No description available.

This dissertation adopts the perspective of Cognitive Ethnography to examine the work of a grassroots, Navajo environmental organization called Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment. Specifically, I will examine the work and the challenges facing the members of this organization in order to evaluate how new communications and information technologies may be of use to them. This analysis begins, as Cognitive Ethnography mandates, with a general description of the tasks which constitute the work of Diné CARE. As will be discussed, these consist primarily in attempts to reassert what the organization's members consider to be traditional Navajo perspectives on economic development and the human relationship with the natural environment. Subsequently, I analyze the representations, measurements of work, and forms of organization required to accomplish Diné CARE's tasks. In all aspects of the work, members were constantly required to manage a dialogue between their preferred means of organizing or representing work, and the means required by the operating environment in which they found themselves, characterized primarily by relationships with various outside sources of legal, technical or financial support. The work of Diné CARE is thus extensively "dialogic." While members continually drew on Navajo traditions for viewing the relationship of human beings to the natural environment, for representing their work, and for building cooperative access to resources for resistance, they were nonetheless required at the same time to position these "traditional" approaches against approaches whose history of development have political, social and cultural roots in Western Europe and modem America. Often, this dialogue brought with it tension and even morally charged conflict for the members of Diné CARE. This tension extended to emerging technologies as well. In spite of many claims to the contrary, new communications and information technologies did little to alleviate the mismatch between "local" and "foreign" ways of doing work. Instead of "empowering" local communities by providing them access to information or the chance to be heard on their own terms, new technologies complicated the scenario of local resistance by requiring practices for representing work which were both difficult to master and often inappropriate.

The Gila River Indian Reservation lies in the Sonoran Desert of south-central Arizona, with an elevation range from 941 to 4512 feet (287 to 1375 m). Three major desert streams (the Salt, Gila, and Santa Cruz Rivers) have their confluences on the reservation. The human occupancy of the Gila floodplain is believed to have been continuous for the past two millenia. In the past century loss of stream flow and deterioration of riparian and marsh habitats have resulted from drastic changes in hydrologic regimes of the major streams. Documentation of original habitat conditions is based on Hispanic accounts (1694-1821) and subsequent Anglo accounts, together with oral history from the Pima Indians. Riparian timber and emergent vegetation were gone by 1950 due to destructive floods and lowered water table. Irrigation run-off and Phoenix sewage effluent have reestablished locally riparian communities and marshes. Eleven major habitats occur today on the reservation. Their predominant vegetation is described. Field work on the reservation was conducted from 1963 to 1976. Modern distributional data are compared with evidence from archaeological, ethnographic, and historical sources. The total avifauna (all time horizons) consists of 232 species, of which 207 are supported by specimen evidence. At least 101 species are breeding or have bred in the past; five other species are probably breeding. On geographic grounds an additional seven species are suspected of having bred aboriginally. The taxonomy and migration are discussed in accounts of 46 species with two or more subspecies occurring on the study area. The Piman ethno-taxonomy of birds distinguishes 67 taxa, most of which correspond to Linnaean (biological) species. In the past 100 years 28 species (21 as breeding species) have been extirpated from the reservation. Of these 24 are directly related to loss of riparian woodlands or open water and marshes. Since 1958 at least 13 species have recolonized as a result of the redevelopment of riparian communities with willow, cottonwood, and cattail. The present reservation habitat and avifauna are contrasted with two modern analogs with perennial surface water and intact riparian communities. These are at similar elevations, less than 30 miles (48 km) from the reservation. Ten Neotropical species have colonized Arizona within the 20th century and an additional eight have extended their breeding ranges northward. Four Neotropical species have occupied the reservation during this period. Formerly allopatric subspecies of two species (Great-tailed Grackle, Quiscalus mexicanus, and Horned Lark, Eremophila alpestris) are now interbreeding on the reservation in areas of secondary intergradation. The northward movements are attributed to post- Pleistocene recolonizations, in part facilitated by human modifications of habitats. At least 15 wintering species are departing earlier in spring than they did at the turn of the century. This is attributed to habitat deterioration. The habitats with the greatest avifaunal diversity, both summer and winter, are the traditional Pima farms (rancherlas) and the recently redeveloped riparian communities along the Salt River. The least diversified and most disturbed habitats are the Gila River channel and the large-scale mechanized farms on lands leased to non-Indians. The future of both the natural habitats and the avifauna of the reservation is in the hands of tribal leaders.

No description available.

Thesis (M.S.)--Northern Michigan University, 2009. / Bibliography: leaf 79.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington. / Bibliography: l. [452]-472.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 382-405). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Sociology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

A study of the Salt River Indian Reservation in central Arizona evaluated pre-development hydrologic conditions with an emphasis on simulating ground-water flow conditions within the reservation, where data was scarce before extensive aquifer pumping began in 1940 in adjoining portions of the East Salt River Valley. Water-resource development began in the valley with the completion of the Tempe Canal in 1871. Additional canals and irrigated agriculture spread quickly in areas along the Salt River, which has a mean annual flow of about 1.25 million acre-feet. Pre-development ground-water flow was horizontal and steady-state. The simulation indicated that the available water-level data, though corrupted in areas adjacent to the river, more properly described the virgin system than flow estimates. Sensitivity analyses indicated that simulated heads on the reservation were sensitive to all processes except evapotranspiration. Recharge through the riverbed, evapotranspiration, and subsurface outflow were all co-dependent.

No description available.