Of Canals, Rivers and the Right to Exist: New (?) Methodological Tools for a Changed World

What can a dying river teach us about post/de-colonial science and technology? In a post-COVID world, absence and loss will be a constant presence in the lives of most. While thinking with erasures and absence in science and technology studies is not new, our current moment pushes us to burrow deeper into the histories of technologies that produce manufactured empty space, examine histories that pushed groups to the fringes of documented memory and encourage us to ponder how we must deal with these moments. This essay examines what the Yaqui River and the history of the Yaqui in Sonora can teach us about historical erasures and new meanings in landscapes and waterways lost to agro-business.