Valoree Gagnon | Michigan Technological University (original) (raw)
Papers by Valoree Gagnon
Socio-Ecological Practice Research/Socio-ecological practice research, Mar 12, 2024
Discourse used in the field of invasion ecology has significant impacts on society's perception, ... more Discourse used in the field of invasion ecology has significant impacts on society's perception, yet communication related to "invasives" is rife with problematic, exclusionary language. We provide potential solutions, including a repositioned perspective that may facilitate better relationships with the natural world by applying the two-eyed seeing framework. Our discussion calls for a paradigm shift for deeper understandings of human and more-than-human relationships. Ultimately, we advocate for respectful, considerate, and intentional language and stewardship.
Ecology and Society, 2023
Lake Superior's Keweenaw Bay is the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the Anishinaabe Ojibwa... more Lake Superior's Keweenaw Bay is the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the Anishinaabe Ojibwa and their relatives. It is also a toxic riskscape: Its waters, shorelines, and fish beings are polluted by an unknown tonnage of legacy mining waste rock called "stamp sands," which contain unsafe levels of toxic compounds. This paper describes Ojibwa stewardship principles and reciprocal obligations, illustrating First Treaty With Gichi-Manitou practices of restoring relations within a toxic riskscape. Defined here, riskscapes are places and spaces where pollution/toxicity relations are continually reconfigured in literal, symbolic, and systemic ways. We share a story from Keweenaw Bay's Sand Point restoration project (2002-present) to elucidate distinctly different approaches and challenges to restoring ecological relationships, including those between human and more-than-human beings. The restoration of 35 acres of barren shoreline into a thriving landscape concurrently created space for reclaiming Ojibwa stewardship obligations to land, water, and life. The goal was to restore Sand Point as a self-sustaining plant community, but maintenance remains demanding and costly. Lake Superior forces continually mobilize stamp sands, and recent extreme storm events have done so with even greater force. Thus measures of "success" are reconsidered annually, a reminder that "in perpetuity" toxic governance regimes are as unstable as riskscapes themselves. Yet Sand Point is a story of hope. Substantial transformations atop the surface reflect the restoration of many relationships between communities, institutional partners, and more-than-human beings. It is our Sand Point plant relatives who share the most valuable lessons of restoring sustainable livelihoods: resilience is interdependent communities caring for one another.
Increased risks due to toxic exposure contribute to numerous health burdens in particular places ... more Increased risks due to toxic exposure contribute to numerous health burdens in particular places and lives. In the Great Lakes region, harvesting and consuming fish provide tribes with socio-cultural and spiritual health, and simultaneously, place their physical health at great risk. Using institutional ethnography to explore Lake Superior’s toxic riskscape, this dissertation investigates perceptions of “health” and the ways “health protection” is applied in the daily work of tribal, state, and federal environmental and public health agencies. By drawing on environmental justice frameworks and the “Seven Generations” philosophy, the aim is to explore linkages between health concepts and toxic risk management. In doing so, I ask how particular views of health influence environmental injustice. Constructed from my research data in the agencies I studied, I describe two different health frameworks and the ways each are applied. For tribal agencies, I define health as “life in balance,” a relationship between social, physical, and mental well-being which includes cultural and spiritual dimensions. These meanings are rooted in the fundamental worldview of how Ojibwa tribal communities perceive health and well-being. Therefore, institutional policies support tribes in actively engaging in healing experiences to disembody harm for themselves. For state and federal agencies, the health framework is rooted in legislated mandates, and centers on biophysical health in ambiguous ways. Legally acceptable health terms can be described in terms of environmental health, determined by risk science, and protected as potential pathways and exposures. Restricted to the terms of risk science, state and federal agencies interpret health protection as the management of risks. As a consequence, implementing health policy is removed from the physical, tangible experiences of living with contamination. Crucial to this case, I discern fundamental disconnections between ways of seeing “health” and environmental justice implications for Seven Generations. I emphasize the legal institutional system of health protection as, in actuality, a system that victimizes and re-victimizes sensitive populations. Harm is an inherent feature of health protection policy. Overall, in problematizing health, I draw attention to a health framework paradigm that results in serious ethical implications for the science-policy relationship, and especially, our human relationship with the natural world
Human Organization
The Ojibwe Gichigami (Lake Superior) bioregion is the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the ... more The Ojibwe Gichigami (Lake Superior) bioregion is the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the Anishinaabe Ojibwa. Harvesting and consuming fish has sustained people for millennia, but today, toxic risks due to fish contamination contribute to many burdens for both human and more-than-human worlds. For the Ojibwa, nibi gaye nii’kinaaganaa (“water and all my relations”) are the lived experiences of fish-reliant communities and emphasize sustaining good relations with water and relatives. Toxicity disrupts traditional harvest lifeways, violates treaty rights, and problematizes Ojibwa water relations. In this article, I describe diverging values attributed to water and conflicting norms of water quality relations between Ojibwa people and scientific practices of toxicology. Drawn from a study of institutional water decision making, I examine practices associated with water, fish, and risk and how these practices clarify ethics in water policy. The study of toxic substances, albeit in...
Journal of Great Lakes Research
T he planet Earth has a long list of environmental issues: expanding droughts and wildfires; esca... more T he planet Earth has a long list of environmental issues: expanding droughts and wildfires; escalating frequency and strength of tornadoes and hurricanes; spreading invasive species; and increasing numbers of endangered species. These unprecedented concerns make headlines every day all over the world, however, helping middle school students make sense of contemporary events as they relate to Earth science can be a challenge for any teacher. For many years, Earth science concepts have been taught as thematic units with lessons in nice, neat chapter packages complete with labs and notes. But compartmentalized Earth science no longer exists, and implementing teaching methods that support student development of holistic understand-ings can be a time-consuming and difficult task.
Journal of Great Lakes Research, 2022
Energy Research & Social Science
A Research Agenda for Environmental Management, 2019
This chapter examines a transdisciplinary (TD) research project that included space for stakehold... more This chapter examines a transdisciplinary (TD) research project that included space for stakeholder and decision maker participation. The project, funded by the National Science Foundation, focused on the atmospheric transport of compounds (such as mercury and PCBs) responsible for fish consumption advisories in the Great Lakes region and the systems of governance in place to address this concern. The TD research question pursued in this project, which was “when will it be safe for people in the Great Lakes region to consume as much fish as desired?”, emerged out of a workshop held with community partners soon after the project began. The various challenges that emerged in the framing and execution of this interdisciplinary project and in the execution of its TD component are considered here, along with the value of having natural science and social science researchers collaborate with community partners
Journal of Great Lakes Research
Lightning talks presented by researchers from around the country that highlights the challenges t... more Lightning talks presented by researchers from around the country that highlights the challenges they experienced with stakeholder engagement in FEWS projects and lessons learned from engagement. This presentation focused on engaging with stakeholders for prioritizing land and life in the Great Lakes region. It discussed important lessons for engaging with/by/as research partnerships. This includes prioritizing land and life by being thoughtful and intentional, being deliberate and make evident your goals, and use academic and scientific tools, methods and resources for protection, restoration and revitalization. Another important lesson is to understand your topic, project, stakeholders and self
Sustainability, 2021
Community and stakeholder engagement is increasingly recognized as essential to science at the ne... more Community and stakeholder engagement is increasingly recognized as essential to science at the nexus of food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) to address complex issues surrounding food and energy production and water provision for society. Yet no comprehensive framework exists for supporting best practices in community and stakeholder engagement for FEWS. A review and meta-synthesis were undertaken of a broad range of existing models, frameworks, and toolkits for community and stakeholder engagement. A framework is proposed that comprises situational awareness of the FEWS place or problem, creation of a suitable culture for engagement, focus on power-sharing in the engagement process, co-ownership, co-generation of knowledge and outcomes, the technical process of integration, the monitoring processes of reflective and reflexive experiences, and formative evaluation. The framework is discussed as a scaffolding for supporting the development and application of best practices in commu...
Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts, 2019
Correction for ‘Responses of deposition and bioaccumulation in the Great Lakes region to policy a... more Correction for ‘Responses of deposition and bioaccumulation in the Great Lakes region to policy and other large-scale drivers of mercury emissions’ by J. A. Perlinger et al., Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts, 2018, 20, 195–209.
Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts, 2018
The effect of policy on fish mercury levels varies spatially, even within the Great Lakes Basin.
Socio-Ecological Practice Research
Scientific study of issues at the nexus of food–energy–water systems (FEWS) requires grappling wi... more Scientific study of issues at the nexus of food–energy–water systems (FEWS) requires grappling with multifaceted, “wicked” problems. FEWS involve interactions occurring directly and indirectly across complex and overlapping spatial and temporal scales; they are also imbued with diverse and sometimes conflicting meanings for the human and more-than-human beings that live within them. In this paper, we consider the role of language in the dynamics of boundary work, recognizing that the language often used in stakeholder and community engagement intended to address FEWS science and decision-making constructs boundaries and limits diverse and inclusive participation. In contrast, some language systems provide opportunities to build bridges rather than boundaries in engagement. Based on our experiences with engagement in FEWS science and with Indigenous knowledges and languages, we consider examples of the role of language in reflecting worldviews, values, practices, and interactions in ...
Energy Research & Social Science, 2020
The global COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a justice crisis. It als... more The global COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a justice crisis. It also brings to light multiple ongoing, underlying social crises. The COVID-19 crisis is actively revealing crises of energy sovereignty in at least four ways. First, there are many whose access to basic health services is compromised because of the lack of energy services necessary to provide these services. Second, some people are more vulnerable to COVID-19 because of exposure to environmental pollution associated with energy production. Third, energy services are vital to human wellbeing, yet access to energy services is largely organized as a consumer good. The loss of stable income precipitated by COVID-19 may therefore mean that many lose reliable access to essential energy services. Fourth, the COVID-19 crisis has created a window of opportunity for corporate interests to engage in aggressive pursuit of energy agendas that perpetuate carbon intensive and corporate controlled energy systems, which illuminates the ongoing procedural injustices of energy decision making. These four related crises demonstrate why energy sovereignty is essential for a just energy future. Energy sovereignty is defined as the right for communities, rather than corporate interests, to control access to and decision making regarding the sources, scales, and forms of ownership characterizing access to energy services. Energy sovereignty is a critical component in the design of a post-COVID-19 energy system that is capable of being resilient to future shocks without exacerbating injustices that are killing the most vulnerable among us.
Socio-Ecological Practice Research, 2022
Scientific study of issues at the nexus of food-energy-water systems (FEWS) requires grappling wi... more Scientific study of issues at the nexus of food-energy-water systems (FEWS) requires grappling with multifaceted, "wicked" problems. FEWS involve interactions occurring directly and indirectly across complex and overlapping spatial and temporal scales; they are also imbued with diverse and sometimes conflicting meanings for the human and more-than-human beings that live within them. In this paper, we consider the role of language in the dynamics of boundary work, recognizing that the language often used in stakeholder and community engagement intended to address FEWS science and decision-making constructs boundaries and limits diverse and inclusive participation. In contrast, some language systems provide opportunities to build bridges rather than boundaries in engagement. Based on our experiences with engagement in FEWS science and with Indigenous knowledges and languages, we consider examples of the role of language in reflecting worldviews, values, practices, and interactions in FEWS science and engagement. We particularly focus on Indigenous knowledges from Anishinaabe and the language of Anishinaabemowin, contrasting languages of boundaries and bridges through concrete examples. These examples are used to unpack the argument of this work, which is that scientific research aiming to engage FEWS issues in working landscapes requires grappling with embedded, practical understandings. This perspective demonstrates the importance of grappling with the role of language in creating boundaries or bridges, while recognizing that training in engagement may not critically reflect on the role of language in limiting diversity and inclusivity in engagement efforts. Leaving this reflexive consideration of language unexamined may unknowingly perpetuate boundaries rather than building bridges, thus limiting the effectiveness of engagement that is intended to address wicked problems in working landscapes.
Socio-Ecological Practice Research/Socio-ecological practice research, Mar 12, 2024
Discourse used in the field of invasion ecology has significant impacts on society's perception, ... more Discourse used in the field of invasion ecology has significant impacts on society's perception, yet communication related to "invasives" is rife with problematic, exclusionary language. We provide potential solutions, including a repositioned perspective that may facilitate better relationships with the natural world by applying the two-eyed seeing framework. Our discussion calls for a paradigm shift for deeper understandings of human and more-than-human relationships. Ultimately, we advocate for respectful, considerate, and intentional language and stewardship.
Ecology and Society, 2023
Lake Superior's Keweenaw Bay is the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the Anishinaabe Ojibwa... more Lake Superior's Keweenaw Bay is the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the Anishinaabe Ojibwa and their relatives. It is also a toxic riskscape: Its waters, shorelines, and fish beings are polluted by an unknown tonnage of legacy mining waste rock called "stamp sands," which contain unsafe levels of toxic compounds. This paper describes Ojibwa stewardship principles and reciprocal obligations, illustrating First Treaty With Gichi-Manitou practices of restoring relations within a toxic riskscape. Defined here, riskscapes are places and spaces where pollution/toxicity relations are continually reconfigured in literal, symbolic, and systemic ways. We share a story from Keweenaw Bay's Sand Point restoration project (2002-present) to elucidate distinctly different approaches and challenges to restoring ecological relationships, including those between human and more-than-human beings. The restoration of 35 acres of barren shoreline into a thriving landscape concurrently created space for reclaiming Ojibwa stewardship obligations to land, water, and life. The goal was to restore Sand Point as a self-sustaining plant community, but maintenance remains demanding and costly. Lake Superior forces continually mobilize stamp sands, and recent extreme storm events have done so with even greater force. Thus measures of "success" are reconsidered annually, a reminder that "in perpetuity" toxic governance regimes are as unstable as riskscapes themselves. Yet Sand Point is a story of hope. Substantial transformations atop the surface reflect the restoration of many relationships between communities, institutional partners, and more-than-human beings. It is our Sand Point plant relatives who share the most valuable lessons of restoring sustainable livelihoods: resilience is interdependent communities caring for one another.
Increased risks due to toxic exposure contribute to numerous health burdens in particular places ... more Increased risks due to toxic exposure contribute to numerous health burdens in particular places and lives. In the Great Lakes region, harvesting and consuming fish provide tribes with socio-cultural and spiritual health, and simultaneously, place their physical health at great risk. Using institutional ethnography to explore Lake Superior’s toxic riskscape, this dissertation investigates perceptions of “health” and the ways “health protection” is applied in the daily work of tribal, state, and federal environmental and public health agencies. By drawing on environmental justice frameworks and the “Seven Generations” philosophy, the aim is to explore linkages between health concepts and toxic risk management. In doing so, I ask how particular views of health influence environmental injustice. Constructed from my research data in the agencies I studied, I describe two different health frameworks and the ways each are applied. For tribal agencies, I define health as “life in balance,” a relationship between social, physical, and mental well-being which includes cultural and spiritual dimensions. These meanings are rooted in the fundamental worldview of how Ojibwa tribal communities perceive health and well-being. Therefore, institutional policies support tribes in actively engaging in healing experiences to disembody harm for themselves. For state and federal agencies, the health framework is rooted in legislated mandates, and centers on biophysical health in ambiguous ways. Legally acceptable health terms can be described in terms of environmental health, determined by risk science, and protected as potential pathways and exposures. Restricted to the terms of risk science, state and federal agencies interpret health protection as the management of risks. As a consequence, implementing health policy is removed from the physical, tangible experiences of living with contamination. Crucial to this case, I discern fundamental disconnections between ways of seeing “health” and environmental justice implications for Seven Generations. I emphasize the legal institutional system of health protection as, in actuality, a system that victimizes and re-victimizes sensitive populations. Harm is an inherent feature of health protection policy. Overall, in problematizing health, I draw attention to a health framework paradigm that results in serious ethical implications for the science-policy relationship, and especially, our human relationship with the natural world
Human Organization
The Ojibwe Gichigami (Lake Superior) bioregion is the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the ... more The Ojibwe Gichigami (Lake Superior) bioregion is the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the Anishinaabe Ojibwa. Harvesting and consuming fish has sustained people for millennia, but today, toxic risks due to fish contamination contribute to many burdens for both human and more-than-human worlds. For the Ojibwa, nibi gaye nii’kinaaganaa (“water and all my relations”) are the lived experiences of fish-reliant communities and emphasize sustaining good relations with water and relatives. Toxicity disrupts traditional harvest lifeways, violates treaty rights, and problematizes Ojibwa water relations. In this article, I describe diverging values attributed to water and conflicting norms of water quality relations between Ojibwa people and scientific practices of toxicology. Drawn from a study of institutional water decision making, I examine practices associated with water, fish, and risk and how these practices clarify ethics in water policy. The study of toxic substances, albeit in...
Journal of Great Lakes Research
T he planet Earth has a long list of environmental issues: expanding droughts and wildfires; esca... more T he planet Earth has a long list of environmental issues: expanding droughts and wildfires; escalating frequency and strength of tornadoes and hurricanes; spreading invasive species; and increasing numbers of endangered species. These unprecedented concerns make headlines every day all over the world, however, helping middle school students make sense of contemporary events as they relate to Earth science can be a challenge for any teacher. For many years, Earth science concepts have been taught as thematic units with lessons in nice, neat chapter packages complete with labs and notes. But compartmentalized Earth science no longer exists, and implementing teaching methods that support student development of holistic understand-ings can be a time-consuming and difficult task.
Journal of Great Lakes Research, 2022
Energy Research & Social Science
A Research Agenda for Environmental Management, 2019
This chapter examines a transdisciplinary (TD) research project that included space for stakehold... more This chapter examines a transdisciplinary (TD) research project that included space for stakeholder and decision maker participation. The project, funded by the National Science Foundation, focused on the atmospheric transport of compounds (such as mercury and PCBs) responsible for fish consumption advisories in the Great Lakes region and the systems of governance in place to address this concern. The TD research question pursued in this project, which was “when will it be safe for people in the Great Lakes region to consume as much fish as desired?”, emerged out of a workshop held with community partners soon after the project began. The various challenges that emerged in the framing and execution of this interdisciplinary project and in the execution of its TD component are considered here, along with the value of having natural science and social science researchers collaborate with community partners
Journal of Great Lakes Research
Lightning talks presented by researchers from around the country that highlights the challenges t... more Lightning talks presented by researchers from around the country that highlights the challenges they experienced with stakeholder engagement in FEWS projects and lessons learned from engagement. This presentation focused on engaging with stakeholders for prioritizing land and life in the Great Lakes region. It discussed important lessons for engaging with/by/as research partnerships. This includes prioritizing land and life by being thoughtful and intentional, being deliberate and make evident your goals, and use academic and scientific tools, methods and resources for protection, restoration and revitalization. Another important lesson is to understand your topic, project, stakeholders and self
Sustainability, 2021
Community and stakeholder engagement is increasingly recognized as essential to science at the ne... more Community and stakeholder engagement is increasingly recognized as essential to science at the nexus of food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) to address complex issues surrounding food and energy production and water provision for society. Yet no comprehensive framework exists for supporting best practices in community and stakeholder engagement for FEWS. A review and meta-synthesis were undertaken of a broad range of existing models, frameworks, and toolkits for community and stakeholder engagement. A framework is proposed that comprises situational awareness of the FEWS place or problem, creation of a suitable culture for engagement, focus on power-sharing in the engagement process, co-ownership, co-generation of knowledge and outcomes, the technical process of integration, the monitoring processes of reflective and reflexive experiences, and formative evaluation. The framework is discussed as a scaffolding for supporting the development and application of best practices in commu...
Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts, 2019
Correction for ‘Responses of deposition and bioaccumulation in the Great Lakes region to policy a... more Correction for ‘Responses of deposition and bioaccumulation in the Great Lakes region to policy and other large-scale drivers of mercury emissions’ by J. A. Perlinger et al., Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts, 2018, 20, 195–209.
Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts, 2018
The effect of policy on fish mercury levels varies spatially, even within the Great Lakes Basin.
Socio-Ecological Practice Research
Scientific study of issues at the nexus of food–energy–water systems (FEWS) requires grappling wi... more Scientific study of issues at the nexus of food–energy–water systems (FEWS) requires grappling with multifaceted, “wicked” problems. FEWS involve interactions occurring directly and indirectly across complex and overlapping spatial and temporal scales; they are also imbued with diverse and sometimes conflicting meanings for the human and more-than-human beings that live within them. In this paper, we consider the role of language in the dynamics of boundary work, recognizing that the language often used in stakeholder and community engagement intended to address FEWS science and decision-making constructs boundaries and limits diverse and inclusive participation. In contrast, some language systems provide opportunities to build bridges rather than boundaries in engagement. Based on our experiences with engagement in FEWS science and with Indigenous knowledges and languages, we consider examples of the role of language in reflecting worldviews, values, practices, and interactions in ...
Energy Research & Social Science, 2020
The global COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a justice crisis. It als... more The global COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a justice crisis. It also brings to light multiple ongoing, underlying social crises. The COVID-19 crisis is actively revealing crises of energy sovereignty in at least four ways. First, there are many whose access to basic health services is compromised because of the lack of energy services necessary to provide these services. Second, some people are more vulnerable to COVID-19 because of exposure to environmental pollution associated with energy production. Third, energy services are vital to human wellbeing, yet access to energy services is largely organized as a consumer good. The loss of stable income precipitated by COVID-19 may therefore mean that many lose reliable access to essential energy services. Fourth, the COVID-19 crisis has created a window of opportunity for corporate interests to engage in aggressive pursuit of energy agendas that perpetuate carbon intensive and corporate controlled energy systems, which illuminates the ongoing procedural injustices of energy decision making. These four related crises demonstrate why energy sovereignty is essential for a just energy future. Energy sovereignty is defined as the right for communities, rather than corporate interests, to control access to and decision making regarding the sources, scales, and forms of ownership characterizing access to energy services. Energy sovereignty is a critical component in the design of a post-COVID-19 energy system that is capable of being resilient to future shocks without exacerbating injustices that are killing the most vulnerable among us.
Socio-Ecological Practice Research, 2022
Scientific study of issues at the nexus of food-energy-water systems (FEWS) requires grappling wi... more Scientific study of issues at the nexus of food-energy-water systems (FEWS) requires grappling with multifaceted, "wicked" problems. FEWS involve interactions occurring directly and indirectly across complex and overlapping spatial and temporal scales; they are also imbued with diverse and sometimes conflicting meanings for the human and more-than-human beings that live within them. In this paper, we consider the role of language in the dynamics of boundary work, recognizing that the language often used in stakeholder and community engagement intended to address FEWS science and decision-making constructs boundaries and limits diverse and inclusive participation. In contrast, some language systems provide opportunities to build bridges rather than boundaries in engagement. Based on our experiences with engagement in FEWS science and with Indigenous knowledges and languages, we consider examples of the role of language in reflecting worldviews, values, practices, and interactions in FEWS science and engagement. We particularly focus on Indigenous knowledges from Anishinaabe and the language of Anishinaabemowin, contrasting languages of boundaries and bridges through concrete examples. These examples are used to unpack the argument of this work, which is that scientific research aiming to engage FEWS issues in working landscapes requires grappling with embedded, practical understandings. This perspective demonstrates the importance of grappling with the role of language in creating boundaries or bridges, while recognizing that training in engagement may not critically reflect on the role of language in limiting diversity and inclusivity in engagement efforts. Leaving this reflexive consideration of language unexamined may unknowingly perpetuate boundaries rather than building bridges, thus limiting the effectiveness of engagement that is intended to address wicked problems in working landscapes.