As part of the Writing & Rhetoric Across Borders series, Dr. Caroline Gottschalk Druschke from the University of Wisconsin-Madison joined us on February 17 to discuss her work around community and disaster discourse. Her presentation titled “Living Well with Floods: Reciprocity, Research, and Refusal in Wisconsin’s Hill Country” provided a fascinating look into how storytelling can create positive frameworks for real change within a community. Although Dr. Gottschalk Druschke admitted that the work could be difficult at times as the community members were wary of university types after being exploited in the past.
Even so, the larger response to increasing devastating flooding in Wisconsin’s Driftless Area had been painfully slow. In response to the “miserably slow pace” of flood response from policymakers, the story collection process became a means to propel changes forward. She wanted to “connect flood narratives” to flood modeling so that residents could not only navigate future disasters more seamlessly, but they could also be more resilient to the events before they happen. In order to make the story gathering successful, however, it was vital for Dr. Gottschalk Druschke and her students to rely on “community-engaged learning” and have a greater understanding of reciprocity.
“Enacting reciprocity asks us to slow down in time and do the work repeatedly over long durations of time. To see ourselves as reciprocal beings means we see ourselves not as separate from and working with community members; we see ourselves instead as community members invested in making structural asymmetries legible and open todeep revision.” (“Resituating Reciprocity within Longer Legacies of Colonization: A Conversation,” Shane Bernardo and Terese Guinsatao Monberg, 85)
Dr. Gottschalk Druschke used the Bernardo and Monberg quote to reiterate the importance of taking time in engaging with the community around their relationship with floods, their homes, and their community. Doing so was vital to collecting stories as well as building trust within the community itself. She said part of their success was dependent on students and other story gatherers to act as community members rather than being outsiders interacting with community members. By doing this they were able to build a strong connection to the folks living in the flood-prone areas.
The Stories from the Flood project, which kicked off in the spring of 2019, had a goal of collecting at least 200 stories to create a “public-facing booklet” that would not only protect the stories for historical documentation but present a means of showing decision-makers how impacted the communities are by continued weather-related disasters. Part of the process included needing to “empower, humanize, and restore dignity to achieve transformative justice,” according to Dr. Gottschalk Druschke. Collecting the stories was a process deeply integrated with an understanding that the community’s mental health needed to be top of mind throughout the gathering process. Focusing on the individuals in this way revealed “a lot of bad parts of community-based research” to Dr. Gottschalk Druschke.
Although the project was slightly derailed by the Covid-19 pandemic, over 100 stories have been collected so far. Dr. Gottschalk Druschke intends to continue story gathering when the pandemic situation allows, though several of her students have been continuing these types of research since graduating. Two of her students are actively working on flood recovery research in the Driftless area. What began as research has become a collaboration that is “amplifying community voices” as well as pushing for funding to help the communities, Dr. Gottschalk Druschke explained.
“We hope this project offers a vision,” she said. The project has bloomed into a “touchpoint around flood resilience. The rooted experiences and knowledge around ever-worsening floods” are also now “identifying everyday threats, food insecurity” and service needs. It will serve as an “invaluable resource for marginalized voices.”