Author(s):
Bradley L Garrett, M.A.* - Royal Holloway, University of London
Abstract:
This paper is a story from the Big Dam Era (1930s-Present) in the
Northern part of what is now California. Countless traditional
cultural properties and memorial landscapes were inundated as a result
of massive public works projects during and after the Great
Depression. Many local communities continue to express regret about
loss of access to these places. Many of these now submerged landscapes
hold deep value to living people and continue to be utilized.
Despite claims of an increasingly attuned cultural awareness today in
the United States, culturally significant areas continue to be
submerged for the collective necessity of water and 'sustainable'
energy. Local community groups continue to have their culture,
traditions and material remains threatened by intentional landscape
inundation.
For the past 3 year three years I have worked the the Winnemem Wintu,
a tribe in Northern California who lost many acres of tribal land
beneath the floodwaters of Shasta Dam. The Winnemem are a group of
indigenous Californians whose traditional cultural property is under
continual threat of submergence. I came to them as an archaeologist to
help record this drowned history and in the process learned a great
deal about how Winnemem culture and attachment to place must be
endlessly transitioning to confront the specter of modernity.
