Book Talk with Ophelia Rivas: Significant Impact
Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026
Registration required: 8 seats left on Wednesday afternoon
https://asu.libcal.com/event/17604879
Come listen and learn from the three authors of Significant Impact, Ophelia Rivas from Tohono O'odham Nation of Ali Jeg'k village, Caitlin Blanchfield from Cornell University, New York and Nina Kolowratnik from Ghent University, Belgium about their newly released book!
Book Synopsis:
A collaboration between O'odham Elder Ophelia Rivas, human rights scholar Nina Valerie Kolowratnik, and architectural historian Caitlin Blanchfield, the book advocates against militarized infrastructures on Indigenous lands and challenges common protocols of environmental review, along with the Western frameworks of scientific classification and property embedded in them. The project makes visible the impact of surveillance when considered through Indigenous sovereignty and an O'odham epistemology of land. It offers a visual language that is sensitive to secrecy protocols within Traditional Knowledge and that challenges the colonial biases of Western cartography.
The book situates current surveillance infrastructure projects on the Tohono O'odham Nation within a longer history of settler colonialism and border militarization, and reflects on the role of environmental review within the politics of protection in Indigenous lands.
Learn more about the book here: https://urbannext.net/significant-impact-contesting-surveillance/
- Thursday, October 1, 2026
- 11:00 am - 01:00 pm
- Arizona Time (change)
- Hayden Library - Labriola Center 2nd Floor
- Freshman Graduate Transfer Undergraduate
