Stories of Fire: A PNW Climate Justice Atlas

In Partnership with the University of Idaho

University of Idaho researchers at the Confluence Lab, in partnership with local communities, created Stories of Fire: A Pacific Northwest Climate Justice Atlas. It is a multimodal, polyvocal atlas that gathers, tracks, and maps stories and images of wildfire, especially those that foreground connections between fire, social/environmental justice, and traditionally underrepresented rural and BIPOC voices. This project explores pyrogeographies of the PNW (both physical and social), using Traditional Ecological Knowledge/Indigenous Knowledge and the environmental humanities to tell stories about our changing region that bridge history and speculative futures and link the origins and effects of the physical and social fires of 2020. Collaborations with community partners support interactive local storytelling workshops, using photovoice and participatory mapping tools in conjunction with rephotography, to invite publics to record, visualize, and share stories about their relationships to fire.

The project also included one in-residence faculty fellow in creative writing specializing in BIPoC narratives of social and climate justice of the Pacific Northwest (a two-year position); one pre-doctoral fellow in human geography (two-year position); and one artist-in-residence specializing in visual arts, especially Indigenous traditions (one-month position). The in-residence faculty fellow wrote the narrative arc of the Atlas and taught four courses per year, including MFA and undergraduate workshops in fiction and nonfiction, with emphasis on diverse and inclusive cultural geographies across the Pacific Northwest. The pre-doctoral fellow was trained in GIS and decolonial mapping methodologies and assisted in integrating the participatory mapping data and photovoice tool into the Atlas, supporting community workshops, and crafting the visual elements of the Atlas. The artist-in-residence worked with the co-PIs, the pre-doctoral fellow, and the faculty fellow to create visual images for the physical and digital editions of the Atlas. This project included a traveling pedagogical toolkit, a series of art exhibitions, and storytelling workshops across the region.