Introduction - Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities - page 10

(2012), Margaret Kovach (2010), and Greg Cajete (2000), who strive to have
research practice as a part of wider projects of decolonization. Smith, Wilson,
Kovach, and Cajete each show how inserting “Indigenous Ways of Knowing”
into research practices can help identify alternative and multiple ways of seeing
problems and identifying solutions. For me, these insights translate into a deep
appreciation for place and an understanding of the relationship of humans and their
environment over time.
Overall, my research is based on a triangulation approach, where I have
employed interviews, participant observation techniques, hosted transboundary
water symposia, and analyzed scores of primary and secondary sources over the
past decade. The triangulation approach serves to cross-check materials - which
is increasingly common in historical geography and environmental governance
studies (Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003; Wynn, 2010).
The geographic scope of this project is throughout the North American
borderland of Canada and the United States (with an emphasis on the basins that
I am most familiar with - the Salish Sea and the Great Lakes and, to a lesser degree,
the Yuquot and Yukon Basins). My work is inherently place-based and - as I
discuss in my “parable of discovery” - my experiences of living, working, going
to school, and exploring the waterways of these basins situate me within the wider
hydrosocial politics that I discuss throughout this volume.
I approach many of the issues in a narrative form. These narratives suggest
both success and stumbling in the governance of shared waters. The narratives are
rooted in stories of overcoming, of hard work, of vision, of engagement, and of
reconnections. They are also rooted in building allies.
Because there is so much at stake for the Indigenous communities highlighted
in this topic, the stories are not just about protecting water or improving water
governance. Rather, the cases demonstrate the importance of strengthening
community to address transboundary water issues. It is also a lens in which the
work cannot be done in isolation. The extraterritorial nature of environmental
issues makes this work equally about maintaining and fostering allies.
The changing political fabric provides challenges for governance across borders,
yet has created opportunities to rethink the mechanisms in place to govern water,
particularly in a postcolonial context. The increased leadership of Indigenous actors
in the governance of transnational environmental resources - particularly water -
is important to document. This provides important avenues to challenge borders
as “fixed”, both in terms of natural resource governance and citizenship. Thus,
the inclusion of a “third sovereign” in the discussion of Canada-U.S. relations
provides a rich opportunity to analyze the cultural politics of transboundary water
governance.
Structure of book and key themes
To help answer my central questions, the topic is organized into two parts:
“Rescaling transboundary water governance” and “Indigenous water governance:
re/ordering transnational space”. In the first part, I contextualize the material