The Sovereign Table: Embedding Knowledge Infrastructure within a Tribal Homeland

Abstract

As climate change exacerbates the consequences of Western land and resource mismanagement, landscape architects are increasingly soliciting traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). This thesis calls landscape architects to resist the exploitation of TEK and join efforts to decolonize public land. A Sovereign Table challenges the ongoing eco-ethnocide in the Klamath River Basin by proposing a new “Land Back” form that supports tribal biocultural sovereignty while fostering intra-basin co-stewardship. Funding designated for basin restoration from the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act shifts co-stewardship decision-making from federal space to sovereign tribal land. Monuments of colonization are then reconfigured into a physical knowledge infrastructure network that invites tribal, local, and federal stakeholders into a co-stewardship relationship. By making space for knowledge negotiation and creation, while making visible biocultural processes, the Bio-Cultural Sovereignty Area encourages ideological barriers to splinter and supports the creation of symbiotic, basin-specific co-stewardship.