BETH ROSE MIDDLETON MANNING

By Hannah Ongley

Beth Rose Middleton Manning didn’t just stumble into her calling. Growing up in Miwok Country in the Sierra Foothills, she’s always had a tether to California’s landscapes—an affinity for its nature that makes her work not just academic, but personal. As a researcher, advocate, and professor of Native American studies at the University of California, Davis, Beth Rose has worked extensively with Indigenous communities to explore issues of land access, conservation, and the healing power of cultural and prescribed fire. Her published works include two books on Native rights and land trusts, looking at applications of conservation easements and the intersection of hydroelectric development and colonization in California.

Lately, Beth Rose has been working with California’s Yurok tribe to identify possible contaminants in water and soil, and how they might affect the community’s health. Data is collected via wristbands that act as passive environmental sampling devices, allowing tribal members control over who has access to information, as well as autonomy in terms of solutions once the results are returned from the lab. Her next stop is hopefully Australia, where Aboriginal cultural burning sequesters soil carbon; she’d like to see if this approach could work in California. Beth Rose isn’t just asking questions. She’s seeking solutions, pulling the wisdom of Indigenous practices into the modern scientific fold. The bridge between these worlds isn’t easy to cross, but for her, it’s exactly where the future lies.

HANNAH ONGLEY: What led you to decide on your focus for your first book, Trust in the Land?

BETH ROSE MIDDLETON MANNING: While I was an undergrad, I had an adviser, Kat Anderson, who wrote Tending the Wild. She took me up to Mountain Maidu country [for my] undergraduate research project, which was about attitudes towards forest management. I interviewed people in the community. I moved up there after I graduated and finished the project, working for a rural community development research organization that shared office space with the Maidu Cultural and Development Group.

There’s a lot of concern about access to land, especially for non-federally-recognized tribal members. I came to learn a lot about the history and what happened to their lands, tracing how they were sold, taken or canceled, and removed from their jurisdiction.

There was a family village area of some good friends of mine, but it was in private ownership. And the local land trust was trying to work with the family to protect that land. There was a community piece to it—to work with my friends to improve access to their homelands, and their ability to steward and care for those lands. And there was this academic piece—looking at this tool, the conservation easement, the structure of the land trust, and how they might be used more towards justice, which wasn’t the purpose they were created for.

HO: What were some examples of using conservation easements in new ways?

BRMM: Recognizing the land as Indigenous land is a starting point. There were some inroads we tried to make with the Land Trust Alliance, thinking first of the land as an Indigenous homeland and what that means: Where is the Indigenous population? Do they have access to this land that the land trust entity is interested in protecting? I’m dialing the questions towards context and critical analyses of how the land came to be, the status and jurisdiction, and how it [left] Native hands.

HO: Then, what could be done to address that?

BRMM: It’s a process of getting land trusts to really think through whose land they’re working on, what the purposes of the conservation is, who will be able to steward and access the land, and trying to build relationships between conservationists and tribes.

HO: Could you talk about the cultural importance of water corridors and how that relates to your work?

BRMM: I’m interested in a deep understanding of history in a place—how it leads to present conditions, how infrastructure and management express colonialism, and how we address that. The dam projects grew out of work in the Maidu community, hearing questions from community members about what happened to their lands at the headwaters.

When I did research at the water archives, I found no mention of the Native history. It’s important to look at [how] development and conservation both attempt to erase Indigenous presence, and push against it when looking at more sustainable planning. In these water projects, at the time they’re built, there’s often the idea that water in the river flowing out into the ocean is waste and that water could be harnessed to provide electricity, address flood risk, and allow for development.

Anywhere there’s a dam, basically, there’s been seized Native land. Lands were flooded and people were displaced. Their institutions on the landscape were erased. For them, those narratives of creation, of how to live and act responsibly, are in the landscape. When the landscape is disrupted through some sort of development or damming, it has a significant, lasting cultural impact, as well as an ecological one. So when we’re talking about dam removals, that has to be central to the conversation. How can we not build on a legacy of disenfranchisement?