Description:

Please join the American Politics Workshop as they host Andrew Curley, Assistant Professor in the School of Geography, Development & Environment at the University of Arizona.

In this presentation, Curley will discuss facets of his recently published book, “Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation” and new research about water rights and Indian water settlements in the western states. He argues that notions of tribal sovereignty are defined in the access and use of resources, but increasingly Diné water protectors and environmental groups and shifting our meaning of sovereignty. He concludes with consideration of Diné political concepts attuned to Diné natural law to ask if another form of environmental governance is possible?

Andrew Curley is an Assistant Professor in the School of Geography, Development & Environment at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, located on the territories of the Tohono O’odham, Yaqui, and Apache peoples. He is Diné and a member of the Navajo Nation. Building on ethnographic research, his publications speak to how Indigenous communities understand “resources,” infrastructure, and development in an era of energy transition and climate change. In 2018, he presented aspects of his research to the House Committee on Natural Resources as it considered the fate of the Navajo Generating Station.