Online Event: “Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice” with Finis Dunaway

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University of Notre Dame – Environmental Change Initiative: Finis Dunaway

Time: Tue Feb 15, 2022, 1:00PM – 2:00PM EST

Register on Zoom

Please join the Environmental Change Initiative and the Environmental Humanities Initiative for a virtual seminar presented by Finis Dunaway, Professor of History, Trent University. 

His talk is on “Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice.”

Cover of Defending the Arctic Refuge by Finis Dunaway

Finis Dunaway is the author of Natural Visions: The Power of Images in American Environmental Reform (2005) and Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images (2015). Seeing Green received the John G. Cawelti Award from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association and the History Division Book Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. His writings have also appeared in American Quarterly, Environmental History, and other scholarly journals and in the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, The Hill, Truthout, and the Globe and Mail.

This talk will focus on his recent book, Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice (2021). Tucked away in the northeastern corner of Alaska, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of the most contested lands in all of North America. Considered sacred by Indigenous peoples in Alaska and Canada and treasured by environmentalists, the refuge provides life-sustaining habitat for caribou, polar bears, migratory birds, and other species. For decades, though, the fossil fuel industry and powerful politicians have sought to turn this unique ecosystem into an oil field.

Defending the Arctic Refuge reveals how unlikely activists, diverse alliances, and grassroots visual culture helped build a political movement that transformed the issue into a struggle for environmental justice. The talk will share stories from the book, feature images from Arctic lands and communities, and trace the history of a movement that is still alive today.

Feature Image: “Caribou and Brooks Range, Arctic NWR” by USFWS Headquarters is licensed under Creative Commons.
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Finis Dunaway

Finis Dunaway is professor of history at Trent University. He is the author of Natural Visions: The Power of Images in American Environmental Reform (2005) and Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images (2015), which received awards from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. His most recent book is Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice (2021), which received the Hal K. Rothman Award from the Western History Association, the Spur Award for Best Contemporary Nonfiction from the Western Writers of America, and the Alanna Bondar Memorial Book Prize from the Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada.

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