Hindcasting the Settler State

• In Event: Unsettling STS 1

Abstract

Ecological restoration aims to approximate a return to a prior state. As the restoration of the Florida Everglades – among the world’s costliest and most ambitious ecosystem restoration projects – demonstrates of the United States, the methods and mindsets that guide restoration have much to tell us about settler colonialism. Ecosystem modeling, invasive species management, and archaeology show how science and policy build the association of whiteness with history into ecosystem restoration and management, while ethnography of the cultural politics of water among the diverse residents of rural South Florida –including farmers and farmworkers, bass anglers, state water managers, and Seminole water managers and users – traces how such science and policy come to matter in everyday practice and possibility.

Author

• Jessica Cattelino, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)