The impact of U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the Navajos, community divisions over Rocky Flats and the good news about Colorado landscapes will be addressed in three lectures by University of Colorado at Boulder faculty in February and March.
Each talk is part of the 2003-04 Chancellor's Community Lecture Series and addresses the theme of "Healing the West." All lectures will begin at 7 p.m. in the Chautauqua Community House, 900 Baseline Road, in Boulder and are free and open to the public.
On Feb. 4, Associate Professor Sarah Krakoff of the School of Law will present "The U.S. Supreme Court and the Navajo Nation: Adaptation, Resistance, and the Enactment of Tribal Sovereignty."
Krakoff will discuss how decisions made in Washington, D.C., by nine non-Indian justices have impacted life among the Navajo people and revealed the challenges and successes of enacting tribal sovereignty in the shadow of federal law. Like all tribes, the Navajo Nation has had to react to these federal decisions as it charts its own path toward political, cultural and economic well-being, she said.
On Feb. 18, Associate Professor Len Ackland of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication will discuss "Lessons from a Tough History: the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant." While workers and managers at the plant argued they were preserving the nation's security, other members of the community contended that they helped put the world at risk while poisoning the local environment, he said.
Ackland will discuss the prospects for "healing" the deep community wounds and for finding a way to reckon with a complex and emotionally charged set of memories surrounding nuclear weapons production. He is the author of "Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West" and has worked on an experimental Internet museum about the plant, which he also will discuss.
On March 3, Professor David Armstrong of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology will speak on "The Good News: A Progress Report on Sustainable Stewardship of Coloradan Landscapes."
As Colorado's population has grown and the economy has diversified, shifts have occurred in land-use management goals and strategies by both public agencies and private landowners, Armstrong said. Today, a spectrum of efforts aimed at sustainable stewardship is providing hope that a viable "ecological theater" will continue in Colorado and the West for a continuing run of what he called the "evolutionary play."
The lectures will continue through May and are sponsored by the CU-Boulder Chancellor's Office, the CU-Boulder Center of the American West and the Colorado Chautauqua Association.
For more information call the CU-Boulder Office of Community Affairs at (303) 492-7084.