Spaces of risk, spaces of difference: Environmental justice and science in Indian country

This dissertation investigates how the space of the Leech Lake Reservation became visible and came to make a difference in the scientific investigation of human health risk at the St. Regis Paper Company site, a hazardous waste site on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund National Priorities List. It argues that the association of the St. Regis site with the space of the Leech Lake Reservation took place only after the collective efforts of U.S. tribes to secure meaningful self-government converged with the ascendance in Washington of neoliberal projects to decentralize and "scale down" environmental governance. This convergence made new flows of funding available, through which the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe was able to develop connections with a geographically dispersed network of tribes, laboratories, and legal experts. These connections enabled both the Band to "activate" the boundaries of the Leech Lake Reservation and to develop a counter-network that could challenge the credibility of the company's claims and EPA's norms. These connections made it possible for Band personnel both to become central participants in the representation of the site and to translate the traditional tribal lifeways of Band members into calculable, customized exposure scenarios for the purpose of quantitative risk assessment. The Band's efforts to transform the geographic situatedness of the St. Regis site---in particular, to associate it with the space of the reservation---have been central to its struggle to obtain a just and reliable assessment of human health risk. Although the Band has been successful in making the space of the reservation visible in the assessment of risk, it has struggled to gain recognition of its treaty-protected right to ensure that land within reservation boundaries is clean enough to support traditional uses.