Water Rites: Reimagining Water in the West ed. by Jim Ellis (review)

Water Rites is an insightful, moving, beautiful book. Merging the scholarly with the narrative and the artistic, the volume provides a unique contribution to the literature around water security and well-being.

Ostensibly focused on water issues as they affect western Canada, the messaging reverberates beyond geographical location. Certainly, as the editor notes, “water issues are particularly acute in the west” (xv). And, in the words of Aboriginal law expert David Laidlaw, Canada’s western province of Alberta can expect “significant economic and environmental impacts” due to considerable projected climate warming. In that regard, “change to Alberta’s water allocation system is needed” (76).

Nevertheless, the lessons here extend beyond Alberta, as we all ask ourselves the central questions addressed by this volume: “How can we rethink our relation to water? What might our duty to water tell us about our connection to each other?” (xvi).

This work emerged from the Calgary Institute for the Humanities’ Annual Community Seminar of 2017. My own sense is that the humanities need to have a stronger voice in environmental decision making today. Ellis is right that while “science can offer proof of climate change, the humanities can explore and expose its human dimensions, and art persuades us on a different—and arguably more fundamental—level, intervening in the imagination” (xxi).

Accordingly, a diversity of imaginative voices and perspectives emerge in this volume. Personal narratives, such as Michelle Daigle’s piece about kinship responsibilities, remind us that technocratic solutions to problems of safe drinking water are never enough. Reflecting on her grandparents’ lived experiences with the Kishiichiwan (Albany) River, Daigle points out how “drinking water issues must be situated within the larger framework of land and water dispossession for private industry’s accumulation of wealth . . . legitimated through settler colonial laws” (7). Helen Knott writes as a Dane Zaa and Nehiyaw woman whose greatgrandparents roamed the land and the waters, inspiring her to be part of a documentary focusing on the connection between violence against Indigenous women and Indigenous land.

There are stunning artistic chapters, too. Warren Cariou uses the tar from naturally occurring undisturbed bitumen deposits on the banks of the Athabasca River to develop petrographs, some of which are presented in the pages of this book. Nancy Tousley’s disconcerting photos in the Treaty 6 territory of Alberta reveal damage done to waters of First Nations communities. My personal favorite is Leslie Sweder’s “Confluence”—“an investigation into the resiliency of nature and the fragility of life” (57). It is worth purchasing the book simply to immerse yourself in her grand images of the conflicting energies of water.

Efforts to conserve watersheds by community organizations like Y2Y, Project Blue Thumb, and Watershed+ reveal how artists become “researchers, investigators, facilitators and magicians” (91). Adrian Parr closes the book, noting that while water may be a human right, “the deeper problem of how to enforce that right persists” (114).

Overall, the book is worth the read, if only to be reminded of and moved by the powerful presence of water through this eclectic and inspiring collection.