“Trash and Trophy?” with Dr. Ashton Wesner
POSTPONED - New date TBD
Presented by the Glasscock Center Short-Term Visiting Fellowship
Jan 29, 2025
Ashton Wesner | Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Colby College
Presented by the Glasscock Center Short-Term Visiting Fellowship
Free & Open to the public
Event contact: Faculty host, Dr. Meg Perret megperret@tamu.edu

“Trash and Trophy?: Settler Colonial (De)mobilizations of Sturgeon in the Columbia River”
New date TBD
When the U.S. dammed Nch´i-Wána (the Columbia River) for hydroelectric power the migratory natural history of the river’s oldest and largest fish, wiláps (white sturgeon), was obstructed. Columbia River Indigenous fishers have long protested dams as deadly for sturgeon, yet settler fisheries science of the twentieth century–shaped by ever-changing notions of sturgeon as ‘trash fish’ and ‘trophies’–did not account for sturgeon movement in regulatory configurations of the river’s ecosystem. This talk examines how settler practices of counting and constructing the value of fish are shaped by, and in turn shape, sturgeon in motion. I use hatchery archives, scientific reports, and published testimonies from Yakama fishers to reveal the relationship between settler cultural and empirical practices of measuring, monitoring, and monetizing sturgeon from the mid-1800s to present.