Photography by Brittany Schoenfelder, c. 2023.
Dissertation
My research positions tribal/federal cooperative land management agreements, known as co-stewardship, co-management, and memorandums of understanding, within geographical discourse through observations of visual materials, imagery, and aesthetics. My in-depth case study is the co-management agreement established between the National Park Service (NPS) and the Huna Tlingit in Glacier Bay Homeland (National Park & Preserve) in southeastern Alaska.
What are cooperative agreements?: These agreements establish intergovernmental relationships between tribes and the federal government, usually pertaining to the management of public lands. These are situated and specific to the needs of each tribe so documents can share language but are often unique. Broadly speaking, they encourage Native-centered stewardship and conservation practices for ecosystem restoration and aim to revitalize cultural practices and relations with land, water, and non-human beings.
Why visuals?: National parks have a long history of Native land dispossession and have misrepresented, erased, and omitted our histories, active presence, cultures, languages, and relations with land/water. Therefore national parks are visual projects intended to convey a specific settler narrative. In the case of Glacier Bay, the Tlingit’s reclamation of representation (which is an act of visual sovereignty) in the park has been deeply influential for their relationship with park staff and contribute to the healing process. Visuals, then, are geographical and reconstitute parks landscapes as Native geographies. Representation is an overlooked and undervalued initiative in cooperative agreements and my work intends to change that perspective.
Projects
Preliminary Fieldwork, 2023. Understanding Tribal/Federal Co-management Agreements Through Visual Rhetoric. Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska.
Researcher, 2022-present. Landscape Wonder: A Springboard for an Environmental Transition? Collaboration with The French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), L’Institut Agro Rennes-Angers, and University of Arizona.
Graduate/Research Associate , 2024-present. Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance. Department of Community, Environment and Policy. With Dr. Stephanie Carroll. University of Arizona.
Research assistant, 2019. Wildfire Lookouts & Photography.
With Dr. Steve Mark, Park Historian. Crater Lake National Park, Oregon.
Publications
2023-24
Schoenfelder, Cassidy. Review of Making and Breaking Settler Space: Five Centuries of Colonization in North America by Adam J. Barker. American Indian Culture and Research Journal Volume 46, no. 4 (forthcoming).
Schoenfelder, Cassidy. Review of This Contested Land. The Storied Past and Uncertain Future of America’s National Monuments. By McKenzie Long. American Indian Culture and Research Journal Volume 47, no. 2 (forthcoming).
2020
Schoenfelder, Cassidy. “My Mother, Death Artist”, hazel Art Magazine,hazelartmag.com