A couple of years ago I read Turning: Lessons from Berlin’s Lakes by Jessica J. Lee. This beautifully crafted environmental memoir also taught me about the seasonal turning of lakes: the colder and warmer parts of the lake switch places, and a lake’s appearance changes too – a murkier summertime lake all of a sudden is crisp and clear in fall. According to the Clear Lakes Alliance, turning “allows for oxygen to be replenished and nutrients to be distributed throughout the lake.”
A similar thing happens on university campuses, with changing cohorts of students and to a lesser degree, faculty and community. This year the FEELed Lab has a number of new core members – PhD students Nela Rosso-Brugnach and Julia Jung join PhD student Tom Letcher-Nicholls and MA student Emma Carey, alongside Postdoctoral Research Fellow Sue Reid who took up her fellowship last April. We are enthusiastic about working alongside and learning from each other. We hope that students new and returning to syilx territory will also find their way to the Lab!
Turning also means that things have changed in other ways: our long-time beloved FEELed Lab Administrator Dani Pierson completed her amazing MA research on Metis Rest as Resistance, and has recently moved to Chátęh Kų́e to work for Fort Nelson First Nation supporting their community-led research and restoration projects. Other students who were regulars at the Lab have similarly moved on! We look forward to future visits! Meanwhile, the Lab is thrilled to have Julia Jung join us as our new Administrator.
The Spring was very full-on last year, with many happenings, workshops, defenses, and other gatherings. We managed to capture some of those in our FEELed Notes, and have since tried to get everything updated! For instance, read about Emma and Tom’s participation at the ALECC confernce in June, or about former Postdoctoral Researcher Alex Berry’s “tasting climate change” research.
One of our commitments at that time, and still, is support to students and community members fighting for justice in the face of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and elsewhere. Although the People’s University at UBCO decamped in June, the statement that they read out concluded with the words: “The People’s University is Everywhere.” The FEELed Lab remains steadfast in our support. This is not the time to look away.
The genocide in Gaza encompasses many forms of violence, including serious climate injustice. One way we are continuing to link violence to Lands and peoples in Palestine to ongoing colonialism here on syilx territory is through our collaboration with IndigenEYEZ in their year-long EarthSense program. Committing to climate justice means committing to syilx-led perpsectives on what climate justice means here. We are grateful to Erin Delfs who is helping coordinate our participation in IndigenEYEZ’s important work.
As always, the FEELed Lab will be a place this year for thinking and practicing togehter in ways that explore our relationships to climate change, Land and related environmental questions from feminist, anticolonial, queer, antiracist and related perspectives. You can look forward to a workshop in November, a “Welcome the Dark” gathering in December, and (most excitingly): our first FEELers Summer Camp! Stay tuned for more info coming soon.
So please bring us your ideas and your enthusiasm; together we will use them well.
The FEELed lab 