Thesis Christ: The racial dimensions of environmental restoration with Carmen Simons
What makes an environment pollutable? How can that land be restored once more? These are the questions being explored by Carmen Simons, a Spring/Fall senior in Environmental Studies/History. Her thesis deals with the history of restoration ecology—processes for rehabilitating ecosystems damaged by human activity—in the Johnson Creek watershed, which covers most of Portland and the surrounding area, including Reed College.
Working with Josh Howe, professor of history in the Environmental Studies committee, Simons is exploring Oregon’s colonial history as it impacts present-day work in restoration ecology. Within this topic, Simons aims to focus on contemporary, Indigenous-led restoration projects.
Right now, Simons is investigating industrial development and watershed pollution in the historically marginalized Lents neighborhood in Southeast Portland. She aims to document the racialized processes that made pollution in this area socially and politically acceptable.
“Originally, I think I had more of a scientific component, and then I became less interested in that because I think that science is already being done in other places. I was more interested in looking at a specific historical context, which is why I chose this watershed that I live in and have worked in,” explained Simons.
Before embarking on this thesis, Simons had been involved with Portland State University’s Indigenous Traditional Ecological and Cultural Knowledge (ITECK) program, which practices Indigenous-led restoration ecology. At Reed, she has also worked on a project to build a restoration site on the art meadow, influenced by the work she did with ITECK.
Simons explained her longtime passion for restoration ecology, saying “I’ve grown up always caring about food and that’s where I really connect to it, is the idea that many more places can be claimed for food production, for making communities more locally stable and resistant to climate change and the turmoils of the market, is really exciting to me.”
One of the sources that has been helping Simons formulate her thesis is David Lewis’s Tribal Histories of the Willamette Valley, which details the history of the indigenous Kalapuya people of the Willamette Valley. This text has helped Simons contextualize the historical background for contemporary Indigenous ecological practices.
Another relevant source for Simons’ thesis is the article “Against decline? The geographies and temporalities of the Arctic cryosphere” by Eyak scholar Jen Rose Smith. Smith’s interpretation of the discourse of “Atlantification,” the phenomenon by which Atlantic waters impact Arctic ecosystems, as a Western imposition has influenced Simons’s conception of restoration ecology. “This intellectual translation that settler states do to try to control geographies and ecological domains that they’re not familiar with… was really helpful for me starting to figure out what’s going on with restoration ecology linguistically and intellectually,” explained Simons.
After graduation, Simons plans to use the skills she has gained in her thesis work to go into outdoor education. “I think teaching kids about how narratives shape knowledge is actually incredibly important,” said Simons. “Learning about that myself and studying how it happens is really helpful.”