Field Guides to the Anthropocene Drift

This series of five booklets aims to provide readers with the contextual information necessary to become responsible uninvited guests in the Anthropocene Drift, while being non-prescriptive about the nature of that response. The field guides assemble images, texts, maps, and other materials around key themes and locations within our geographical and conceptual region, resonating with the content of the Anthropocene River Journey mobile seminar.

Meskonsing-Kansan

by Rozalinda Borcilă and Nicholas Brown with Lance Foster

Meskonsing-Kansan considers Indigenous land and regional settler colonization. It moves between what today are known as southwestern Wisconsin and northeastern Kansas, and between the Wisconsinan and Kansan Glaciations. This territory can be defined in terms of Indigenous removals, refusals, returns, and resurgence, particularly among the Ho-Chunk, Meskwaki, Iowa, and Kickapoo Nations. Meskonsing-Kansan reveals how the land has been physically transformed by glaciers and colonization alike, and also by narratives and counter-narratives of glaciation and settlement. Meskonsing-Kansan focuses on Iowa homelands between the rivers and glacial edges.
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Shaped by Rivers

by Heather Parrish and Sam Muñoz

Shaped by Rivers is a field guide produced by artist Heather Parrish and geoscientist Sam Muñoz, exploring the reciprocal relationship between people, rivers, and the landscape. It focuses on the unique setting of the Driftless Area of the Upper Mississippi region — an area characterized by deeply incised valleys that reflect the uninterrupted work of rivers over millions of years and which maintains an anachronistic geography with vibrant counter-culture, creative communities, and unique agricultural practices.
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Amongst Relatives

by Corinne Teed, with Francis Bettelyoun, Rhonda Funmaker, Jodee Smith

Amongst Relatives, a field guide by artist Corinne Teed with Francis Bettelyoun and Rhonda Funmaker, draws from a series of interviews with indigenous thinkers from communities of the northern Mississippi River Basin that explore the incongruent histories of settler-colonial agricultural methods and indigenous ecological epistemologies.
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Beyond Property

by Sarah Kanouse

Beyond Property is a field guide produced by artist Sarah Kanouse, exploring the evolution of the “ownership model” of property as a technology of the colonial Anthropocene and that considers alternative possibilities of living with and on the land.
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After Extraction

by Ryan Griffis

After Extraction is a field guide written by artist Ryan Griffis, combining creative nonfiction and montage-based images to depict a partial history of extractive land use in Central Illinois.
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