Sterlin Evans
Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair, Brandon University (Manitoba)
Current Project
I am researching and writing a book-length work on the agricultural and environmental history of dams and irrigation in Sonora, Mexico. Most of Sonora's rivers have been dammed (some now dried up reservoirs) to help regulate the water supply to large-scale farmers involved with exporting fruits and vegetables to the United States and Canada. The results of those projects, especially the social effects of relocating rural people and villages prior to inundation, on a state-wide basis have not been previously addressed.
Another long-term project I am co-authoring (with Travis Tennessen) is a landscape history of North American badlands. We identify more than sixty badlands areas in the American West, western Canada, and northwestern Mexico, and will be writing on their indigenous understandings and uses, newcomer responses to badlands topographies, conservation measures, and more recent controversies surrounding ranching and natural resource development in those areas.
Best Place for an Agricultural History Conference
In the Prairie Provinces
Hobbies
Travel, camping, threshermen's reunions
Favorite Historical Figure
Rachel Carson
Favorite Agricultural/Rural Movie
"The Plow that Broke the Plains"