 Okay, good morning everybody. Thank you so much for being here. This is Andy Gerbage. I'm the president of the Anthropology of consciousness This is our 39th annual conference the theme is sea change life worlds and ecological upheaval I'm so excited to have you all here because this is really groundbreaking time for all of us This is I don't need to to reiterate all that most of us have been through for the past year and a half or maybe longer It's been a very challenging and difficult time and it's really a time of intense and and rapid transformation And this conference is really a groundbreaking opportunity for us. It's our first fully online conference It's the most diverse. It's the most accessible and it's by far the least ecological footprint of any conference We've ever held we have people from all over the world joining us To share their expertise. We have a full schedule and I'm excited to get started I just want to mention a few things as we get going for functionality Since we're all working together to sort of create these new spaces I do understand that there's been some glitches and it's been a little difficult for folks to get registered on the AAA page to find the community's page to find the links We're trying to iron most of that out and be in contact with us If something doesn't make sense if you're a presenter or an attendee But as I said take some joy in the fact that you are really a trailblazer and helping to create these new Spaces for us to be able to interact with one another In in capacities that we never have before and I think even after this pandemic subsides We're going to be progressing in these kinds of spaces together for years to come a Few things in terms of the conference format And so we're going to be in webinar format for most of our sessions, right? And so what that means is The panelists and presenters are going to be on your screen and you're going to be able to see them and hear them But if you're just attending the event your camera and your microphone will not be on some of you Have not been in a zoom session like that before and so we'll be handling the Q&A Through chat and so if you look on your screen there you have a couple of options. There's a Q&A box And then there's also the chat box And so if questions arise during the presentation, so I'm sure they will Please post them in either the Q&A or the chat it'd be better to post them in the Q&A So we can keep track of them But put them in either place in the Q&A or the chat and I'll be gathering them and then when it comes time for the question period We'll go ahead and share those questions with the panelists And if we need to we can turn on individual people's microphones at that time if you want to actually directly speak To the panelists Another thing I want to say is please keep an eye out in the chat box Because we're going to be putting some things in there as well for you to have a look at Some upcoming sessions for the day for you to have a look at other things We have going on through the conference stuff about some of our keynote events for tonight and tomorrow Things about decorum and rules for interaction on zoom and how we want to make sure we keep this as safe and Thriving and welcoming space for everyone Please do if you would like You don't have to do this but think about By way of accessibility and just keeping the space Open and welcoming for all different kind of folks. Maybe add your preferred pronouns to your name We Probably will start Most sessions with the land recognition as well. I'm coming to you from Portland, Oregon Which is the home of the Catholic met Chinook and many other tribes and bands and I'm here Speaking to you today because of historic injustices that have been done to those peoples and moving them off of their lands And so we want to acknowledge that and thank them and honor their sacrifice that allows us to be here today and So much of the work we're trying to do in this conference is to try to write some of those historic wrongs And so without further ado, I actually want to hand things over to our panel chair It's Meryl Shriver rice the first panel is entitled evocative ethnography So Florida Silver River biodiversity boundaries life experiences and conservation So Meryl, please take it over. Thank you. Good morning, everyone I am Dr. Meryl Shriver rice and I'm the director of the master's program in environment culture and media of Which all of these presenters are students in this program I would like to also start with a land acknowledgement The University of Miami acknowledges the ancestral and traditional territories of the Seminole tribe of Florida the council Mikosukee Seminole nation aboriginal peoples and the Mikosukee tribe of Indians of Florida Who are the original owners and custodians of the land upon which we stand and learn? I would like to now introduce dr. Amanda concha homes who Joined our class and worked with us on her own innovative form of ethnography called evocative ethnography That really led our classes projects that you will see today So without further ado, go ahead and take it over Amanda so So today I'm just going to offer a little bit of an introduction about what Evocative ethnography is all about and what we've been covering in class And what the hopes of it are for and then a little bit of context about Florida's Silver River So this in part is coming from my research on Silver River Past over a decade now that was funded by the Winnegren Foundation and currently I'm writing a multimodal manuscript That's funded by the National Endowment for Humanities that will be published with after PWPW which are published without walls so with me being immersed in that project I've partnered with Marilyn her class to be able to to sort of Work with some students with these ideas Art ethnography and uncovering more underrepresented voices So what is ethnography? Ethnography a really critical aspect of it is this idea of power honestly the process of representation Who are you choosing to tell the story and how are you interpreting and translating these cultural norms? Is an exercise of power And What's evocative about it rather than representational and this is key aspect of what you're going to be seeing today with the students presentation Is the different framing sort of framing that's focused on feminist decolonial theory and methods That highlights fragmentation rather than categorization And that really tries to emphasize an embodied sense rather than rational cognition in terms of emergent improvisation Emergent improvisation is this act of self-organization where there's no continuous leader There's no predetermined script and where ensembles create their own patterns And that's what we're seeing today is this collective ensemble now creating their own patterns coming together Fragmentation is a way of living with differences without turning them into opposites and this is huge when we're talking about decolonization Fragmentation is therefore a way of living at these borders right at the borderlands of human nature and how do we grapple with those issues? Particularly using community print shots from intersectionality Recognizing that these issues must be interpreted in multiple axes and not just a single axis analysis Taking from Tremendri Nosebici Recognizing that there is that we shouldn't just recognize a single story But indeed the multiplicity of stories and the different aspects of the stories to avoid following the traps of stereotypes and to offer more rich nuanced analysis Audrey Lorde helps us interpret that in terms of poetry. So how do we offer these poetic Interludes so that the poetry becomes fused with theory and with that Recognizing that poetry then is not a luxury It's a vital necessity to be able to have survival and change Because it's the poetry that first made into language Then it can become an idea and when it's an idea it can become tangible action So evocative ethnography breaks down the colonial division of subject object of human nature of physical spiritual and made of non-native For a lived experience of mutual becoming And this mutual becoming is this mimetic dance right? It's this it's an event in which all parties become transformed And that's true for the research itself. That's true for Hopefully today's event so that when you experience some of these projects that students are sharing that there also will be a mutual transformation That transformation is hopefully an act of healing an act of transformation of decolonization and immobilization for the major tenants that Linda to Lee Smith Offers in her what she calls the indigenous research agenda And these are what's guiding the principles of today Using art as a method as Natasha Myers explains so that you can alter ideas about what we can see sense feel and know Recognizing how colonial and limited often our forms of going on and to develop the skills for expanding these ways of knowing and being in the world Towards a sense of becoming using sound to be able to recognize place And to highlight underrepresented places So evocative ethnography favors a sensorial realm to explore and interpret and share sensation stories and meaning for emergent improvisation It includes provocative techniques of videography, a customology and photography It includes aspects of proprioception can a seizure and counter narratives rather than a single meta narrative rather than The typical arc right you'll see that a lot in the experimental forms today Using things like montage and non narrative structures non human agents as the as the major perspective and sound voyages So today we'll be talking about the Silver River in Ocala National Forest which is in Florida In the U.S. of A and specifically about the Silver Spring State Park. This is the head springs and this is mammoth springs where with some underwater archeology They found a mammoth kill site So mammoths we know we're we're traveling about these lands As we're alligators from the time of the myosin 18 million years ago as were manatees the Florida sea cow and much later on in from the 1800s 1500s the creeks and come in in the 1800s enslaved Africans escaped the South Carolina and Georgia and became to be known as black Seminoles here in Florida So this one his name is John force also known as one collage or one collage and go for John and he was born in 1812 From with African-American Indian and Spanish heritage and he's one of the most successful black freedom fighters has been his life As fighting for freedom of his people and for trying to attain land where they could stay on Finally wound up in Mexico after his fighting in the wars here Osceola was also And he's one of the many things that he's known for is for the 1834 meeting for the US government When the government was trying to get him a treaty to say all of your people need to move from the Florida and leave these lands And he put a knife into the treaty and said basically between the multi. We're not interested. That's not we're not really looking And that has a statue at the Soviet to recognize that so there's three major Seminole wars Many of which you'll notice are around the the area of the Silver River Right where Fort King is the D Massacre. And so this was a really important part for Native American heritage lack Seminoles African descendants And this is a heritage that is not often spoken of or if it is spoken of it's often spoken up from the colonial perspective of Andrew Jackson And of removing the Indians as it as as if it were positive Because we were inviting tourists inviting Perspective we were trying to get people coming down into Florida to be able to create the citrus industry to create The mining industry. Here's a steamboat that was very big in the 1800s Bringing tourists to Florida And this was right along the Silver River Another Another Element that's on the Silver River of the monkeys the Reese's macaques that come from Asia And Pearl Tony to we brought them four to eight of them and put them on that little island because he thought he couldn't swim and then they swam off and the B.M. Populating Studies in the 60s showed him about at 78 and then they got up in the 80s to 300s, but then in the mid 80s there were Conservation conservation became a state park. So then the whole ideology of conservation came and what that means and how you should interact with what was now considered not a welcome species but a non native one so it went from Feeding them in this being a wonderful beautiful thing for the tourists and for the non to the light They would actually have special monkey chow then they were no longer allowed to feed them or touch them and they actually began to be trapped and sent off to laboratories for experiments And so you'll notice that then in the 80s it came down in the 90s as well until there was a civic scientist in the Early 2000s that began to know these monkeys and then we did some ethnic primatological research and found about 100 So the civic scientist is Bob Gottschalk and what's interesting is is he starts letting us know more of the personalities of these monkeys so we have four groups along the southern And we have very specific monkeys so it's not just the monkeys we now have slacky or can fill it He was able to recognize the the alpha males and the alpha females and some of the others and really understand some of their behaviors who they are so you get needle nose and bob team And scar and flat top So he named them and really got to know them As he was interacting river and he was sharing that with us so they become Individuals that we can get to know and so this is one of the major parts when we're uncovering these underrepresented stories We're asking who belongs and who gets to be to belong and whose stories get to be told and specifically how So Cynthia Wilson Graham is also keen on uncovering these underrepresented histories and she when she was uncovering Paradise Park on Silver River which is another underrepresented history that few people know about and even fewer talk about And so she published a book on in 2015 about the Paradise Park which was there from 1949 to 1969 to put it back on the map because most of the history books and most of the maps completely erasing And so this was a and we'll see more about this in one of the presentations that this was a paradise for only blacks during a time Jim Crow south of segregation of otherwise intense violence there was joy And there as she highlights there was black professionals so doctors lawyers business and civil rights leaders educators. And this is critical to know because this is not the history that's written down in history books and it's not the history that gets shared in school systems, but by the late 18 hundreds. 73% of Marion County was made up of freed African Americans, and this is huge and critically important when we're talking about the history of this this area of the region. And she highlights people like Dr. EC Mitchell Hampton, who's the first African American woman to become a doctor in Florida, and she was a daughter of an excellent. She said of her practice and pharmacy in West Broadway which became like the Harlem of Ocala. Dr. RS Hughes that 1925 established the American Crypt Association hospital also on West Broadway, and Dr. Lee Royal Hampton, the first black dentist. And she recognizes these folks to be able to highlight their stories and reinsert them into our common history. So who stories get told and how, and I offer this to the students, and I also offer this to all of our participants to really think about which stories will you tell, and how will you tell me. How can you use your voice, your camera your publications to tell the stories that need to be told, but are not being. Thank you. Thanks for that brief intro Amanda. So I'm going to start us off with my classmate Brittany, we're going to be the first two students presenting. And you'll notice a lot of shared imagery that you saw on Amanda's presentation as well, because there's hardly any footage archival footage of Paradise Park. Brittany and I are going to be focusing on Paradise Park I'll let her give a brief introduction to her own project afterwards. But what I'm going to be focusing on is kind of using interview footage of Cynthia, who Amanda highlighted. And I'm going to be overlaying that with archival footage as well as contemporary footage from news outlets and other like more contemporary media outlets. And basically what I'm trying to do here is to demonstrate that while yes Paradise Park was a safe haven for people. Cynthia's entire story is not about just highlighting the doctors the lawyers, the successful people. Her story is about highlighting the fact that these injustices, while they previously manifested are still manifesting every day. And while they may take different forms, a lot of those forms are actually still the same. And you'll see that in my video but I wanted to just highlight that they're really while slavery is no longer legal we're still seeing these really heinous forms and acts of racism in our country today. So I didn't do any editing over Cynthia's voice at all. Every sound that's there is exactly as it was when we recorded her and I want to do as much justice to her story as possible. So I'm going to go ahead and leave it there and then if anyone has any follow up questions feel free to ask those later, but I'm going to go ahead and share the screen now. And if everyone could just mute their microphones please. 2000 we were doing a census with the city of Ocala they had a weed and seed program. And Bill Patton who worked for the city mentioned all of the rich history of African Americans in Marion County. However, I hadn't heard anything about most of them in school we hadn't been taught and I was at Howard Academy in 2004. And I noticed they had this picture of these women and men hanging off the side of the glass bottom boat. I've always seen the men and women but none of them look like me. This picture happened to look like me. Everyone on the boat looked like me. You could go to Paradise Park basically you could see everyone coming and going in the park. But we're talking about doing a time of segregation lynching was happening finding someone in the side of the street hanging from a tree. The grovelling for Rosewood being burned is so many things that was happening all at the same time. But we still found a way to enjoy family culture religion and friends away from it all. We didn't have hotel accommodations. We only had one hotel that would accommodate us. So the hotels that they had on the ground they could not stay here they could not stay around the springs. So they had to stay in boarding houses or sleep in their cars and they came from all over the United States by the bus loads. So that part of the culture is gone is lost and you don't hear anything about it. Even on your boat tours you don't hear anything about Paradise Park. If you rented anything the kayaks or canoes you didn't hear anything about Paradise Park. You would not know that Paradise Park existed at all that civil springs had you not come here today and listen to me. It's a lot of interesting history here in Marion County but just to stay with the Paradise Park piece of it 20 years it existed. It closed very quietly and that part of the park was not integrated into civil springs at all. If you want to take it from there. Yeah so I can take it over from there. So Sasha as she said we have a lot of the same footage because there's very limited footage but my aspect is more to tell you about the history. Of the park itself and moving forward I guess. It's critical that the history is documented for all of the cultural history of the springs and other places as they exist. And we not worry about how and why we're doing it because our history your history is just in part as important as the American history. It is a part of the American history that everything about African American history is not all slavery. There were kings and queens but they need to understand that we were not all poor people that didn't like to work. Our heritage was taken. We were brought over here unwillingly. Our language was taken our culture was taken and we still survived. And Paradise Park was one of those places where we could go let our hair down and not worry about the humiliation that you would find in a lot of other places. So Paradise Park was a safe haven and as she's saying that it was off the beaten track. You could go to Paradise Park basically you could see everyone coming and going in the park. We were talking about during the time of segregation but the music we had the jukeboxes and the pavilion and the food the different types of food the beauty contest we had Easter egg hunts we had baptisms. Although the park was here in Marion County it was the park. There was little to no history on Paradise Park at all. The park closed in 1969 without a trace. It was supposedly supposed to be integrated into Silver Springs but most people you ask they will say it's more of assimilation than integration because we've lost our culture once we came to Silver Springs. And some people still have not ever came through the gates of Silver Springs that went to Paradise Park. So that part of the culture is gone is lost and you don't hear anything about it. Even on your boat tours you don't hear anything about Paradise Park. If you rented anything the kayaks or canoes you didn't hear anything about Paradise Park. You would not know that Paradise Park existed at all that Silver Springs had you not come here today and listen to me. It's not just way back when it's still happening. It goes on a long time. It's still happening but we can change that fabric one person at a time by the way we act. By the way that we treat the next individual. And even though I'm one person I speak for many people and some people are afraid to talk. They refuse to share their story because of whatever the reason are. And things are still happening to people where they're disappearing. How we stop that action is how we treat the next person. If you see something happening say something. It could be one of us. What are you going to do to change the culture? What can you do as an individual to change the culture? To stop some of this action that's happening against people just because of the color of their skin. So I wanted to show you more of Paradise Park now and in the past. And Chris can take it over with Sarah now. Right so thank you Brittany and Sasha for the kind of historical look at the Silver River. Chris and I are taking an ecological approach. Focusing on some of the species and wildlife that inhabit in the river. And I know like Meryl and Amanda said the Silver River is on Seminole land so all of this footage was taken there and then I am reporting here from Miami which is Mikosuke land like Meryl mentioned. So my piece I wanted to focus on a lot of people. The day we were there there were a lot of people and I really experienced a lot of kind of like murmurings of being bummed out that there wasn't any manatees which are really common to see. And I just wanted to challenge what we see as like the fun animals to see and what's the charismatic megafauna. And would we care more if we knew how important certain species were and kind of any species that you'll see in my footage you know if they disappeared tomorrow would cause a collapse of everything at the Silver River so I just kind of wanted to challenge that and then go off everyone in to this kind of wildlife. Alright so that was my kind of holistic view of everything that's going on so that quote it was a little hard to hear but it was a man saying like there's not too much stuff going on today we're here in the middle of the weekend. And it was kind of like I looked around like there is so much going on just not some of the you know the big megafauna that people love to see. But there was so much going on and I just wanted to challenge the idea of like focusing on the things that we're not really conscious of when going in a place like that like you want to see the monkeys and the manatees but there are a lot of really important species. Everywhere you look and everything is super interconnected. And then Chris took a focus on the monkeys that you saw the footage of so I'll hand it over to Chris. Yeah, thanks Sarah that was that was great. Yeah, so I took a little bit of a different approach. I wrote a poem bit of a prose poem and I laid it down in Adobe edition. And I threw in some surround sounds of the Reese's monkey. The Reese's macaque as Amanda mentioned that were introduced in 1938. So they've been there for 80 years. So each stands of focuses on a different aspect of their history as a species pertaining to the actual river. So I'm going to share my screen. It's an audio file so I encourage you to also you know you can close your eyes if you want and if you have headphones it might be a little bit easier to listen. And if not it's still it still sounds good so just give me a second let me share the screen. Sighting down on roots, fruit and seeds native to Nepal and Vietnam, fellow colonies in the United States. First primate astronauts who aboard V2 Jupiter and Atlas rockets, Albert reached space able return safely. Scatback was lost at sea from the Ralph Mitchell Zoo to the National and Space Museum. Sightings from South Carolina's the islands to Silver Springs State Park, Central Florida's National Natural Landmark featuring concessionaire Colonel Two East Tarzan themed jungle cruise. Silvery, short, spring-fed, six strong swimming Reese's macaques slivered away from their small island via the Silver River situated within the state park set the stage for another six to do the same. The diverse diverse diet includes native insects and invertebrates CDC claims 30% carry herpes bait Syrian population increase due to rapid freedom captures of sought after features of the biomedical researchers with wires with action by state agencies. Okay, yeah so might be a couple of questions. I talked about a couple of, or a variety rather of different. I guess of their experiences that they that the monkeys have had, not just on Silver River but across the country. So I hope you like it. And now we have Georgia and Caitlin. Thanks Chris. So Georgia and I decided to call our two pieces of who is speaking combined and both of our pieces are exploring the human relationship with the river, whether that's using it, and going out on kayaks and using it for personal pleasure and leisure, or an even larger sense of using it as a spot for and to make Hollywood films because Silver River has been used as a location for a few Hollywood films as well. So I will start with my piece. One thing that I found striking when I was on the river was all the sounds of everyone that was there. And one thing that I've really been thinking about is, how do you give back to the river when you're on it and you're using it as leisure or for pleasure, and then how is the river experiencing the humans that are there. So my piece is playing with the sounds that I recorded of different people speaking on the river that day. And Georgia, do you have the file? Again, what I was trying to focus on here is just the different sounds and what it might to be like for the river to hear humans and try to use this as a piece to just for myself and other people to be more aware of their actions and their behaviors when you're on a place like Silver River and how their behavior might be affecting the place and the animals that live there. And then along with that also thinking about the use of the film camera and filming it and even going in to edit this footage together and putting it together and how do you create narratives that support conservation efforts and not diminish them in any way. How do you tell appropriate narratives, narratives that are not giving a bad image to the river or perpetuating negative ideas about some of the creatures on the river as well. And with that I will give it to Georgia so she can talk about her piece. Thank you. Yeah, so just kind of going from there I think I found myself after we had an opportunity to interview Mark Emery who is a National Geographic filmmaker and cinematographer and he's worked on all kinds of films on the river and has been filming his whole life. And at first when we got there and kind of had our river trip I was had the plan of making a very like river focus textures of the river colors kind of really using the evocative ethnography kind of visual scheme. But then once we had the interview I found myself really thinking about the legacy of cinema culture and the way that you know representations of nature have influenced our collective unconscious and our morals and kind of on all levels how these like patriarchal values and colonizing views in the cinema industry have really impacted, you know, our collective belief system. So I kind of decided to take a look at some of the films that have been made on the river. And yeah I think just share a couple of questions that I had in mind when working on this is. How do we know when something is right or wrong. Is that an instinct, or is that, you know, constructed by society and how, how does that kind of play out. How far will we go to get the shot. I think working in the film industry that's something that has come up a lot for me and kind of watching the way that people work and interact with natural spaces and kind of who is being who or what is being exploited in that process and what is the impact that it's having in the long term. Speaking, whose point of view are we seeing. And then kind of what is considered worthy, like what is the worthy subject. And then how is that worth portrayed on screen. So with those questions in mind, I will share and I will try to optimize the video. I apologize, Caitlin, if I, if your video was not optimized. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void. So this, this river here has memories for all of us. We've, a lot of us have done, you know, anywhere from 80 to 90 movies that we've worked on here. So I ended up working with a man who invented scuba with Jacques Cousteau. He lives here in town. He invented the underwater movie housings for IMAX, for everything. He did Jaws, Splash, Cocoon, The Abyss. He did James Bond. He did Feature from the Black Lagoon. He shot all those films. So a lot of the, the culture here has to do with filming, too. And how do we capture what we think is very special here? Lots of commercials have been done here. We did a Navy SEAL group where I caught an eight foot alligator and tied a little bit of a hundred pound test to his tail, put it in front of them and then swam out of the shot. And they swim through and the gator moves out of the way and it looks like gators moving away for the Navy SEALs to come through. You will know in your own heart when you're doing the right thing. So, yes. So I guess what really kind of came up for me in the process was some of the common tropes that we find specifically in creature features. Particularly like the woman's legs and being attacked from underneath in the water. You know, we see that in Jaws. We see that in other films that have really kind of entered our unconscious, collective unconscious. And kind of thinking too through some of the animals that really have been, in my opinion, unfairly portrayed and vilified, like sharks and alligators and other, you know, scary animals that should be feared and that need to be controlled. And just thinking through the way that women have been portrayed, the way that they're sexualized and victimized and also the conflation of the feminine with nature and kind of the way those merge in cinematic history. So yeah, and then finally just also thinking about the literal footprint of filmmaking, and as Caitlin had also touched on in her piece. And just you know in this, the creature from the black lagoon was made in 1954, when there weren't a lot of regulations in the industry which there still aren't that many and there needs to be more. And then just thinking about the ecological footprint of making something like that. And the hundreds of other films that have been made on this river as Mark mentioned. And so, kind of in the second half I really wanted to offer some kind of point of view of maybe what the creature would have seen or what maybe that experience is like which I did with a GoPro. And also just thinking about the algal blooms and some of the impacts of humans that are really having these long term effects and kind of bringing it to a broader climate change perspective. So, yes, Merrill back to you. Thank you Georgia and thank you everyone I would I would now like to open it up to any questions we already have one question from Marjorie. Great presentations, can you tell us more about seminal freed black slave relations and history. Does anyone learn about this and any of your classes at UM you want to speak at all, I can say that it is my understanding from lectures I've attended that many freed enslaved peoples ended up in south Florida, ended up with this final hold out of some of the seminal nation. And they lived more along the coast and then we're pushed into the Everglades where they still are today. I can add that, in addition to being in the Everglades, some of them also went out west and then some of those also then went to Mexico and some of the ones that went to the Everglades also went to Andrews Island in the Bahamas. And so it became a diaspora black seminal relation really. And there's been the sort of migratory relationships. And this has been one of the things that I think is critically important to highlight is that is the dynamism really of migration patterns for humans as well as animals and animals. To be able to put it in that larger context right and so relationships with Cuba with Venezuela with the Bahamas with Mexico with Haiti have been a very consistent relationship with with Floridians and my Floridians. I'm referring to the caterpillars that we see in Sarah's and referring to the monkeys that we hear in Chris's. I'm referring to the folks that went to Paradise Park that some of them included heritage of black seminals, sort of really make that much broader the way that we interpret who belongs and who's supposed to be somewhere. And we have another question from Stephanie. Hi, my panelists consider the way birds as charismatic species and as a symbol for biodiversity generally emerge in the human aquatic spaces of representation in which you have worked. My panelists consider the way birds as charismatic species and as a symbol for biodiversity generally emerge in the human aquatic spaces of representation in which you have worked. So I will I'll just quickly before everybody else gets ready that I think birds are incredibly important, particularly on the solar river and in all spaces. And again, at least in my framing, also reinterpreting who belong so birds help us really recognize and also migratory patterns right so that these ideas of nations these ideas of who's transient and who's a resident shifts and shifts drastically and so when we think about the silver river there's specific birds that come there. And they live throughout the year and then there's many other birds that that's a resting place right you can tell what time of year it is because of which birds are there. Birds are incredible feature to be able to recognize and expand upon in terms of how we interpret natural spaces. Anyone else. For the other panelists jump in here I just want to go ahead and say, first off you're all doing a wonderful job I just want to remind attendees that to ask questions if you go to the bottom of your zoom screen there's a Q&A button and you would click that and open it and you can type your chat box options in there. You can also do it through opening your chat function please do open your chat function regardless because we've been posting a lot of information there about future panels and other things going on. So if you're an attendee and you don't have your chat box open please open that, and then the Q&A box can also be a space for you to ask questions you can ask questions in either space Q&A would be easier, but it's fine to post them in the chat box as well and if you would like to raise your hand and you want to actually speak to the participants directly we can do that as well so go for it I just want to make sure attendees knew all of the ways that they could connect with help. Thanks Andy. Sure. Would anyone like to speak about birds in their work. I just, I love that birds is a symbol for biodiversity because that's what I kind of tried to do in my piece because, and birds are they can be really charismatic they also get a bad rep sometimes because, you know, especially with like pigeons which are everywhere and that's a huge symbol and like seagulls are obviously a huge symbol for beaches, but tourists don't want seagulls around because they're annoying. I did I definitely wanted to include birds to show that biodiversity because you don't have birds without insects and you don't have you don't have marine life without birds. And because they're kind of the first species to evolve so I'm having trouble finding the words but I did definitely try to include as much bird footage as I could get to show the biodiversity. I think there's also something to be said about thinking about deeper time and thinking thousands of years of humans living along the river alongside these same species of birds and the birds as Amanda pointed out would have been a part of the reality that humans would have experienced and as we visit the river well biodiversity has been lost on the river, we can still experience some of these same birds and so it was great that you guys captured some of those. We have another question I think you probably all have something to say about. I'd like john says I'd like to hear more about your process for editing video and audio. Is it a cooperative effort with the whole team and community partners, and I'd like to just intro that by saying that the students were only able to spend one day on the river so everything that you saw was actually captured we had. We had to make a five hour drive from Miami to Silver River, and the students really only were there like something like five hours to capture the sound and video, but go ahead, whoever wants to jump in on that. I can hop in here. So I think that for our entire group, this was really collaborative not in the sense that we were editing together just because of coven. You know we were not like proximate to each other, but we were sharing a lot of similar footage with each other, because as Merrill mentioned we had such a tight time constraint. So I mean if you're actually thinking about time, none of these were actual ethnographies right just because we spent so little time there but they're an exercise in ethnography. And this collaborative way like I mean for myself and for Brittany, we use a lot of archival footage and there are only two videos on the internet of Paradise Park. One is four minutes and one is one minute. And those are the only videos out there where we could actually pull footage to like showcase the like joy and happiness at these people were able to experience in this space. So I think that just you know given the context and also just the nature of our, our class and our project. It didn't have worked if it wasn't collaborative. I mean I know myself I wouldn't really have anything to show if I didn't have other people to lean on so that's just my experience. I'll just quickly say that the Paradise Park footage that there is there is in part because Cynthia Wilson Graham was able to encounter it and it was in horrible state. And then Mark was actually able to find somebody to repair the footage and you'll notice that in a lot of spaces that it's that it's, you know, you can see that it's in disrepair, but it was not even viewable before that. And so Mark was fundamental in helping find a professional to be able to actually repair it enough. And then when they've shown it, people viewers have just been brought to tears to be able to see some of their own family members and recognize them on screen. So it's been a pretty phenomenal process. And it just goes to show how not only was Paradise Park really erased not only from the history books and the records, but the park itself was raised. So all of this, the buildings that were there were actually raised to the ground, like completely destroyed. And so, so, ideologically it was destroyed. And this was the idea of desegregation as integration. But as Cynthia well said, that it wasn't integration whatsoever, it was just destroying cultural heritage and not valuing what was there. Everybody created both incredible audio and and video compilation. So please. Maybe Chris, you want to tell us a little bit about your audio compilation. Yeah, I mean, we, you know, like we've mentioned we were kayaking and that's how we got all the and canoeing. But yeah, we, I took a couple of sounds from monkeys that were previously recorded because we really like we were able to see monkeys not manatees. That's why there's no manatees in any of these in these videos but the monkeys we briefly saw but it was so crowded there. And I know men to mention that it was it's usually not that crowded. So, you know, with the limited time that we had and the limited amount of audio that we were able to record and or and video as well. I, I don't have the background of writing so I decided to take it from that approach. I was going to talk about just different rivers in general, like from the Amazon and whatnot and conservation, but I thought it'd be interesting. And you need to, you know, feature these monkeys that have no really no business being there but unfortunately, they were, they were just, you know, introduced by this guy Colonel to we and you know they're not native just like Burmese pythons and, you know, lionfish as well. So Florida's full of all these non native species invasive species as well. So, I don't know I just threw in a couple of sounds but definitely enjoyed this project and thanks for thanks for having us here. Appreciate it. Does anyone want to speak a little bit about how much footage was collected. I don't know how much we had total that you all worked with, because I know you guys shared it all in one place or you attempted to share it all in one place. I can't speak to that because I, well I loved that everyone shared footage with each other I approached it as a challenge because I love a challenge and I wanted to do only things that I recorded personally because I wanted it to be kind of like all the individual person can see and record on like a. I guess it was like a three hour kayak through the river. And I did trips into the woods a little bit after and got some more but I think I only had like an hour total of footage personally. Because I did a lot of like short, you know, 10 second recordings because, especially when you're moving in a kayak, like you're just kind of like floating by what you're trying to film. So at a certain point it was like I would love to make that a 22nd clip but there that bird goes and I am 10 feet down. But yeah I just challenged myself and was like I'm only using what I took. Which is why there's some repetition and what I did but I don't know total what we got. I can jump in and say that I definitely had quite a bit of footage, mostly because I dragged my GoPro attached to my kayak under the boat pretty much the whole way. And that amounted to a fair number of clips. And was also using my phone so there's definitely more videos to be made from the footage that I have, which, yeah and I know I shared some footage but a lot will sit in my digital archive to be used at another time. So we have another question that Amanda's mostly answered about question to panelists from Andy the history of religion is in a way a history of human relationships to sacred rivers, the Tigris Euphrates, the Danube, Ganges, Jordan Nile Amazon will be used at Columbia Silver, etc. Can you speak to what happens when communities see the spaces as sacred and not just as resources to be used and exploited. And Amanda's already said that to move to move what considered it a sacred waters and Paradise Park attendees would hold baptisms at the river. African American sacred music music from the Florida folk live collection has the collection shall we gather at the river. And also all other kinds of sort of people who in a colonialist lens explorers would try to, they were trying to find sacred sources that they heard through word of mouth amongst Florida's different rivers and springs Florida was sort of known as the possible place for the spring of life. We've also have someone saying from David, hi panelists, good. Interesting work. I'm in the process of establishing a small county park in central Florida would love to get suggestions. Most immediately we need to come an appropriate name. And I'm sure everyone would love to talk to David about this. David if you'd like to email me me and Amanda. I'll definitely pass that along and maybe even do a zoom chat with you we'd love to help you talk through names and think your names, name titles. Let's see. And just as most people I've interviewed over the years also reflect on the absolute awe they sense will on the river. It's actually been one of the major features. And this is a cross group so whether we're talking women or men people in yachts people in the smallest kayaks people on a john boat. And across economic ranges across professional and across religion because I've asked what people practice. And that's been the main thing has been the, the, the absolute awe. Now the day that all of the students came to the river was one of the busiest days I've ever seen. Actually, in my years and years I've never seen that many people in one spot. So I think it harks back maybe to win silver river actually was the Disney World of Florida before Disney World. But in recent times, it's not been like that. I would say, and I think the relationship that when there is a sense of sacredness to a space to a river, the hope would be that then there's also this ethic of conservation. One of the ideas that I grapple with a lot and I definitely ask people to question is this idea of what conservation should look like what does it mean. And to really recognize that conservation itself when we talk about conservation policy comes from an ideological framing that is colonial in and of itself. And so it conceptualizes nature as an object to be exploited or to be stewarded. And it creates a division between what is nature and what is human, rather than an integration and I've been trying to develop this concept of human nature. Like that, where it's really reflecting on that in so that in between this that space of interconnectivity. To be able to challenge and go beyond this, this idea of separation, and this goes also to thinking about even joy so when we think about what is not only our experience on the river but what is the rivers experience of us like Caitlin was asking. And if that rivers experience of humans is also joy, then how beautiful, and if it's violence, how not, right, but what does that mean so to a conservationist, and we'll see some of those volunteers and kayaks coming down the river and you know helping people's stay according to policy are often, you know, white middle class Americans from the north that who have either moved or are here transient with the summers as snowbirds. And so their relationship to the river is is very different than say, self professed rednecks who have generations of a relationship with the river. And one noted example is how, how do you interact right so a typical conservationist from the north will say, Okay, well, you keep as much distance as possible you don't interact, you don't see you keep the human element out of the natural as a typical redneck will be very engaged right so there's not this distinction so much there's here's a little baby alligator well let me pick it up right let me show you or let me play with it. And there's this this connectedness. Now what does that mean for conservation policy, particularly when we're talking about, you know, larger realms of people that may come to the river much like these students for the day. Right, so they're not necessarily developing a long term relationship. So we have the conservation policies as we do. So that it goes to the, to the lowest denominator that may not be developing relationships, but I do feel like this idea of sacredness is critical, as is questioning, what should conservation look like. When we're talking about ecological becoming. I've been here to and just also implore you Andy, the there's such a, I would implore you to look into some critical race theory, and also potentially reading decolonization is not a metaphor if you haven't read it yet. Because looking into fields of indigenous studies and also just critical race theory at large will explain just exactly why like people like us, like, I mean I don't know about you but like me in this class and Amanda like we're just, you know, we're all white people and I think that there's a really big difference between identifying a relationship with your environment as a colonizer and indigenous people having a sacred relationship with their land. And there's a lot of historical context and a lot of power dynamics at play. And I think that while both are incredibly valid I mean, I think water is a really big part of my identity in the ocean. But I think that looking into those power dynamics is really important in understanding what actually happens when a community views their environment as sacred. And I just want to add. I feel like we're, you know, America and the, the culture that we're living in right now is obviously pretty secular and very capitalist driven. And I think that framework has the, the spiritual is not necessarily a big part of the way people are in their everyday lives. I say that because I feel I grew up where there weren't any religious or spiritual values really pushed on me or I do consider myself a spiritual person but I think you know for example on a day like the day that we visited the river the amount of people that were there and the drinking and kind of some debauchers activities that some of us maybe witnessed didn't really lend itself to being able to have a kind of intimate feeling I think in a lot of ways. So I think that's something just for me is like considering the bigger picture of what we value in our society and I agree with Amanda that restoring some of the spiritual connection I think is important and it's something that we need to work on and replace with buying more stuff. Putting in the section here. I will say where I'm from in Ohio. We have a summer ritual of going to a river called the little Miami in Ohio and it's called kabruing and it is very much. It's a very warm day of the summer tradition all the high schoolers and college kids go and canoe on a river that's not as beautiful as the one in Florida and drink and engage in all that debauchers activity Georgia mentioned and it very much is like a first day of summer tradition. With all these high schoolers and college kids. But it's just interesting to look at the as rivers for ritual and things like that, being from a place where it very much is just a little Miami is just like a vehicle for these kids to party for the first day of summer. That's just interesting. I want to say we have about five minutes left for any follow up questions or last minute thoughts this has been a fantastic way to start the conference I've actually bowled over by all of your presentations by the thoughtfulness of your responses by the panelists and engagement of this activity it's made me fall in love with this region and with each of you in your work and I just am so thankful that you're sharing this with us. And I couldn't have come up with a better way to start this conference and so thank you all so very much. Thank you for having me last minute questions I'll go ahead Merrill sorry, I was just going to say just wanted to thank everyone who woke up this morning on a Friday. I'm not even morning for a lot of people around the world so just thank you so much for attending our panel and I think I'm going to ask the students in the last four minutes. What was most surprising to you in the actual process of putting together your work. What surprised you the most in your creative process. I'm not really necessarily a filmmaker and what surprised me is how long it takes to just edit a tiny little thing. Took a lot longer than I was anticipating. Yeah, I can piggyback off that to I have never made a video ever before this. So this was my first video. And it was definitely an interesting process. And that's why I did an audio and a written portion because I am not good at videos but I think all of us have, you know, our own, you know, creative talents that we applied this program and what we did on the river. And I think it's pretty unique, you know all the stuff that we came up with. We wish we had more time, you know as we all were saying it was too busy there that one day but now maybe another time Georgia can make another video with her, with her digital archive. Yeah, I think the most surprising thing for me was as someone who's worked in film quite a bit. I definitely went into the day with an idea in my head of what I was going to film and how I was going to do it, especially knowing the time constraint that we had and knowing what that can mean for making a film project. And then just actually being really surprised by the opportunity that we had to do the interview section. And I think I speak for all of us that we were really like interested to hear what both speakers had to say and we're surprised by a lot of things that were said and the way they were delivered. So that really became like the thing that was at the forefront of my mind. And it kind of put all of my planning of the footage that I was going to get in that I did get but that it kind of put it on the back side of what I wanted to address. So that was really interesting to kind of have that as a surprise opportunity. Yeah, it was very much. You can plan all you want but you don't know what's going to happen like it could have rained when we were out there and that would have changed a lot of our plans to. So it was very kind of like you may have a plan but you got it, you just have to go with the flow I originally I'm an artist and I originally wanted to do this whole idea for like a drawing and an animation. And just, you know, I got this great footage and there are just certain things that weren't going to work out and so there was a lot of just kind of go with the flow on the day of and then in the editing process to. Yeah, I agree with that I also come from a filmmaking background so I went into it thinking that I knew what I wanted to get and then I was completely surprised by what I actually got. All of the footage together and all the editing, but I think another thing that just surprised me is also just thinking about my role as a filmmaker and going out into the space and getting these images and thinking about the narrative that I was putting together and thinking about, you know what I'm, what was the story that I'm putting out there how is this going to be perceived. And I feel like that's something that I haven't necessarily thought of before with my filmmaking so it was a very self reflective process for me. Yeah, I agree with Caitlin, I think that I was. This is the first time I've gone into some kind of visual content where the focus wasn't on me or what I was doing. And being able to just let Cynthia's narrative take front and center and not include any kind of anything in there other than maybe some slight bias but it's towards racial justice so it shouldn't be biased, but I mean just allowing an actual narrative to just speak for itself and kind of moving away from what's expected and introducing more like unconventional forms of cinematography like including the archives for a really long time at the end of mine, which is something I've never done before I think that was really surprising and just kind of like not feeling uncomfortable by that like I was only feeling uncomfortable by the fact that like somebody might not want to sit through this long, quiet piece at the end. And I think that that's like a shift in mindset that I've never experienced so I was surprised by that but really enjoyed it. I just want to give my congratulations to everybody. Because I know that you're super busy with other classes and this class and I know that there was a lot of reading. And I know that the ideas didn't always work sometimes uncomfortable and challenging. And that's what's amazing I think about really allowing yourself to immerse in them, and to let the ideas themselves and the experience themselves the river itself and all of the creatures help guide that process. You guys really did become this collaborative constellation. So it's the dynamic of all of you that was able to create what we were just able to share today, and then hopefully maybe share in another publication source. So I congratulate all of you. Congrats and thank you so much for all of your hard work everyone and thank you again to everyone who came and attended today. Coming up is Buddhist and feminist approaches to the climate and environment at 1145 you check your chat box there's the link there to join and Andy do you want to say anything else to conclude. And again, thank you all so very much for being here to me this panel represents so much about what what education is about and what anthropology is about and just the care with which each of you approach this subject, the clear love you have for the indigenous people of that land and for the water is evident and it is infectious in the best way, probably not the best word to use during a pandemic but it was just absolutely spectacular if I can just share my screen quickly. So going out to folks again, our next panel, we have a break now and then at 1145 Eastern time. That's the next panel the information is in the chat box it's also here for you it's also on the conference communities page listed and that only works for folks who are registered for the conference if you haven't registered. We'd like you to but if you'd like to attend. We'd be happy to have some of the panelists attend just gratis as well. If you have any questions for us now would be the time to ask that. If not, thank you all so very much and we hope to see you in future sessions and please do have a look at our happy hours each evening that's a really great time for folks to come together and get to know one another and kind of share the work they're doing to make connections and a more informal setting and have a look at our keynote for tonight as well because it's a water roundtable with actually indigenous activists and others who are water protectors and water activists and I think that panel dovetails absolutely is going to be great way to close the day because it just picks up on everything that you folks have shared with us today so thank you so much.