The average person’s relationship with water has changed because of the effects of settler colonialism. Some Indigenous people in the Americas have maintained their cultural understanding of the environment. The Havasupai tribe (the people of the blue/green water) have a strong relationship to water that is based in language, culture, and stories. I will analyze the Havasupai relationship and claim to water in regard to Indian reserved water rights and water policy. This includes the Winters Doctrine, on-going mining litigation, and contemporary water policies like the Clean Water Act.

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has strategically created a message in hopes of persuading its population that they stand for justice. “Our Mission, Creed, and Core Values,” may be considered an honorable message to its preferred audience. But from a subversive standpoint, the message is considered to target and criminalize marginalized citizens. This study will demonstrate how the hegemony uses militarized rhetoric to support their war on our communities. Ultimately, this research seeks to educate its audience about the ways in which messages, those similar to the LASD’s, continue to instigate hostilities towards and among the marginalized population.

This ethnography focuses on how outreach is cultivated, idealized, and put into action by employees and volunteers at CCAT. The research takes place at Humboldt State University at the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology (CCAT). This project aims to ask how the outreach programs at this particular Associated Students organization are structured, interact, utilized, and overall encourage local activism. The methods conducted include participant observations, collected artifacts, naturally occurring conversations, surveys, formal and informal interviews. The findings of this research highlight the necessities for student run organizations and awareness-building communities.

What support do survivors turn to after environmental disasters? This research examines how survivors of the Camp Fire, one of the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in California’s history, draw upon religion in the aftermath of disaster. Specifically, this research asks: What role does religion play in rebuilding a community post-disaster? During the summer of 2019, I conducted ethnographic observations, interviews and surveys with individuals affected by the Camp Fire. I documented material, social and spiritual forms of support that religions organizations offered to residents of Paradise and consider how these factors relate to building the town.

The aim of this research is to gain insight into the experience of female religious leaders in Humboldt County, centering around the challenges, obstacles, and opportunities faced by women in these roles. How do such figures view their gender has affected them in terms of authority, personal spirituality, and relationship to religious tradition? By conducting a series of ethnographic interviews with local religious leaders, these questions have been explored across faith traditions. The examination of gender and power is not only limited to a religious setting, but extends broadly to society as a whole.

By addressing the needs of Generation Z students in the classroom, we are able to tailor the learning environment to the generation. The ineffectiveness of the traditional teaching pedagogy shows the need to adapt the classroom. As a classroom assistant in a service-learning class, I was able to see how communication in the classroom plus reflection creates community, and awareness of community. By proposing a dynamic learning environment such as one with service-learning, one is able to shape the way the classroom interacts and engages with its students to address their changing learning style. We need to ask the question of how can we engage students in an adapting and changing world.

Through extensive on-campus research and personal experience my research attests to the fact that the classroom assistant position, while not widely adopted in many university settings including HSU, has proven to be an effective on-campus support mechanism. By performing functions such as assisting in classroom flow, facilitating in-class group exercises, and checking in on students’ progress on work outside of class, classroom assistants are an understated, invaluable resource that develops students’ work capacities as well as their level of comfort and integration into on-campus resources and events.

I did my project on the telenovela "Jane The Virgin" and looking at the stereotypes that the show portrays about Latino culture. I discuss bisexuality within the latino culture, intersectionality, the Bechdel Test, and apply all of this to the show and telenovelas in general. I did this project for my Comm 309B class.

This project will investigate the current support mechanisms for students intending to study abroad and how HSU could both better prepare students for their experience and help re-acclimatize them on their return. This work would involve interviews with those working with students as faculty and staff as well as student interviews about what they would find valuable in terms of support. The aim for this work would be a set of practical proposals for the marketing and outreach to encourage more students to study abroad as well as more aware pre-departure preparation and return programming.

In American society, identity is something that many people struggle with throughout their daily lives. The US has a unique sense of culture like no other country that is created through the social construct of the race and the belief of the “melting pot”. The US census, requires that every person identify their race, which is more difficult for some than for others. When someone marks the race box, it is assumed that their race is simply their identity, without taking into account the struggle that the individual could be facing. We need to have a greater understanding of what it is to have an identity that can’t be placed within society as a race that could be found within a box.