Geography & Geographic Information Science

Accurate, up-to-date delineation of hydrographic features is essential for hydrologic modeling, water-resource management, and climate resilience. But existing workflows for the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) rely heavily on Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) and manual editing, limiting scalability, consistency, and the timeliness of updates across diverse landscapes.

This talk explores how the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians mobilize Anishinaabe relational methodologies to challenge colonial logics of resource governance. Tracing histories from treaty-making through contemporary restoration work, this research demonstrates how relationality and cultural agency reshape resource governance in the Great Lakes region.

Connecting nineteenth-century mapping to twenty-first-century design pedagogy reframes cartography as a design practice that produces—not merely represents—social and spatial realities. Material intelligence emerges as both a research method and a pedagogical ethos for investigating how visual artifacts shape ways of seeing, knowing, and belonging in the world.