigenous communities for thousands of years, yet the more recent developments of industrialized corn agriculture directly contradict and subvert the importance of maize. In the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. scientists began to breed hybrid strains of corn, with the goal of having all plants becoming genetically identical instead of the significant variability in genetic makeup seen with naturally pollinated plants23. These continued research projects and efforts to control nature have led to strains of corn that are able to grow more closely together, creating a higher yield for the same amount of original land.

Alongside increased hybridity and genetic modification, newer fertilizers and more “efficient” farm tools like tractors have been developed in an effort to mechanize the harvest24.

Modern genetically modified sweet corn is also a health concern, especially amongst many Indigenous communities, as it has a dramatically higher sugar content than the traditional varieties25. The goal of corn production from a U.S. capitalist lens is to receive a maximum yield while expending the least amount of work, time, or money, completely contradicting the nature of the plant and eliminating a cultural connection to food.

Open-pollination and other selection techniques have allowed thousands of maize varieties that can withstand varied environments to be brought to life over the course of its history. Some may argue that genetic modification of corn is just a further extension of Indigenous methods of selection, yet the reality is that seeds that are modified are direct contradictions to the traditions and values of the communities that care for them26. As author Robin Wall Kimmerer notes, the technology of modification “uproots the original agreement between maize and people and makes corn subservient to the needs of agribusiness. The genetic integrity of The Wife of the Sun [maize] has been contaminated”27. Growing corn is vastly different from nurturing maize, as the traditional practices are focused on more than just nutritional needs. Maize is more than food; it is a teacher of values and the interdependence and symbiotic relationship between communities and plants. The goal of the system of industrialized agriculture, as

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Field Notes

mentioned previously, has been financial gain since its inception. For communities within the Hopi Nation and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, as well as other Indigenous nations, the goal is about how people are “going to benefit from that connection to the land and community… our agriculture is based on spiritual gain”28. Growing and caring for maize into its maturity is a reciprocal relationship between people and plants that cannot be replicated by industrial monocultures and machines; as such, “modern’’ agriculture techniques regarding corn are a perversion of Indigenous methods and often directly contradict many Indigenous values.

73 28 Onondaga Traditional Corn Grower Angela Ferguson in Bleir, “Indigenous Corn Keepers”.

29 Colwell, Ferguson, and Kuwanwisiwma, “The Genetic Diversity of Hopi Corn”, 159.

30 Colwell, Ferguson, and Kuwanwisiwma, “The Genetic Diversity of Hopi Corn”, 160.

31 Natwani Coalition – Natwanit Tu’sawyungqam.

“Projects,” n.d. https:// www.natwanicoalition.org.

RECLAIMING MAIZE AND COMMUNITY Many Indigenous nations and communities across Turtle Island are working to reclaim traditional foods, whether that be through agriculture, fishing, hunting, foraging, gathering, or most often a combination of many methods. This reconnecting to food is not just about providing healthier and nutrient-rich food to the people; it also is part of community-building, reconnecting to the land, and more broadly, increasing sovereignty and self-determination efforts. Both Hopi and Haudenosaunee communities are designing ways to reconnect with traditional maize varieties and practices, while also reconnecting with each other and their broader cultural traditions.

In the Hopi Nation, both the Pueblo Farming Project and the Natwanit Tu’sawyungqam, or the Natwani Coalition, are fostering spaces where traditional agricultural knowledge will be gathered and shared with the broader community. The Pueblo Farming Project was implemented in 2005 as an initiative between Hopi farmers, the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office (HCPO), and the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center29 with the goal of examining and cataloguing Hopi maize varieties and educating the community on traditional farming practices. This project is led by Hopi farmers, who alongside educators are working to utilize the growing project to produce lessons on the continuance of Hopi lifeways, as well as the importance of maize to Hopi identity and culture30.

The project is also revitalizing and documenting the traditional dry-farming techniques through written records, storytelling recordings, photography, and video in an effort to make the knowledge more accessible to community members.

Similarly, the Natwani Coalition is home to a variety of projects to promote and preserve traditional farming practices, and to promote sustainable wellness within the community31.

They maintain a grant program to help community members work to launch their own food and farming initiatives on the

Um hapi qaa’öniwti: The Reclamation of Maize as a Sacred Food Across Turtle Island

32 Waterman Gray, Lisa, “An Indigenous Corn Makes a Comeback” Civil Eats, 2018. https://civileats. com/2018/04/20/anindigenous-corn-makes-acomeback/.

reservation, as well as an heirloom seed library for traditional Hopi varieties of maize, beans, and squash. A bit of a larger initiative, the Natwani for Youth Project is a project running within local schools to educate kids on the importance of maize to their cultural identity, and the traditional farming practices of the area. The curriculum itself is structured around the twelve lunar cycles within the Hopi calendar, which allows for the integration of ceremony and the maintenance of traditional planting times.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, much like the Hopi Nation, is seeing the strong development of a variety of initiatives to return, safeguard, and teach traditional maize and plant-related knowledge to community members. The Iroquois White Corn Project, founded originally in the 1990s, is a project meant to encourage Haudenosaunee farmers to grow white maize and make it something they eat every day, rather than just on special occasions or for ceremonies. Growing this type of maize in the traditional way is both labor and time intensive, but that is part of the beauty of the initiative. It brings community members together and they see the seasonal process through planting, hand-picking, dehulling, roasting, and often grinding the corn. People are asked to come to the gardens with a good mind and good intentions, to bring respect and understanding to the process. Community husking bees are held during harvest time, where community members come together and braid the ears of maize together so that they can dry32. The whole process fosters a space for interpersonal connection, as well as connection with maize, a plant of such great importance in the community.

The Onondaga Nation Farm Crew is another organization working alongside “Braiding the Sacred” to protect and share cultural corn varieties and agriculture techniques. The Farm Crew, as well as “Braiding the Sacred”, were founded

by Angela Ferguson, a traditional Corn Grower from the Onondaga Nation working to reunite communities with their sacred maize varieties. She initially was given a collection of heritage seeds, which she, alongside community members, cleaned, sorted, washed, and held ceremonies to honor either their return to their lands or the return that the organization would make possible. This seed work, along with the efforts to educate the community, started initially out of an effort to provide traditional foods to Elders with less access, and thus maintain connections between traditional agriculture and Elder knowledge.

The act of providing traditional foods has fostered such a community connection that the Farm Crew is now able to provide traditional vegetables, meat, and berries to community members for free. However, it is much more than the food itself. The initiative is working to educate younger community members on traditional Haudenosaunee gardening tech-

THALIA NEEBE

Field Notes

niques such as mound agriculture, and Elders are sharing and teaching traditional recipes so that everyone can fully utilize the harvest. Just like the other three initiatives, it is always brought back to tending and caring for the seeds, the land, and each other – not solely about consumption.

CONCLUSION Indigenous communities across Turtle Island are making concerted efforts to revitalize and restore traditional food varieties and practices, often with the goals of disentangling themselves from the dominant corporate-run food economy, and subsequently working towards sovereignty. In order to explore this, I have looked at the significance of maize in two communities – the Hopi Nation, and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. By establishing a basis of maize’s cultural importance in origin and creation stories, as well as the connection of its cultivation to ceremony and lifeways, we are able to see more clearly the results of industrialized and mechanized corn farming. Additionally, by providing examples of efforts within these communities to revamp culturally-significant agriculture practices, we can understand the development of the larger effort for food sovereignty.

On a broader scale, this effort extends far beyond maize.

Food sovereignty initiatives are multiplying, as Indigenous people fight to reclaim their foods and identities. It is critical that we keep highlighting the work being done in community to gain food – and full – sovereignty. 

75

Um hapi qaa’öniwti: The Reclamation of Maize as a Sacred Food Across Turtle Island

BIBLIOGRAPHY Baker, L. E. (2013). Corn meets maize: Food movements and markets in Mexico.

Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

Black, M. E. (1984). Maidens and mothers: An analysis of Hopi corn metaphors.

Ethnology, 23(4), 279-288.

Blake, M. (2015). Maize for the gods: Unearthing the 9,000-year history of corn.

University of California Press.

Bleir, G. (2019). Indigenous corn keepers are helping communities recover and reunite with their traditional foods. Intercontinental Cry. https://intercontinentalcry.org/indigenous-corn-keepers-are-helping-communities-recover -and-reunite-with-their-traditional-foods/ Ferdman, R. A. (2015). How corn made its way into just about everything we eat.

The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/ wp/2015/07/14/how-corn-made-its-way-int o-just-about-everything-we-eat/ Gray, L. W. (2018). An Indigenous corn makes a comeback. Civil Eats. https://civileats.com/2018/04/20/an-indigenous-corn-makes-a-comeback/ Interview: Overabundance of corn and its effect on the economy. (2003). Michael Pollan, NPR. https://michaelpollan.com/interviews/overabundance-of-cornand-its-effect-on-the-econo my/ Kanienkehá:ka creation story: Adapted from a story by Ionataíe:was, Mohawk storyteller [PowerPoint slides]. (n.d.). Kanesatake Voices. http://www.kanehsatakevoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CREATION_-as-told-by -KANIENKEHAKA-woman-storyteller-FINAL2-April-13.pdf Kimmerer, R. W. (2020). Corn tastes better on the honor system. Emergence Magazine. https://emergencemagazine.org/story/corn-tastes-better/ Kuwanwisiwma, L. J., Powell, S., & Varien, M. D. (2018). The genetic diversity of Hopi corn. In L. J. Kuwanwisiwma, T.J. Ferguson, & C. Colwell (Eds.), Footprints of Hopi history: Hopihiniwtiput kukveni'at (pp. 157-177). University of Arizona Press.

Masayesva, V., & Wall, D. (2004). People of the corn: Teachings in Hopi traditional agriculture, spirituality, and sustainability. The American Indian Quarterly, 28(3), 435-453. https://doi.org/10.1353/aiq.2004.0109 Mt. Pleasant, J. (2011). Traditional Iroquois corn: Its history, cultivation, and use. Plant and Life Sciences Publishing.

Olan, K. (2014). Haudenosaunee creation story as retold by Kay Olan (Ionataíe:was) [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV5sGEneGCM

CAT CARKNER

Field Notes

Projects. (n.d.). Natwani Coalition. https://www.natwanicoalition.org/ Xavier, A. L. (2017). Longhouse to the greenhouse: The path to food security at Six Nations. In C. Etmanski (Ed.), International issues in adult education: Vol. 23. Food leadership: Leadership and adult learning for global food systems transformation (pp. 1-16). Sense Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-946351-050-9_1

77

Understanding Health Outcomes from Indigenous Perspectives: Systematic Review of the Influence of Indigenous Foodways on Health

MAREN ROESKE

Field Notes

79

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Indigenous food systems and foodways are understood to be nutritionally healthful for Indigenous communities. Yet, the aspects of how these foodways influence health outside of nutritional composition remain an understudied aspect of Indigenous health and wellbeing. The objective of this systematic review is to explore Indigenous food systems and Indigenous health utilizing a realist framework. Literature was reviewed and analyzed to explore how Indigenous foodways are understood to influence health from the perspective Indigenous peoples in North America.

Methods: A systematic search of OVID Medline and Web of Science Core Collection was completed to identify studies relevant to Indigenous foodways, health, and knowledge/perspectives.

Results:The systematic review revealed four main dimensions of health outcomes understood as influenced by Indigenous foodways: (1) physical, (2) mental, (3) social, and (4) cultural. These outcomes were thought to be interrelated and Indigenous foodways were a mechanism to promote health holistically.

Discussion: Research found that Indigenous foodways are an important mechanism of holistic health, especially for addressing food insecurity. These findings suggest that to address health disparities, policy makers and community health practitioners should emphasize and support food diversity and cultural resurgence movements to promote Indigenous foodways. Additional research should explore the efficacy and effectiveness of existing policy promotion Indigenous foodways on improving health.

INTRODUCTION

1 Mosby, I., & Galloway, T. (2017). ‘Hunger was never absent’: How residential school diets shaped current patterns of diabetes among Indigenous peoples in Canada. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 189(32), 1043–1045.

Indigenous food systems have, from the very start of colonization, been weaponized against Indigenous peoples as a tool of genocide and control. Settler-colonial states have long used systemic starvation policies as a part of their ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples1. The policies include the deliberate destruction of ecosystems, pushing Indigenous peoples onto too small parcels of unproductive land, and mass slaughtering of animal food sources. In addition to directly destroying Indigenous food systems, the settler states also worked to disrupt “the transfer of food-related knowledge from one generation to the next” by forcing Indigenous youth into residential schools where they suffered unethical biomedical nutrition experimentations, starvation, and assimilation “forced to take on staples

Understanding Health Outcomes from Indigenous Perspectives: Systematic Review of the Influence of Indigenous Foodways on Health

2 Hoover, E. (2017)‘You can’t say you’re sovereign if you can’t feed yourself:’ Defining and Enacting Food Sovereignty in American Indian Community Gardening.

American Indian Culture and Research Journal 41(3), 8.

3 Settee, P., & Shukla, S. (2020). Indigenous food systems: Concepts, cases, and conversations, 5.

4

Ibid

5 Settee, P., & Shukla, S. (2020). Indigenous food systems, 17.

6 Delormier, T., & Marquis, K. (2019) Building healthy community relationships through food security and food sovereignty. Current Developments in Nutrition, 3(Supplement 2), 26.

7

2017, 1045.

8 Maudrie, T., ColónRamos, U., Harper, K., Jock, B.W., & Gittelsohn, J. (2021). A Scoping Review of the Use of Indigenous Food Sovereignty Principles for Intervention and Future Directions.

Current Developments in Nutrition, 5.

of a standard diet that embodied Anglo ideals of foodways”2.

Today, Indigenous peoples in North America face a disproportionate and distinct burden of disease rooted in past and ongoing settler-colonialism. In Canada, the rate of diabetes is three to five times higher and life expectancy is 10 to 15 years shorter in Indigenous peoples than the general population3. Infant mortality, tuberculosis, obesity rates are all rising in Indigenous communities. Approximately 30 percent of Indigenous peoples in Canada experience food insecurity, a rate three times higher than the general population4. The health issues of Indigenous peoples are so dire as to be thought of as ‘fourth world’ conditions where Indigenous peoples “live in Third-world conditions within the First-world nation-state of Canada”5. Food related health issues, from non-communicable diseases such as diabetes to food insecurity, must be viewed in the context of settler-colonialism.

Yet, from the very start of colonization, Indigenous peoples across North America have resisted settler-colonialism in all forms, including defending and upholding Indigenous food systems. This resistance is epitomized by Indigenous food sovereignty, defined as “the distinct responsibilities and abilities Indigenous communities possess to make decisions about the food they eat and continuing cultural food systems and practices through relationships with Indigenous territories”6. Not only is Indigenous food sovereignty resistance to colonization, it is resistance to disease. According to Mosby and Galloway, Indigenous food sovereignty is a direct move towards better health and wellness as it demands “the next generation of Indigenous children have access to the kinds of plentiful, healthy, seasonal and traditional foods that were denied to their parents and grandparents”7. At the center of the health goals of Indigenous food sovereignty are Indigenous food systems.

The focus of this review, Indigenous food systems and foodways, have long been thought to be more healthful for Indigenous communities. Yet, they remain an understudied aspect of Indigenous health and wellbeing. Existing literature reviews on Indigenous foodways are generally focused on Indigenous food sovereignty or diet assessments. Reviews on Indigenous food sovereignty consider the theoretical and political foundations of the movement or policy and community action considerations8. The existing reviews on Indigenous food systems focus on diet aspects, specifically diet and consumption behavior of Indigenous peoples or micro-nutritional assessments of foodstuffs. Diet and consumption behavior reviews have documented the ‘nutritional transition’ of Indigenous peoples away from Indigenous food systems to Anglo-colonial market foods as well as ongoing health related issues related to diet including obesity and insecurity9. Scoping and systematic reviews on the micro-nutritional aspects of

MAREN ROESKE

Field Notes

Indigenous foodstuffs have definitively proven that Indigenous diets based on ‘traditional’ foods are healthier, with greater biodiversity, nutrient density in protein and essential micronutrient, and energy density10. However, these diet-centric reviews have been deeply criticized from Critical Indigenous perspectives. According to Neufeld, these reviews, and the studies they include focus either “exclusively on intake” or have “been almost exclusively deficit-based, with considerably less attention given to learning how larger food systems” influence health11. Additionally, these reviews fail to consider “Indigenous concepts of health, which are holistic, focus on language and place, and value relationships” instead centering on Western scientific knowledge regimes that reduce health to physical dietary metrics12 .

The objective of this systematic review is to explore Indigenous food systems and Indigenous health from a holistic and critical perspective. In this paper, I systematically review literature to explore how Indigenous foodways are understood to influence health by Indigenous peoples in North America.

What makes this review unique as well as necessary is that it focuses not on foodstuffs but foodways, not on diet health but on holistic wellness, and is based not on Western knowledge regimes but Indigenous knowledge and perspectives.

Utilizing a realist conceptual framework, the research objective is to explore how the mechanisms of Indigenous foodways influence the outcome of holistic health in the context of Indigenous Communities in North America. First, I present the research methodologies, then I analyze the results of the systematic review, and finally I conclude by discussing the limitations and implications of this research.

METHODS Statement of Positionality The positions I hold inherently impact my perspective of Indigenous food sovereignty thus it is important to begin this work by accounting for those positions and addressing my reflexivity. I am a white settler. I was born and raised on Anishinaabe land belonging to the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi Nations in Waawiyatanong, the Anishinaabemowin name for Detroit. I currently occupy the lands belonging to the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples. I am writing about Indigenous food sovereignty and food systems but my knowledge and experience on these issues is second-hand.

My academic background is in the discipline of geography, specializing in urban studies and political geography.

Geography has long been a field engaged in colonial violence,

81 9 Akande, V. O., Hendriks, A. M., Ruiter, R. A., & Kremers, S. P. (2015).

Determinants of dietary behavior and physical activity among Canadian Inuit: a systematic review.

International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition & Physical Activity, 12, 84; Batal, M., & Decelles, S. (2019). A Scoping Review of Obesity among Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Journal of Obesity, 2019; Gates, A., Skinner, K., & Gates, M. (2015). The diets of school-aged Aboriginal youths in Canada: a systematic review of the literature. Journal of Human Nutrition & Dietetics, 28(3), 246-261;McGrathHanna, N. K., Greene, D. M., Tavernier, R. J., & Bult-Ito, A. (2003). Diet and mental health in the Arctic: is diet an important risk factor for mental health in circumpolar peoples?--a review.

International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 62(3), 228-241;Walch, A., Loring, P., Johnson, R., Tholl, M., & Bersamin, A. (2018). A scoping review of traditional food security in Alaska. International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 77(1)

10 Herrmann, T. M., Lamalice, A., & Coxam, V. (2020). Tackling the question of micronutrients intake as one of the main levers in terms of Inuit food security. Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition & Metabolic Care, 23(1), 59-63; McCartan, J., van Burgel, E., McArthur, I., Testa, S., Thurn, E., Funston, S., Kho, A., McMahon, E., & Brimblecombe, J. (2020).

Traditional Food Energy Intake among Indigenous Populations in Select HighIncome Settler-Colonized Countries: A Systematic Literature Review. Current Developments in Nutrition, 4(11), 26 11-12

See page 82.

Understanding Health Outcomes from Indigenous Perspectives: Systematic Review of the Influence of Indigenous Foodways on Health

11 Neufeld, H. T., Richmond, C., & Southwest Ontario Aboriginal, H. (2020). Exploring First Nation Elder Women’s Relationships with Food from Social, Ecological, and Historical Perspectives. Current Developments in Nutrition, 4(3), 11.

12

Ibid, 2.

13 Oswin, N. (2020).

An other geography.

Dialogues in Human Geography 10 (1), 10.

14 Kerpan, S. T., Humbert, M. L., & Henry, C. J. (2015). Determinants of diet for urban aboriginal youth: implications for health promotion. Health Promotion Practice, 16(3), 393 15

Ibid.

16 Pawson, R., Greenhalgh, T., Harvey, G., Walshe, K. ( 2005) Realist review –a new method of systematic review designed for complex policy interventions.

Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, 10, 21.

17 Delormier, T., & Marquis, K. (2019) Building healthy community relationships through food security and food sovereignty. Current Developments in Nutrition, 3(Supplement 2), 30.

18 Pawson, R., Greenhalgh, T., Harvey, G., Walshe, K. ( 2005)

founded upon and for the purpose of “overtly colonial knowledge production”13. These traditions are very much still in place and require active resistance in academic work. Thus, to engage with the topic of Indigenous food sovereignty and food systems, I seek to acknowledge my background and make a deliberate turn away from colonial knowledge regimes towards two-eyed seeing and critical Indigenous theory.

Conceptual Framework Towards the end of two-eyed seeing and critical Indigenous theory, this review employs a realist conceptual framing. According to Kerpan, a major failing of Western scientific knowledge is that it “decontextualizes knowledge from its local context to make it more generalizable”14. This has resulted in health programming that has been “largely ineffective due to external strategies that do not take into consideration the local and cultural ways that Indigenous Peoples understand health”15. Realism, in contrast, demands contextualization and rejects positivist generalization. Realist reviews do not seek to make a definitive judgment but to discern “what works for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects and how”16, allowing the space to unpack and engage with complex entanglements and contexts of Indigenous food systems. The context in which health is constructed among Indigenous peoples is vastly complex.

In addition to the contexts of socioeconomic status, health gradient, gender, climate, is the context of colonization. As discussed above, this context cannot be ignored yet neither can ongoing decolonization efforts. Additionally, Indigenous foodways are not static or inert, rather foodways must be contextualized as “meaningful and significant, and symboliz[ing] the reciprocal caring relationship that Indigenous Peoples hold with the natural world, and that the earth is our mother who provides all that is needed… Food is a connection to the specific places and spaces wherein Indigenous Peoples draw their identity”17. Realist reviews are premised on a “systems-within-systems” approach to analyzing interventions and issues18. In reviewing literature on Indigenous food systems and holistic health, it is imperative to ground research within a framework where interdependent systems can be critically engaged with in their cultural, historical, and geographic contexts.

In addition to the conceptual framing of the review, it is important to frame the topics at hand. First turning to the mechanisms of this review, Indigenous food systems are traditional harvested foods from the land or water as well as the “teachings of ancestral food knowledges, adaptive practices, and social-cultural values that shape a complex and layered

MAREN ROESKE

Field Notes

worldview that includes one’s sacred relationships with, and responsibility to, the environment, other humans, animals, land and water”19. Though it is often referred to as ‘traditional food’, I use the term ‘Indigenous foodways’ throughout this paper to refer to all aspects produced through Indigenous food systems.

According to Settee and Shukla, “calling the diet ‘traditional’ is problematic when conveying the present-day and ongoing nature of the subsistence mode of production and consumption of bush food”20. Additionally, this can contribute to the historical relegation of Indigenous peoples and the ‘freezing’ of practices and ways of life in history. Importantly, the use of foodways instead of foods is intentional as Indigenous foodways are “not simply what we eat but how and why we eat it, and more importantly, what it means”21. These foodways are protected and upheld through Indigenous food sovereignty. At its simplest conception, Indigenous food sovereignty consists of four pillars, “(1) sacred or divine sovereignty, (2) participation, (3) self-determination, and (4) legislation and policy”22.

The outcome of these pillars/practices is that Indigenous food sovereignty “inherently asserts Indigenous Peoples’ self-determination of their own culturally suitable food systems and promotes revitalization of Indigenous food systems”23.

Turning now to the outcomes of this review, Indigenous health and wellness must be conceptualized holistically and in context. Throughout this review, health and wellness refer generally to holistic conceptions of health at all levels, physical, mental, spiritual, communal, based in Indigenous knowledge and epistemologically different from Western systems24. This conception is grounded in the understanding that “Indigenous Peoples possess unique determinants of health and wellness, such as jurisdictional issues related to community self-control and determination [and] historical factors, such as colonization, dispossession of traditional lands, and assimilation policies”25.

Importantly, there is no one pan-Indigenous conception of wellness and health. This diversity and variance require holistic health to be conceptualized as inclusive of all aspects considered as wellness for the various nations represented in this review.

A limit to the realist framework is the expansiveness allowed by it in reviews. Thus, an essential foregrounding choice is where to draw the ‘boundary’ of what contexts and aspects are included. For this review, the boundary was to limit research to Indigenous knowledge and understandings of the influence of foodways on health. This choice was based on the demand “to include Indigenous knowledge, values of interconnectedness, and relationality to replace the colonial dysfunctionalities with strength”26. The focus on Indigenous perspectives and understandings is based on the valuing of Indigenous peoples as experts on their own health and foodways by treating “Indigenous peoples’ knowledge not just

83 19 Settee, P., & Shukla, S. (2020),4.

20

Ibid, 63.

21

Ibid, 85.

22

Ibid, 4.

23

Ibid.

24 Kerpan, S. T., Humbert, M. L., & Henry, C. J. (2015). Determinants of diet for urban aboriginal youth: implications for health promotion.

25 Neufeld, H. T., Richmond, C., & Southwest Ontario Aboriginal, H. (2020). Exploring First Nation Elder Women’s Relationships with Food from Social, Ecological, and Historical Perspectives. Current Developments in Nutrition, 4(3), 9.

26 Settee, P., & Shukla, S. (2020),223.

Understanding Health Outcomes from Indigenous Perspectives: Systematic Review of the Influence of Indigenous Foodways on Health

27

Ibid.

28

Ibid, 88.

as data points to prove a larger learning, but as vital knowledge sources”27. Indigenous ways of knowing, while diverse and varied, generally are “embedded in the cumulative experiences and teachings of people, are transmitted orally through storytelling from generation to generation, and involve a connection to the land through ceremony”28.

Systematic Search Methods In an attempt to find as many relevant studies as possible, the database search strategy was designed “to err on the side of over-inclusion during this first stage”29. A systematic search of OVID Medline and Web of Science Core Collection was completed to identify initial studies. The central concepts for the search were Indigenous food systems and Indigenous peoples. For OVID, Indigenous food systems were targeted with the MeSH terms of “food supply” or “diet”. Indigenous peoples were targeted with the MeSH terms of “Indigenous Peoples” or “Indians, North American (exploded)” in order to return as many studies on Indigenous peoples in North America as possible. In addition to the MeSH terms, “traditional food*” was included in the search as a keyword to focus results on studies that looked at Indigenous foodways. Initial searching prior to the inclusion of this keyword returned mainly studies on food security or consumption patterns that did not look at Indigenous foodways at all. For Web of Science, Indigenous food systems were searched with the keywords of “traditional food system”, or “Indigenous food system”, or “food system”.

In parity with OVID, Indigenous peoples were searched with the keyword of “Indigenous Peoples” or “Native American”. In addition, the keyword “health” was included as initial searches returned mostly articles or reviews on the politics or policies of Indigenous food systems, not the health impacts. OVID Medline returned 140 papers and Web of Science returned 50 papers. Papers were then imported into EndNote and duplicates were removed resulting in an initial 187 papers.

Following a sensitive initial search phase, the screening phase was more discerning to exclude irrelevant studies. In order to mitigate bias and conduct the screening in a reproducible manner, the following criteria were established to determine inclusion in the systematic review. First, included studies must be set in the area of study, North America, resulting in 19 studies being excluded. This criterion was established to limit the review to a similar area in terms of politics and colonial experiences. Second, included studies must be written in English. All studies met this criterion. Third, included studies must be empirical research. This criterion was established as part of the review guidelines and papers could be any form of empirical research. 38 studies did not meet this

MAREN ROESKE

Field Notes

criterion, the majority of which were theory or opinion papers.

The 47 combined papers that did not meet these criteria were excluded through abstract screening. 130 studies remained to be screened based on the fourth criterion. Fourth, included studies must be relevant to all three core concepts being reviewed: Indigenous food systems, health, and knowledge/ perspectives.

103 studies were excluded through abstract screening and an additional 13 were excluded through full text screening based on this criterion. 14 studies were excluded because they did not address any of the three concepts. 24 studies were excluded because they did not address Indigenous peoples or health, only looking at environmental contamination of sources of Indigenous foodways. 24 studies were excluded because they did not include health, focusing mainly on consumption amounts and dietary patterns of both market and Indigenous foodways. 54 studies, including all 13 full-text screened studies, were excluded because they did not include Indigenous peoples’ knowledge or perspective on health. Broadly, these papers tended to focus on micro nutritional assessment of Indigenous foodstuffs rather than understanding of foodways and their influence on health. 14 out of 187 studies generated through the initial search met all criteria and were included in the review. An additional three papers were identified through citation snowballing: Elliott et.al. (2012) was identified from Delormier et.al. (2017), and Gilpin and Hayes (2020) and Powlowska-Mainville (2020) were both identified from Neufeld (2020). Figure 1 presents a summary table of the 17 studies to be reviewed.

Data Analysis Methods Following a realist framework, data extraction occurred by reading each paper with the aim of identifying the mechanisms through which Indigenous foodways are understood to influence health outcomes. This review process resulted in a data extraction table where mechanisms and outcomes were of central focus. This table is available as a supplemental appendix. Additionally, a major aspect of this review was critical appraisal of the included studies. To this end, methodologies and notes on quality were captured in the data extraction table. Thematic synthesis is useful to evaluate the perceived appropriateness, acceptability, and, especially, effectiveness of Indigenous foodways as a health intervention. Based on the qualitative methods of all 17 of the included studies, the purpose of thematic synthesis analysis was “aggregative, that is, findings are accumulated and summarised rather than ‘transformed’… [as] a way of producing a ‘map’ of the contents of qualitative studies”30 . Grounded in a realist approach which

85 29 Centre for Reviews and Dissemination. (2009) Systematic Reviews: CRD’s guidance for undertaking reviews in health care.

York: CRD, University of York, 23.

30 Barnett-Page, E., & Thomas, J. (2009).

Methods for the synthesis of qualitative research: a critical review. BMC medical research methodology, 9, 5.

Understanding Health Outcomes from Indigenous Perspectives: Systematic Review of the Influence of Indigenous Foodways on Health

Figure 1 Summary table of the 17 studies included for systematic review.

emphasises contextualization, the themes identified were organised to ‘map’ how and where Indigenous foodways were understood to influence health. The four themes identified through data extraction and iterative review were that Indigenous foodways influence: physical, mental, social, and cultural.

MAREN ROESKE

Field Notes

RESULTS Before turning to the thematic synthesis of the included studies, it is important to first synthesise their characteristics, as presented in Figure 1. Three of the 17 studies were on Indigenous peoples located in the United States. 14 were based in Canada, of which three studies were located in the Arctic and an additional three located in cities, broadly focused on urban Indigenous peoples rather than one specific nation. The cities were Vancouver, London, and one that was unnamed.

Turning to methodologies, all studies employed qualitative methods in some ways. 14 studies utilised interviews or focus group sessions. Of those, four additionally used some surveying in tandem with open ended interviews. Two studies employed photo voice methodologies and two studies employed storytelling methodologies. An additional four used some ethnographic methods as well. From the resulting data, 15 out of 17 studies conducted some form of thematic analysis.

Three studies also incorporated statistical analysis. The two studies that did not use thematic analysis utilised storytelling analysis where the results produced, and the analysis were in the form of stories in line with Indigenous ways of teaching.

In terms of quality of methodologies, it is not constructive to compare sample size or length of study given the wide range in local contexts. Sample sizes range from a low of only five participants to a high of 1,711. But quality or rigour is not obvious just from the number in a sample given how small some target populations included were; Genius et.al. (2015) for example had a sample of 26 student interviewees out of a total of only 40 students in the entire school. Many studies utilised community-based participatory research (CBPR) methodologies throughout, one measure for quality of the inclusion of Indigenous communities. Eleven out of 17 explicitly stated that they employed CBPR methods, though again this does not provide a complete picture. Some of the studies which did not explicitly state they used CBPR, like Gilpin and Hayes (2020), were authored by Indigenous scholars on and for their own community.

Yet, CBPR is not always an assurance of engaged and critical research. Bhawra et. al. (2015), for example, stated their research was community-based yet perpetuated colonial tropes around the ‘nutritional transition’ as a matter of personal preference or choice rather than consequence of acculturation and forced assimilation. Additionally, normative determinants of academic quality do not always translate to quality of Critical Indigenous research. In Arthur and Porter (2019), for example, the lead author explicitly states that his positionality affects his research and his work is conducted out of anger and in opposition to settler-colonialism in his community. This could be considered a ‘conflict of interest’ by

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31 Settee, P., & Shukla, S.,9.

normative standards but is a clear example of strong, engaged research carried out critically and ethically for and with an Indigenous community.

Though the included studies took place across a wide geographic range, utilised different data collection methods, from the studies arose four themes related to the principal research question of how Indigenous foodways are understood to influence health by Indigenous peoples in North America. These four themes organise the findings of the studies into spheres of health outcome influence, where foodways are perceived to have positive influence over physical, mental, social, and cultural health outcomes. These spheres of health outcomes are aligned with Indigenous understandings of holistic health conceptualised as health across “physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental spheres which relate to the spirit, family, and community worlds”31. For each of these different themes, there are a series of mechanisms identified throughout the studies as pathways by which traditional food influences health. These themes are represented in Figure 2, which highlights interconnection between the spheres conceptualised as holistic health.

Theme One: Physical Health Influence Community Advisor, Anishinaabe: “Food is medicine. If you’re sick and have a cold, you don’t take vitamin C capsules, you boil a light batch of cedar tea.” (Domingo et.al.:2021:7) Figure 2 The four themes are modeled as spheres of health outcome, which together form holistic health.

Of the four themes, the physical health influence of Indigenous foodways was the most evident and ubiquitous. In all but one paper (Arthur & Porter:2019 which focused exclusively on mental health), the influence and importance of Indigenous foodways to improve and better health was clear. The most noted health influence was that Indigenous foodways were an essential component for food security. The mechanism by which this outcome occurs was understood to be straightforward: bodily health improved when participants could access needed food and Indigenous foodways were an essential strategy to access food. Specifically, in evaluations of food security status, Chan et.al. (2006), Kerpan et.al. (2015), Lambden et.al.

(2007), Skinner et.al. (2013), and Sowerwine et.al. (2019) all found either the majority or all of their participants engaged in harvesting as a strategy for food security.

MAREN ROESKE

Field Notes

Two additional physical health outcomes found were nutrition and physical activity promotion from Indigenous foodways. Indigenous foodways were understood across the studies to better physical health because of the nutritional and medicinal character of the foodstuffs as compared to market-based foods. The outcomes were seen as a decrease in diet-related illness and obesity from a more nutritious diet.

However, more than nutritional makeup, these foodstuffs were understood to better physical health because “food is medicine”32 . Physical activity promotion was the least mentioned way that foodways influenced physical health, but several studies which looked at harvesting practices33 highlight that the actions of harvesting Indigenous foods are a mechanism of health promotion, getting out into the bush and working to hunt or grow foods.

Theme Two: Mental Health Influence Participant, Tsartlip First Nation, BC: “It’s meditative and physical and allows for real contact with the earth…There is a deep satisfaction and amidst the life distractions it balances me.

This is where I feel peace.”(Gilpin & Hayes:2020:112) Bonnie, Oneida, ON: “The venison and the corn soup is good.

It makes you feel better. I don’t know if it’s good for you, but it makes you feel good to eat it.” (Neufeld et.al.:2020:8) Mental and physical health outcomes are deeply intertwined and many of the mechanisms through which foodways influence mental health are similar to that of physical health, but there are some distinct and important understandings of how mental health can improve from Indigenous foodways. Overall, fewer of the studies addressed mental health outcomes, only seven broaching the topic directly34. Just as with physical health, the most discussed influence was Indigenous foodways providing food security. In the case of mental health, the outcome is seen as decreased stress and worry and improved general mood as the weight of food insecurity is lifted by Indigenous foodways. A major coping strategy to access Indigenous foodways and thus improve security was through family.

Gilpin and Hayes (2020) and Kerpan et.al. (2015) note that practices of sharing intrinsic to foodways additionally improve mental wellbeing by strengthening support ties and de-stressing home environments. A major aspect of improved mental health outcomes come from the emotional influence of these foodways. As highlighted in the pull quotes, emotional health is influenced through harvesting as well as eating. Powlowska-Mainville (2020) and Gilpin and Hayes (2020) emphasise the emotional impact of harvesting, where food security as well

89 32 Domingo, A., Charles, K. A., Jacobs, M., Brooker, D., & Hanning, R. M. (2021).

Indigenous Community Perspectives of Food Security, Sustainable Food Systems and Strategies to Enhance Access to Local and Traditional Healthy Food for Partnering Williams Treaties First Nations (Ontario, Canada).

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(9), 15, Article 4404, 7.

33 Lambden, J., Receveur, O., & Kuhnlein, H. V. (2007). Traditional food attributes must be included in studies of food security in the Canadian Arctic. International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 66(4), 308-319; Gilpin, M., Hayes, M. (2020). A Collection of Voices: Land-based leadership, community wellness, and food knowledge revitalization of the WJOLELP Tsartlip First Nation garden project.

In Settee, P., & Shukla, S. (Eds). Indigenous Food Systems: Concepts, Cases, and Conversations, Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Scholars. Chapter 6, 101118; Pawlowska-Mainville, A. (2020). Aki Miijim (Land Food) and the Sovereignty of the Asatiwisipe Anishinaabeg Boreal Forest Food System. In Settee, P., & Shukla, S. (Eds). Indigenous Food Systems: Concepts, Cases, and Conversations, Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Scholars. Chapter 4, 57-82.

34

See page 90.

Understanding Health Outcomes from Indigenous Perspectives: Systematic Review of the Influence of Indigenous Foodways on Health

34 Arthur, M. L., & Porter, C. M. (2019). Restorying Northern Arapaho food sovereignty. Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development, 9, 69-84; Domingo, A. et al. (2021).

Indigenous Community Perspectives of Food Security, Sustainable Food Systems and Strategies to Enhance Access to Local and Traditional Healthy Food for Partnering Williams Treaties First Nations (Ontario, Canada); Elliott, B., Jayatilaka, D., Brown, C., Varley, L., & Corbett, K. K. (2012). “We are not being heard”: Aboriginal perspectives on traditional foods access and food security.

Journal of environmental and public health, 2012, 130945; Gilpin, M., Hayes, M. (2020). A Collection of Voices: Land-based leadership, community wellness, and food knowledge revitalization of the WJOLELP Tsartlip First Nation garden project.

In Settee, P., & Shukla, S. (Eds). Indigenous Food Systems: Concepts, Cases, and Conversations, Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Scholars. Chapter 6, 101-118; Kerpan, S. et al.(2015) Determinants of diet for urban aboriginal youth: implications for health promotion; Neufeld, H. (2020). Exploring First Nation Elder Women’s Relationships with Food from Social, Ecological, and Historical Perspectives; PawlowskaMainville, A. (2020). Aki Miijim (Land Food) and the Sovereignty of the Asatiwisipe Anishinaabeg Boreal Forest Food System.

35

Neufeld, H. (2020), 8.

36 Delormier, T., & Marquis, K. (2019) Building healthy community relationships through food security and food sovereignty.

as connection to land and culture engaged feelings of pride, wealth, self-reliance, and empowerment. All of the authors discuss how participants attach positive feelings of joy, peace, and goodness to Indigenous foodways. As Bonnie, cited by Neufeld et.al.35, emphasises it does not necessarily matter if these foods are physically or ‘nutritiously’ good for you, there is a genuine health influence from the fact that they make you feel good. It is important to understand the outcomes of food security and emotional well-being as co-created, where feeling secure is a mechanism to improve emotional well-being as well.

Theme Three: Social Health Influence Participant, Klamath Nation, CA-OR:“I know that this last winter we were pretty scarce on food, and my uncle went and got deer for us. We survived a lot off that.” (Sowerwine et.al.:2019:594) Aside from physical health outcomes, the most noted influence was on social health outcomes. 12 out of 17 studies discussed the social health benefits brought about by Indigenous foodways. Even with the amount of discussion on social health, there was very little variance in how it was discussed. There were two main mechanisms and two main outcomes of social health across the 12 papers.

The mechanisms were understood to be the sharing of or the time together harvesting or making Indigenous foods.

The outcomes, influenced by both mechanisms, were understood to be increased food security as a social health benefit and strengthened social ties. Social health outcomes are very related to mental health outcomes, with security and support being identified in both spheres of health but the descriptions of these health outcomes were different for the different spheres.

Sharing was identified in the bulk of studies as a major characteristic of Indigenous foodways, where foodway practices were tied to the sharing and redistribution of food to family and those in need36. According to Settee and Shukla (2020), reciprocity, relationality, and responsibilities to share are integral to not only Indigenous foodways but holistic conceptions of health as well, where the health of these social networks and relationships are deeply important to overall wellness. These foodway networks and relationships are a main facilitator of food security, influencing physical and mental health as previously discussed but also influencing the health of social relationships. Additionally, food security influences overall societal health where strong communities are fed communities. As the pull quote highlights, sharing networks and social ties are a means of survival and secu-

MAREN ROESKE

Field Notes

rity for communities. Similarly, another mechanism by which foodways influence social health is through strengthening social relationships during the time together preparing and harvesting Indigenous foods. Domingo et.al. (2021), Genius et.al.(2015), Hanemaayer et.al.(2020), Kerpan et.al.(2015), and Neufeld et.al.(2020) all emphasise the theme of foodway practices -- harvesting, preparing, sharing, and eating- as important times for strengthening social ties. Neufeld, in particular, explores this relationship between foodways and social health in the extreme circumstances of residential school survivors, noting that the “reciprocal relationships or shared roles in the maintenance of traditional foodways have also been described as ‘intimate and spiritual’” spaces for intergenerational bonding37.

Theme Four: Cultural Health Influence Participant, Klamath Nation, CA-OR:“[Indigenous foods] are just a part of my culture and even my religion and my history.

Those are things that are very important to me to hold onto and pass on to my own future children and my nieces and nephews. It’s just a part of who I am. I couldn’t imagine myself without those things that are important to me and to my family.”

(Sowerwine et.al.:2019:580) The final theme emerging from analysis is the influence of Indigenous foodways on cultural health. Though interrelated to social health, cultural health is generally conceptualized as when good health and wellbeing are supported culturally. An important component of cultural health is the vibrancy and strength of the culture itself as a mechanism of overall wellness. Eleven out of the 17 studies addressed influences on cultural health, all related to the cultural resurgence and sovereignty inherent in Indigenous foodways.

Encompassed in Indigenous foodways are traditional ecological knowledge, spirituality/religion, language, value systems, ceremonies, relationships to land, family, and identity. In engaging in foodway practices, participants highlighted the reconnection to all these elements of culture. As the pull quote highlights, foodways are not just what is being eaten but representative of culture, generally. In and of itself, reconnecting to culture is an important health outcome, but from doing so stems several other health outcomes included in the studies. Participants noted the influence of foodways on political and personal empowerment as well as establishing a sense of identity. But perhaps most significantly and most evident across studies was the outcome of Indigenous sovereignty through the mechanism of Indigenous foodways.38 Sovereignty was identified by participants as

91 37

Neufeld, H. (2020), 8.

Understanding Health Outcomes from Indigenous Perspectives: Systematic Review of the Influence of Indigenous Foodways on Health

38 Arthur & Porter (2019). ; Delormier et.al (2017). ; Elliott et.al (2020); Gilpin & Hayes (2020); Neufeld et.al (2020); Powlowska-Mainville (2020); Sowerwine, J., Mucioki, M., SarnaWojcicki, D., & Hillman, L. (2019). Reframing food security by and for Native American communities: a case study among tribes in the Klamath River basin of Oregon and California.

Food Security, 11(3), 579-607.

the pinnacle state of a healthy culture. These sentiments were summed up by Arthur, “many participants explained that during [nutritional transition] they “just got away from that” referring to things like language, sustainability, sharing, tribalism, culture, and happiness” and through resurgence of foodways they could get back to that, get back to sovereignty (2019:79). Importantly, Indigenous foodways were thought of as a mechanism on the way to sovereignty, it being the most important influence on health, not an end in and of itself.

DISCUSSION Health Outcomes in Colonial Context As sovereignty is the ultimate mechanism understood to influence health, it is important to highlight the overall colonial context in which health occurs. Throughout the studies, the impact of colonialism as a barrier to Indigenous foodways was addressed. My question and my research focus are strength based, looking at the understood influence of Indigenous foodways. But it is important not to dismiss the context of settler-colonialism in which this research occurs. It is from this context that the systematic theme of the loss and absence of Indigenous foodways emerges. All but two of 17 studies discussed the context of colonialism for foodways. I present a context-mechanism-outcome configuration to synthesize the understandings of settler-colonialism from the studies.

Colonialism and colonial-capitalism can be understood as the upstream causes/contexts of Indigenous foodway loss and health disparities for Indigenous peoples. These flow down to the mechanisms. The major perceived mechanisms identified in the studies were dispossession and forced assimilation, including genocidal policies like forced removal and residential schools as well as cultural assimilation into the market economy. These mechanisms represent the dramatic and violent theft of people, land, and culture carried out to the end of colonialism. From the studies, the most commonly noted outcomes were poverty, food insecurity, cultural knowledge loss, environmental degradation, displacement, and intergenerational trauma. At all levels, these CMOs are the contexts within which Indigenous foodways currently exist and the mechanisms barring access to such foodways.

Limitations Evidenced by the complications of colonial context, a major

MAREN ROESKE

Field Notes

limitation of this review is the complexity and entanglements of the concepts of interest. One aspect of foodways may be a mechanism or an outcome at the same time; food security, for example, was widely discussed as a physical health outcome but also as a mechanism influencing additional mental and social health outcomes. When exploring holistic systems of Indigenous health and foodways, the linearity of realism and the context-mechanism-outcome configuration is not always applicable to Indigenous ways of knowing. While this review is strength based and stands out among related reviews from that perspective, this framing could be interpreted as downplaying the influence and harm of settler-colonialism.

However, this review was never supposed to be about the influence of settler-colonialism on health; rather, it turns towards examining Indigenous foodways influence on health.

Additionally, the limitations of realism, while significant, can be overcome by highlighting the co-creation and interdependency of the systems explored. The limited applicability and scope of this review could also be seen as a weakness; it purposefully does not seek to provide a widely applicable understanding of foodways and is narrowly focused on the Nations included in the studies and in the specific context of North American Anglo-settler-colonialism. I contend that this is not a limitation but a reality of studying diverse and complex minority populations and decontextualized or generalized findings lose relevancy.

Implications The myriad and positive influences of foodways on health were made very clear through review. While the results of this study do not apply broadly to Indigenous peoples or foodways around the world, for researchers and policy practitioners in North America and from the participating Nations, there are two major important implications. First, these results highlight the necessity of policy based on promoting and protecting Indigenous foodways, policies which do so should be conceptualized as part of food sovereignty not just food security.

Throughout the studies, the importance of food sovereignty to both foodways and health was emphasized. The pervasive sentiment, summed up by a Klamath Nation participant, is that health disparities are the result of colonialism and solutions rest not in Wester-colonial practices but Indigenous sovereignty and cultural resurgence: “I believe that Native Americans should be able to harvest their foods wherever, within their ancestral territories. We always have since time immemorial. The government itself is basically tying our hands to being able to live off the lands”.39 Second, these results highlight the necessity of research based on Indigenous knowl-

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39 Sowerwine et.al (2019), 600 40 15

Neufeld et.al (2020),

edge which treats Indigenous participants not as subjects but experts on their own health, foodways, and needs. Many of the health outcomes influenced by Indigenous foodways come not from objective diet or nutritional measures but the subjective connections to culture, family, and mental wellbeing promoted through foodways. To support food sovereignty and protect Indigenous foodways requires “understanding Indigenous food systems from the communities’ perspectives and their contexts. This is a first step to decolonizing our overall understanding of the importance of Indigenous food systems”.40

CONCLUSION Though a small portion of the Indigenous foodways scholarships, these studies that center on Indigenous knowledge and perspectives on foodways are an essential contribution to the overall understanding of Indigenous health. From the 17 studies systematically reviewed emerged four main themes answering how Indigenous foodways are understood to influence health: physical, mental, social, and cultural health.

These outcomes are interrelated and Indigenous foodways as a whole influence health holistically. Research found that Indigenous foodways are an important mechanism of holistic health, especially for addressing food insecurity. These findings suggest that to address health disparities, policy makers and community health practitioners should emphasize and support food diversity and cultural resurgence movements to promote Indigenous foodways. Importantly, this research highlights the need to look beyond micro nutritional or dietary assessment to understand the influence of Indigenous foodways. Foodways are more than foodstuffs and their influence on health extends beyond just physical health to mental, social, cultural, and ultimately the health of the sovereignty movements and decolonization of Indigenous peoples. 

MAREN ROESKE

Field Notes

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Field Notes

Mosby, I., & Galloway, T. (2017). ‘Hunger was never absent’: How residential school diets shaped current patterns of diabetes among Indigenous peoples in Canada.

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Pawlowska-Mainville, A. (2020). Aki Miijim (Land Food) and the Sovereignty of the Asatiwisipe Anishinaabeg Boreal Forest Food System. In Settee, P., & Shukla, S. (Eds). Indigenous Food Systems: Concepts, Cases, and Conversations, Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Scholars. Chapter 4, 57-82.

Pawson, R., Greenhalgh, T., Harvey, G., Walshe, K. ( 2005) Realist review –a new method of systematic review designed for complex policy interventions. Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, 10, 21-34 Settee, P., & Shukla, S. (2020). Indigenous food systems: Concepts, cases, and conversations.

Shanks, C. B., Ahmed, S., Dupuis, V., Houghtaling, B., Crane, M. A. R., Tryon, M., & Pierre, M. (2020). Perceptions of food environments and nutrition among residents of the Flathead Indian Reservation. Bmc Public Health, 20(1), 15, Article 1536.

Skinner, K., Hanning, R. M., Desjardins, E., & Tsuji, L. J. (2013). Giving voice to food insecurity in a remote indigenous community in subarctic Ontario, Canada: traditional ways, ways to cope, ways forward. Bmc Public Health, 13, 427.

Sowerwine, J., Mucioki, M., Sarna-Wojcicki, D., & Hillman, L. (2019). Reframing food security by and for Native American communities: a case study among tribes in the Klamath River basin of Oregon and California. Food Security, 11(3), 579-607.

97

Canadian Indigenous Cartography as Colonial Resistance

ELINOR ROSENBERG

Field Notes

99

ABSTRACT

This paper tracks how four Canadian Indigenous artists use maps to resist colonial ideas and powers. The artists’ maps are analyzed visually, along with their time and place-specific contexts to provide a comprehensive explanation of the role of each map in combating colonialism.

This paper then explores Indigenous-led digital mapping organizations and how they empower Indigenous individuals and educate the non-Indigenous public, exemplifying the role of contemporary maps in colonial resistance.

INTRODUCTION

1 Anker, Kirsten.

“Aboriginal Title and Alternative Cartographies”.

Erasmus Law Review, 1, 14-30, 2018. DOI: 105553/ ELR.000098

Land displacement forms a core part of the Canadian Indigenous experience. Colonists use stolen land for resource extraction and profit, neglecting previous Indigenous stewardship. The colonial conception of land possession starkly contrasts with the Indigenous view of land as part of an interconnected system with natural resources and living beings.

These clashing conceptions of land possession implicate maps in the perpetuation of colonialism. Indeed, the geographer Bernard Nietschmann claims that “more Indigenous territory has been taken by maps than guns...[and] more Indigenous territory can be defended and reclaimed by maps than guns”.1 Colonial maps erase Indigenous histories and center land ownership. Indigenous mapping practices are not about possession, and instead center land protection against degradation, personal connections to the land, and the impacts of colonialism.

The four prominent artists Shawnadithit, Christi Belcourt, Sonny Assu, and CeeJay Johnson all produce maps that root Indigenous peoples to the land in unique ways, illustrating a temporal progression of relationships to specific territories. Shawnadithit used maps as witness statements to document the genocide of her people. Christi Belcourt exemplifies disastrous colonial land management practices through toponymy and cartographic keys. Sonny Assu incorporates map fragments into his art, giving insight into lost spatial memories from colonization. CeeJay Johnson’s combined beadwork map of Turtle Island allows current artists to explore their heritage in the face of colonialism and consider the future of their identities. Indigenous digi-

Canadian Indigenous Cartography as Colonial Resistance

Figure 1 Shawnadithit.

Untitled. 1828, pencil on paper, unlisted current location. Accessed at https://www. canadiangeographic. ca/article/ametunderstanding-beothuk.

tal cartography organizations are also vital parts of Indigenous mapping. They embrace principles of accessibility and collaboration and simultaneously challenge viewers. Maps created by Indigenous artists and mapping organizations are effective tools in colonial resistance that enable Indigenous peoples to reassert their traditional stewardship of lands and waters.

SHAWNADITHIT

2 Harris, Cole. “How Did Colonialism Dispossess?

Comments from an Edge of Empire.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94, no. 1 (November 5, 2004): 165–82. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.14678306.2004.09401009.x.

3 Ralph T. Pastore and G. M. Story, “SHAWNADITHIT,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 6, University of Toronto/ Université Laval, 2003–, accessed December 9, 2021, http://www. biographi.ca/en/bio/ shawnadithit_6E.html.

Shawnadithit, the last surviving member of the Beothuk, created maps to immortalize her people in the face of destructive colonialism. The Beothuk were an Indigenous tribe that inhabited modern-day Newfoundland. In the middle of the 18th century as English and French colonists established commercial fishing, the Beothuk escaped inland from the colonists in their historic coastal lands. Colonial coastal land possession created a “geography of resettlement”; the new human geography superimposed on historically Beothuk land, forcing them to move and abandon their way of life while navigating relationships with hostile settlers.2 When traditional livelihoods of fishing were inaccessible and the Beothuk were unable to fight back against settlers, this geography of resettlement led to mass starvation.

Colonial attacks and kidnappings devastated the Beothuk, in addition to their forced resettlement. In December 1819, Shawnadithit witnessed the English colonizers kidnapping her aunt Demasduit, known as Mary March in English.

ELINOR ROSENBERG

Field Notes

Williams Eppes Cormack, a Scottish-Canadian explorer who hosted Shawnadithit for several years labeled one map as “The taking of Mary March on the north side of the Lake” and “Captain Buchan visit 1810-11 on the south side of the Lake” (figure 1).

As Cormack indicates, this pencil-drawing map depicts both Demasduit’s kidnapping on the north side of the lake in 1819, and an encounter with English Lieutenant Buchan on the south side of the lake which resulted in the death of two British colonists. 3 These contrasting stories placed together on the map illustrate that while the Beothuk initially had defensive power, they were not able to match the strength of the colonists in the long-term. The dotted lines delineate the paths that the British took in 1811. After traveling these paths, the British kidnapped Demasduit, illustrating how the British colonists traveled freely on the stolen land. The shapes and color palette in this map are simple, allowing Shawnadithit to exclusively focus on the stories at hand. The red in this map represents the Beothuk’s traditional ochre decorations and the blood of their demise, conveying how being Indigenous is tied to defeat from colonialism. Cormack gave Shawnadithit the pencil and paper and wrote the captions as part of his attempt to preserve Beothuk culture.4 However, his prioritization of culture over people reflects the possessive nature of anthropology and undervaluing of Indigenous individuals themselves. Shawnadithit’s lived experience strengthens her credibility in establishing this map and illustrates the personal impacts, in addition to the impact on the Beothuk, of colonial expansion.

Figure 2 Belcourt, Christi. Goodland. 2007, Acrylic on canvas, 2008 Artspace Gallery, Peterborough, ON. Unlisted current location.

Accessed at www. christibelcourt.com/ Gallery/gallery2008page 3f.html

CHRISTI BELCOURT Métis artist Christi Belcourt demonstrates how colonial conquest, which Shawnadithit experienced, leads to the destruction of Indigenous lands and peoples in her 2007 acrylic on canvas map, Good Land (figure 2).

The right panel of this map is a colonial view of the Great Lake region, Belcourt’s home, and the left panel is an Indige-

101 4 Mitchell, Alanna.

“Amet*: Understanding the Beothuk.” Canadian Geographic. Canadian Geographic Enterprises, May 13, 2021. https:// www.canadiangeographic. ca/article/ametunderstanding-beothuk.

Canadian Indigenous Cartography as Colonial Resistance

5 Belcourt, Christi.

“Reclaiming Ourselves

By Name- Contesting Canada’s Colonial Names, By Language and By Map.” Briarpatch.

Briarpatch Magazine, July 1, 2013. https:// briarpatchmagazine.com/ articles/view/reclaimingourselves-by-name.

6 Uluococha, Nna O. “Decolonizing Place-Names: Strategic Imperative for Preserving Indigenous Cartography in Post-Colonial Africa.”

African Journal of History and Culture 7, no. 9 (September 2015): 180–92. https://doi.org/10.5897/ ajhc2015.0279.

7

Harris, 2004.

8 Lebedinskaia, Natalia.

“Imaginary Lines.” Art Mur. Art Mûr Montreal, March 7, 2020. https://artmur. com/en/artists/sonnyassu/imaginary-lines/.

nized version of the same map. Her exclusive use of blue and beige in the maps mirrors the simple color scheme of authentic colonial maps, causing Good Land to appear as a historical document. While many Canadian place names are derived from Indigenous languages, the public ignores the history behind them, causing the place names to be empty references that ignore the colonial genocide.5 In the right panel of Good Land, Belcourt uses contemporary “Canadian” place names and labels from historical and contemporary colonial maps.

The use of colonial place names promotes the idea that land access only exists under colonial systems.6 So, the right panel of Goodland illustrates an erasure of Indigenous peoples and histories. However, the original place names and labels on the left panel of this map directly contrast with the right side and illustrate holistic Indigenous views of the land. Indigenous place names disrupt colonial narratives of land ownership and express geographic knowledge that revolves upon living with the land, rather than solely extracting from it. For example, in Good Land, the colonial map’s label of “Indian land” portrays the inland as occupied by “savages.” Indigenous people living on land that had not yet been “developed” according to colonial standards were viewed as backwards and lazy. Therefore, colonists viewed “developing the land” as a cultural necessity that would reform Indigenous people.7 The Indigenous label of “stolen land” illustrates how colonialism actually robbed Indigenous people of their land and their culture, rather than improve it.

The cartographic keys in the bottom left of Good Land actualize the deadly contrast between colonial and Indigenous land management. The colonial cartographic key represents trees with dollar signs, while the Indigenous cartographic key describes trees as “lungs of the Earth” (Belcourt, 2007). This contrast illustrates how colonial land management practices are unsustainable, literally depriving the Earth of air. Cartographic keys typically show what resources can be taken from the land, but Belcourt subverts the typical colonial cartographic key of over-extraction from the land to illustrate the consequences of taking from the land. Belcourt’s contrast between the colonial and Indigenized map of her home region in Good Land foreshadows how colonial land possession leads to land degradation that neglects vital components of the interconnected ecosystem.

SONNY ASSU Sonny Assu explores the personal impacts of colonialism in his 2020 series Landlines. This series consists of fifteen images in earth tones of turquoise and beige.8 Landlines is reminiscent

ELINOR ROSENBERG

Field Notes

of pop art with its poster forms, sharp lines, and simple color palette. This color palette is similar to Good Land, however the white background and use of turquoise instead of blue further evokes a sense of modernity. This modernity allows Assu to comment on the present struggles Indigenous Canadians face in connecting to their historical land, and on his own challenges in connecting to his Ligwilda’xw/Kwakwaka’wakw background. The fractured maps and negative space in the background of the images in Landlines represent gaps in spatial memory and loss of generational spatial knowledge.

Assu spent his childhood summers on Vancouver Island with his grandfather who was part of the local system of lands and waters.9 However, Assu struggles to maintain a connection to his ancestors and their historical land while living in the modern colonial world of resource extraction, consumerism, and environmental destruction. Personal stories like Assu’s are decolonizing because they provide a human element to maps that reaches beyond arbitrary boundaries.10 Assu’s personal experience grounds Shawnadithit and Belcourt’s maps, representing initial colonial contact and colonial land management principles in present-day cultural losses. Specifically, the copper shield in Landlines #7 is part of Indigenous northwest symbology that originally represented wealth and power (figure 3).11 Place-based knowledge is empowering and allows people to live in harmony with the land. However, the copper shields throughout the series have crossed eyes, causing them to appear helpless and reflecting how forced assimilation and land conquest deprive Indigenous Canadians of their homes and cultures. The effects of climate change, resulting in large part from neglectful colonial policies, further compound on the loss of place-based knowledge and prevent Indigenous Canadians from connecting with their ancestral lands and waters.

103 9

Lebedinskaia, 2020.

10 Palmer, Mark, and Korson, Cadey.

“Decolonizing World Heritage Maps Using Indigenous Toponyms, Stories, and Interpretive Attributes.” Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization 55, no. 3 (2020): 183–92. https://doi.org/10.3138/ cart-2019-0014.

11

Lebedinskaia, 2020.

Figure 3 Assu, Sonny.

Landlines #7. 2020, acrylic ink on Stonehenge Archival paper, 2020.

2020 Art Mûr, Montreal, QC. Unlisted current location. Accessed at www.sonnyassu.com/ gallery/landlines

Canadian Indigenous Cartography as Colonial Resistance

12 Wenzel, Abra.

“Circling Covid: Making in the Time of a Pandemic.”

Anthropologica 63, no.

1 (June 17, 2021): 1–13. https://doi.org/ 10.18357/ anthropologica 6312021350.

13 Ray, Lana. ““Beading Becomes a Part of Your Life.”” International Review of Qualitative Research 9, 3(2016): 363-378. https://doi.org/10.1525/ irqr.2016.9.3.363.

14

Wenzel, 2021.

15 Rodriguez, Jeremiah.

“Beading Is Medicine’: Intricate Map Connects Indigenous Artists across Canada, U.S.” CTV News.

Bell Media, April 7, 2021.

Retreived from http:// ctvnews.ca/lifestyle.ca/ beading-is-medicineintricate-connectsindigenous-artists-acrosscanada-u-s.1.5378292.

CEEJAY JOHNSON Dakota and Tlingit artist CeeJay Johnson embraces the complexity of Indigenous heritages in the modern day in her 2020 “Bead Your State/Province Project” (figures 4 & 5).

Johnson established this project during the first wave of COVID-19, when the surge in digital communication technology lowered barriers to involvement in Indigenous communities.12 Artists, primarily women, from every province, territory, and state across Turtle Island sent Johnson images of their beadwork. The public first voted on their favorite designs, maximizing community participation, and then Johnson digitally weaved the designs together to create a beadwork map of Turtle Island. Beadwork is a form of Indigenous storytelling that allows spiritual and relation-based knowledge to pass through generations. However, assimilation pressures disrupt this process.13 As digital communications technology expanded Indigenous communities during COVID-19, art has been a key pathway to building relationships and reclaiming identities.14 Beading is innately collaborative, so Johnson’s project capitalizes on the advantages of digital mediums and traditional art.

The New Brunswick design, by Lenore Augustine from the Elsipogtog First Nation, consists of a yellow sun on a blue background, indicating an appreciation for nature. The fiddlehead plants in the background represent the multiple Indigenous communities in the province.15 Erica Dawn of Shinnecock, Choctaw, and Tsalgai descent beaded the Kentucky design of the state’s abbreviation “KY” and a horseshoe, which is a common symbol of the state’s identity and key tourist attraction. While Augustine focuses on the natural landscape of New Brunswick, Dawn centers recognizable aspects of modern Kentucky. Artists in this project grapple with creat-

Figure 4 Johnson, CeeJay. Bead Your State/ Province. Various beads, 2020. Accessed at https://www.ctvnews. ca/lifestyle/beading-ismedicine-intricate-mapconnects-indigenousartists-across-canadau-s-1.5378292

ELINOR ROSENBERG

Field Notes

105

Figure 5 Johnson, CeeJay. Bead Your State/ Province. Various beads, 2020. Accessed at https://www.ctvnews. ca/lifestyle/beading-ismedicine-intricate-mapconnects-indigenousartists-across-canadau-s-1.5378292

ing beaded designs to represent multifaceted Indigenous and contemporary identities using the arbitrary colonial boundaries. Beaders from a single state, province, or territory cannot represent the multiple Indigenous groups within their region and must instead focus on conveying overarching Indigenous principles of being in relation to their homes. The artists in this project all embrace their Indigenous heritages through learning and relearning beading and combining their designs. The final digital piece illustrates how contemporary Indigenous mapping thrives upon the fusion of tradition and taking advantage of the present moment.

CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS MAPPING ORGANIZATIONS Beyond the art of individual artists, Indigenous mapping organizations work on a large-scale to subvert colonial maps.

Native Land Digital is an Indigenous led non-profit organization founded in 2018.16 The home page of the website displays a map indicating Indigenous territories, languages, and treaties (figure 6).

The pastel colors demarcating these elements overlap with each other, reflecting how Indigenous land stewardship exists beyond random boundaries and that there is a great deal of cultural overlap. The pale blue and green of the water and forests is distinct, illustrating the centrality of nature to Indigenous groups. As Belcourt explores in Good Land, toponymy

16 Native Land. Native Land Digital, 2021. https:// native-land.ca/.

Canadian Indigenous Cartography as Colonial Resistance

Figure 6 Native-Land Digital (map with Treaties, Territories, and Languages). 2021, online map. Accessed at https://native-land.ca/

17

Native Land, 2021.

18

Anker, 2018.

informs how viewers perceive territory and displaying original place names forces viewers to grapple with the violent history of Indigenous erasure around the world. The inclusion of languages and treaties compels viewers to consider not only who lives in their land, but also how these Indigenous people have lived and the way their land was stolen.

The management of Native Land Digital also reflects the principles of collaboration, accessibility, and growth. They partner with academic institutions and organizations promoting Indigenous history. Beyond organizational partnerships, Native Land Digital has an open Slack channel that promotes transparency of organizational operations and ensures that involvement is accessible to people of all backgrounds and skill levels. Their interface is free, ensuring that the organization resists capitalistic pressures and that geographic information about Indigenous land is available. In claiming that “this map is not perfect – it is a work in progress with tons of contributions from the community”, the organization emphasizes how it evolves with new knowledge that viewers share.17 Applying standard mapping practices is not sufficient to resist colonialism because standard maps can draw Indigenous peoples into a capitalistic economy based on land degradation.18 Therefore, the maps of Native Land Digital explicitly prove overlaps in historical ties to the land, providing information about people who lived there, and existing as living documents that can be changed at any time.

The Indigenous Mapping Workshop (IMW) empowers individuals to learn digital cartography techniques and create and improve platforms like Native Land Digital. IMW is part of the Firelight Group, an Indigenous owned Canadian consulting group that uses research to uplift Indigenous communities. IMW ensures that Indigenous communities, which are typically under-resourced, have adequate support to create

ELINOR ROSENBERG

Field Notes

impactful maps. Geospatial technology can be difficult to grasp and access.19 So, IMW conducts annual workshops that educate Indigenous mapmakers of all levels in the use of geospatial technology to create culturally relevant maps.

These workshops have been held in Canadian cities with substantial Indigenous populations, in typically overlooked northern communities, and online when gathering in person was not possible due to COVID-19.20 The geographic expanse that IMW covers reflects how issues of Indigenous land stewardship exist across Canada. Native Land Digital and IMW complement each other in the quest for disrupting colonial maps through the empowerment of Indigenous individuals and the education of settlers.

CONCLUSION Shawnadithit, Belcourt, Assu, Johnson, and Native Land Digital and IMW exemplify Nietschmann’s claim that more Indigenous territory will be reclaimed by maps than guns. Each of the four individual artists mentioned here address a different moment in relating Indigenous mapping to colonialism.

The transparency of the organizations leading and supporting Indigenous mapping efforts ensure that Indigenous cartography represents multiple Indigenous perspectives and experiences. This openness directly contrasts colonial power-seeking mapping efforts. The storytelling and collaborative components of Indigenous mapping allow it to transcend the limits of colonial mapping and be an effective tool for colonial resistance. 

107 19 Zhu, A-Xing, Fang-He Zhao, Peng Liang, and Cheng-Zhi Qin. “Next Generation of GIS: Must Be Easy.” Annals of GIS 27, no. 1 (May 18, 2020): 71–86. https://doi.org/10 .1080/19475683.2020.1 766563.

20 Indigenous Mapping Workshop. Fireflight Research Inc, 2021. https://indigenousmaps. com of Sciences 114, no.

24 (2017): 6238-43.

Canadian Indigenous Cartography as Colonial Resistance

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anker, Kirsten. “Aboriginal Title and Alternative Cartographies". Erasmus Law Review, 1, 14-30, 2018. DOI: 105553/ELR.000098 Assu, Sonny. Landlines #7. 2020, acrylic ink on Stonehenge Archival paper, 2020.

2020 Art Mûr, Montreal, QC. Unlisted current location. Accessed at www. sonnyassu.com/gallery/landlines Belcourt, Christi. Goodland. 2007, Acrylic on canvas, 2008 Artspace Gallery, Peterborough, ON. Unlisted current location. Accessed at www.christibelcourt. com/Gallery/gallery2008page3f.html Belcourt, Christi. “Reclaiming Ourselves By Name- Contesting Canada's Colonial Names, By Language and By Map.” Briarpatch. Briarpatch Magazine, July 1, 2013. https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/reclaiming-ourselvesby-name.

Harris, Cole. “How Did Colonialism Dispossess? Comments from an Edge of Empire.”

Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94, no. 1 (November 5, 2004): 165–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2004.09401009.x.

Indigenous Mapping Workshop. Fireflight Research Inc, 2021. https://indigenousmaps.com Johnson, CeeJay. Bead Your State/Province. Various beads, 2020. Accessed at https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/beading-is-medicine-intricate-map-connects-indigenous-artists-across-canada-u-s-1.5378292 Lebedinskaia, Natalia. “Imaginary Lines.” Art Mur. Art Mûr Montreal, March 7, 2020. https://artmur.com/en/artists/sonny-assu/imaginary-lines/.

Mitchell, Alanna. “Amet*: Understanding the Beothuk.” Canadian Geographic. Canadian Geographic Enterprises, May 13, 2021. https://www.canadiangeographic. ca/article/amet-understanding-beothuk.

Native Land. Native Land Digital, 2021. https://native-land.ca/.

Native-Land Digital. 2021, online map. Accessed at https://native-land.ca/ Palmer, Mark, and Korson, Cadey. “Decolonizing World Heritage Maps Using Indigenous Toponyms, Stories, and Interpretive Attributes.” Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization 55, no.

3 (2020): 183–92. https://doi.org/10.3138/cart-2019-0014.

Ralph T. Pastore and G. M. Story, “SHAWNADITHIT,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 6, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed December 9, 2021, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/shawnadithit_6E.html.

ELINOR ROSENBERG

Field Notes

Ray, Lana. “”Beading Becomes a Part of Your Life.”” International Review of Qualitative Research 9, 3(2016): 363-378. https://doi.org/10.1525/irqr.2016.9.3.363.

Rodriguez, Jeremiah. “Beading Is Medicine': Intricate Map Connects Indigenous Artists across Canada, U.S.” CTV News. Bell Media, April 7, 2021. http:// ctvnews.ca/lifestyle.ca/beading-is-medicine-intricate-connects-indigenous-artists-across-canada-u-s.1.5378292.

Shawnadithit. Untitled. 1828, pencil on paper, unlisted current location. Accessed at https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/amet-understanding-beothuk Uluococha, Nna O. “Decolonizing Place-Names: Strategic Imperative for Preserving Indigenous Cartography in Post-Colonial Africa.” African Journal of History and Culture 7, no. 9 (September 2015): 180–92. https://doi.org/10.5897/ ajhc2015.0279.

Wenzel, Abra. “Circling Covid: Making in the Time of a Pandemic.” Anthropologica 63, no. 1 (June 17, 2021): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica6312021350.

Zhu, A-Xing, Fang-He Zhao, Peng Liang, and Cheng-Zhi Qin. “Next Generation of GIS: Must Be Easy.” Annals of GIS 27, no. 1 (May 18, 2020): 71–86. https://doi. org/10.1080/19475683.2020.1766563.

109

Colophon

Field Notes

Editors-in-Chief LEA JOSEPH EVA SAYN-WITTGENSTEINT

Editors MARIA GHEORGHIU SEAN HALL OLIVIA KENNEDY LILLY LECANU-FAYET ELLA WISCHNEWSKY Art Direction, Design GIULIA CARUANA giuliacaruana.com Funding ARTS UNDERGRADUATE SOCIETY JOURNAL FUND MCGILL UNDERGRADUATE GEOGRAPHY SOCIETY

111

When You’re Green You’re Growing: Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities

When You’re Green You’re Growing: Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities