Native sustainment: The North Fork Mono tribe's stories, history, and teaching of its land and water tenure in 1918 and 2009

This dissertation focuses on the North Fork Mono (or Nium) Tribe's historiography and oral narratives about its land and water tenure. I begin with a recounting of my recent experiences in elementary school curriculum development about Native Americans and the environment and a discussion of the clash in worldviews that this work brought to the surface. Then, by drawing on secondary sources, on archival research into federal land records and anthropologists' correspondence and field notes, on an analysis of the content and structure of traditional stories recorded by the anthropologist E. W. Gifford in 1918 (and of Gifford's publications), and on my participation in and observation of the 2009 California Tribal Water Summit, I describe the traditional Nium fire regime and the history of the Tribe's land and water tenure. My dissertation supports the Tribe's sovereignty and environmental jurisdiction I focus on an investigation of how the Nium have expressed water tenure and rights in the watershed of the San Joaquin River and on how Nium stories operate as educational media. My literary and historical analysis shows how Nium narratives can drive ecological restoration and how these narratives sustain people, land, and water by articulating the connections among all these entities. In clarifying this sustainment---this persistent, reciprocal support and nourishment among Nium people, land, and water over time---for a broader audience, my objective is to contribute to other groups' capacities to sustain themselves and that which surrounds them---to accomplish the goal, in other words, of sustainability education.