WATERS RESIST: MODERNITY, ARIDITY, and THE FIGHT OVER ORME DAM

JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, SPECIAL ISSUE: H2O 74.1 (2020)

Modern ideology strips water of its sociocultural and political contexts, reducing it to the scientific abstraction of H2O. This reductivist approach to water has erased longstanding ontologies and physically transformed America’s aridlands to advance modern political and economic agendas. By studying the 1947 proposal for Orme Dam and the Yavapai Nation’s forty-year resistance to it, this paper reveals the interconnected relationship between modern ideology and the design, development, and management of the environment. The inclusion of alternative ontologies can inspire the design of more just and resilient environments.

The proposed Orme Dam would inundate nearly two-thirds of the Yavapai Nation’s reservation lands at Fort McDowell, forcing their relocation and the loss of between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand acres of the Yavapai’s irrigated lands, as well as destroying the historic Fort McDowell, 120 prehistoric Hohokam sites, and the Yavapai tribal cemetery. Anticipating the consequences to their livelihood, the Yavapai Nation opposed construction of the Orme Dam.