From Desolation to Abundance: Manzanar, Storytelling, and Solidarity

Because the concentration camps that held Japanese Americans during World War II were typically established in harsh and desolate conditions, dust and dryness feature prominently in personal accounts of incarceration, and everyday resistance often involved gardening and landscaping, drawing on communal knowledge of irrigation. But the arid conditions at the Manzanar camp, in California’s Owens Valley, hardly “natural,” were already a product of Native dispossession and engineered ecological catastrophe. Before they were transformed by the relentless thirst of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which owns 90 percent of the valley, these Nüümü (Paiute) and Newe (Shoshone) lands were known as “Payahüünadü”—the place where the water always flows. As the documentary Manzanar, Diverted reveals, the confluence of multiple traditions of recollection and resistance inspires contemporary political organizing, honoring the “perfect memory” of Payahüünadü’s abundant waters. This seminar explores the life-giving abundance sustaining communal efforts for solidarity, reparation, transformation, and healing. Building on the film’s example, we’ll consider associated histories of solidarity among Japanese American, Indigenous, Mexican and other peoples, through films, other creative works, and guest speakers.

Trailer for Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust: