Does water have a border? When do the politics of water cut across borders, and when are they shaped, or even determined, by them? How does water challenge our conventional understanding of borders, including geopolitical ones, and how does it alert us to histories that pre-date the power of the colonial state? Can struggles around water – whether for decent drinking water, or against mega-projects and their impact on Indigenous communities – on different sides of North America’s settler borders be understood in common, or as discrete and different?

In collaboration with the University of Manitoba’s United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6 (Water and Sanitation) Group, on Feb. 28, 2023 the CHRR welcomed Drs. Cary Miller, Teresa Montoya, Emma Norman, Adele Perry, and Nicole J. Wilson for an exploration of borders and the politics of water.