Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
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Item Rivers of resistance: resource conflict and rural organizing in the Americas(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2024) Anderson, Jacey Christine; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Molly ToddIn the last half of the twentieth-century, historians of every specialization framed their studies by national boundaries, and environmental historians of the so-called "global north" separated the domain of human culture from the domain of physical nature. For decades, scholars widely accepted and repeated these arrangements, but the lines of separation and division turned out to be far more effective as obstructions to understanding than as paths to insight. This transnational research sets a consequential example by removing those obstructions and by mapping those paths. This is an environmental history of two river basins in the Americas. The following chapters unpack parallels between these places, specifically, how people along the Rio Lempa in El Salvador and the Tongue River in Montana used their local knowledge of the land to successfully prevent mining projects in the late twentieth and early-twenty first centuries. I examine the environmental, societal, and cultural factors that led to these successes from different scales--the global to the local--and highlight common themes they shared. Both movements focused on defending their watersheds from mining projects that would have damaged water quality and altered locals' ways of life. The leaders of both movements were not traditional environmentalists and did not consider themselves to be; rather, they were ordinary people who were fighting for what they valued--a life of dignity and respect for their surroundings. By examining two distinct case studies, I show that "success" stories are not singular anomalies. They serve as models for future action.Item The way of the mountain: powder snow, Dolores LaChapelle, and a search for 'the answers'(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2022) Menzel, Clare Wolz; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mark FiegeLongstanding narratives in Europe and the United States about progress as emancipation from nature construct perceptions of separation between humans and everything else. This separation justifies human mastery of and control over nature, leading to environmental exploitation as well as individual experiences of alienation from place. Dolores LaChapelle, author of 'Deep Powder Snow: 40 Years of Ecstatic Skiing, Avalanches, and Earth Wisdom', countered dominant Eurocentric and anthropocentric ascendancy with knowledge that she argued came from her experiences as a powder snow skier in the western United States during the twentieth century. Using theories of neo-materialism and vital materiality, this study examines relational, more-than-human agency that produced cultural identity and embodied ethical knowledge. In particular, it focuses on LaChapelle's encounters and relationships with mountain places, and transformations in her thinking that occurred after she learned to ski powder in Aspen, Colorado, from 1947-1950, as well as after she experienced a large avalanche in Alta, Utah in 1963. This study argues that LaChapelle is an overlooked, original thinker about the agency and ethical standing of non-human beings in the material world.