Presenter: Laura Nausieda
Co-Presenters: Alex Deck, Arica Sears, Lauren Rapp, Rowan Hardenbrook, Arielle Shamash, Emma Sloan, Hope Tejedas, and Marla Waters
Mentors: Kathryn Lynch and Aylie Baker, Environmental Studies
Creative Work Presentation: C11 (Gumwood Room)
Majors: Environmental Studies and Anthropology
Using video, audio and photography, the goal of the Environmental Leadership Program’s Just Stories Team is to collaborate with local partners to document communities responding to environmental injustice. Winter term we worked with community members in Cedar Valley, Oregon to create the film Drift: A Community Seeking Justice. In October 2013, a helicopter spraying herbicides over recent clearcuts dripped chemicals over local residents, several tributaries of the Rogue River and lands abutting the local school. Residents immediately began reporting negative health effects. The 20-minute film documents the aftermath of the aerial spray incident as well as the community’s efforts to organize locally and call for statewide community health protections. Drift was screened at the State Capitol in March as well as the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference at the University of Oregon. It aims to spread awareness about Senate Bill 613, which would require the Oregon Department of Agriculture and the Department of Forestry to create spray buffer zones for homes, schools, drinking water and fish-bearing streams. Spring term, we are working with women who are leaders in their communities in responding to pesticide drift to learn about their visions of change. In addition to sharing some of these stories, we will talk about our process of community-centered media-making as a catalyst for meaningful change on environmental justice issues.