Cultural Heritage and Contamination: Reclaiming Personal and Community Narratives

Anita Bakshi (Rutgers University)

There are important connections between environmental design and cultural heritage. Even the most severely compromised Superfund sites are composed of more than contaminants and strategies used for remediation. The emotional and cultural aspects of environmental losses must be addressed through work with impacted communities. This talk describes a project funded by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities at the Ringwood Mines Superfund Site in New Jersey. We have been working with a Native American community, the Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lunappe, to address multiple aspects of environmental contamination including history, culture, education, and environmental justice. This project addresses two main issues. The first is effective and accessible communication of scientific information about environmental issues, especially in regards to contaminated brownfield or Superfund sites. Secondly, it explores methods of advocacy for environmental justice in marginalized communities in New Jersey. We are exploring the development of a participatory action research approach for raising awareness about significant ongoing environmental issues at the Ringwood Mines Superfund site. This is grounded in a collaborative process of gathering and visualizing site information and personal stories with the Ramapough in Ringwood. Since this case and site involve multiple contested narratives about the history of contamination and cleanup in Ringwood and debates about the impact, experimentation is required with representation techniques that might convey divergent site narratives and histories through visualized stories, drawings, and documentation. This project presents complex environmental data from EPA reports alongside narratives of human experience, in order to make this information accessible and comprehensible. The project includes historical research, photography of sites in New Jersey, and meetings with the Ramapough. A book will be published in 2019 for distribution to educators and cultural institutions throughout the state, and the work will be featured in the Humanities Action Lab exhibition in Newark.