Graduate Student Research Spotlight | Matt Williams  

Matt Williams, an Environmental Humanities graduate student, recently presented his research on the Colorado River Basin’s cultural and environmental history at the American Indian & Indigenous Collective Symposium held at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  “My presentation sought to both introduce the audience to the incredibly complicated situation on the Basin and to center Indigenous sovereignty in conversations about how to care for the river going forward,” he said.

Williams works as a backcountry guide on the Colorado River, so he sees firsthand the river's state and the environmental concerns surrounding it. “The condition of human relations with the Basin is dire,” he said. “It's a real mess, and I'm passionate about helping people understand what's going on so that they can get involved.” The river is an incredibly important resource, covering 15% of the contiguous United States and sustaining over 40 million people in seven states, 30 Tribal Nations, and Mexico.

“Through countless hours of paying attention to the river and how it resonates internally, I've revised a lot of my assumptions about what it means to be a body of water,” he added.

While in the Environmental Humanities Graduate Program, Williams was encouraged to ask significant questions about how the world works and imagine alternative futures. He describes the program as “a model for what academia could be if it were oriented around problems, not disciplines.”  The project he presented at this conference began as a term paper in one of his core classes, which will eventually expand into his thesis. In the upcoming summer, he will be guiding again and gathering qualitative data on the river that he will analyze this fall.

Williams advises any student looking for similar opportunities not to be afraid to ask for help from faculty. “They will help you align your passions with assignment prompts and external opportunities,” he said. “This paper and presentation have so many fingerprints on them, from our departments and programs across campus.” Danielle Endres and Cory Pike were wonderful mentors to Williams along the way and constantly searched for opportunities where he could turn his passion into a project.