Two talks at WU: Champoeg after the 1861 Flood, the Psychology of Sustainability

There are two talks in the next couple of days at Willamette that might be of interest, one on recent archeology at Champoeg, which will touch on settler colonialism, the origins of statehood and early statehood, and of course flood; and the other on the psychology of sustainability (and presumably why it has been so difficult to engage people).

Though it's from 2009, it's still relevant for this talk!

Tomorrow, on Thursday the 18th at 7:30pm in the College of Law auditorium, there is a formal talk on research at Champoeg, "Caution! High Water: An Archaeological Investigation of the Champoeg Townsite after the 1861 Flood":

Archaeological excavations, led by Dr. David Brauner of Oregon State University, took place at the Champoeg townsite during the summers of 1990 and 1991 in search of information regarding the significant, pre-flood townsite. Yet, excavations at Block 4, Lots 1 and 2, seemed to tell a later story, and began to yield information pertaining to a post-1861 flood occupation, potentially a general mercantile store. However, analyses and interpretations regarding the archaeological record recovered during these excavations were never completed, leaving the tale of Block 4 and post-flood Champoeg a mystery that still needs to be told. Thus, this lecture will discuss recent research regarding both the historical documents and the archaeological assemblage from the Block 4 site in order to better understand the unknown history of the post-1861 flood time period at the Champoeg townsite.

The Champoeg meetings, the international situation at the time, the wolves, the native peoples, the floods - the issues remain so timely, and are so central to our self-understanding and origin myths.

Governor Geer after he biked to Champoeg in 1900

Even in the "off" anniversary year of 1919, the annual celebration was a big deal.

Front page, May 2nd, 1919

And floods continue to exercise the historical imagination, so much so that it has been difficult to weed out some garbage data. The NOAA still lists a phantom flood of 1891, which must be a duplicated record for the flood of 1861.

The reproduction of error: There was no flood of 1891!
The dataset duplicates 1861
and swaps a 6 and 9 in the date field.

On Friday there is a faculty talk in the Hatfield Library:

Please join us on Friday, April 19th, at 3 p.m. in the Hatfield Room for our tenth Faculty Colloquium of this semester....

Recently, conservation biologists, environmental policy makers, and other experts have recognized the importance of engaging with experts on human behavior (i.e., psychologists) in order to effect behavioral change in a sustainable direction....and [environmental studies] students lack explicit education focused on understanding and changing human behavior. This talk provides an introduction to the rationale for integrating sustainability topics into psychology courses, and psychological concepts into ESS classes, along with some strategies for doing so at the level of individual course units as well as full courses.