“Like a Second Home”: Conceptualizing Experiences within the Fox River Watershed through a Framework of Emplacement

Abstract

We propose and implement a new emplacement framework through exploration of the socio-spatial landscape of the Fox River Watershed (FRW) in Northeastern Wisconsin from a particular cultural perspective. Based primarily upon interviews conducted with 16 Hmong people to better understand and learn from the experiences of an important but overlooked FRW stakeholder group, we present our findings through the components of this framework: displacement, misplacement, replacement, and emplacement. Our research reveals that the strength of Hmong culture has persisted through tremendous loss and displacement, to survive and evolve in a new setting. The resettlement of Hmong people in the FRW has afforded relatively widespread access to landscapes that facilitate recreation, social interaction, and food production, enhancing physical and mental health and augmenting household incomes. It has also led to empowerment of women and the emergence of a generation of group members with formal ecological knowledge to add to their existing ethnobiological understanding and cultural foundation of ecological conscience. For such reasons, conservation organizations, policy makers, and departments of natural resources should look to build linking social capital between those in power and marginalized groups such as the Hmong.