Where the Water Once Was: Indigenous Remembering and Settler Forgetting of the Tulare Lake Basin in California

The talk traces the politics of settler memory and the erasure of Indigenous histories in
California water infrastructure. The presentation highlights the environmental history of Tulare
Lake, once a vibrant wetland fed by multiple rivers now dammed and drained for agriculture.
The Tulare Lake Basin is now barren, destroyed by drought and infrastructure. The Tulare Lake
Basin was utilized by the Yokuts and Mono for gathering, hunting, and cultural practice and the
memory of that is still alive in the tribes today. Using Dian Million’s assertion to theorize from
an Indigenous lived perspective, I am interested in the remembering and the forgetting of Tulare Lake and its supporting rivers by settler colonial governments and California Indian people.