Richard Currie Smith, Ph.D., ecological anthropologist presents his Minnesota River Basin research (EPA/NSF funded)

1. Prairie emergence: Ecological restoration through self-organization Biosemiotics in America Symposium Purdue University Richard Currie Smith, Ph.D. September 30, 2006

4. Minnesota River Basin

5. North American Prairie

6. Prairie Lake Region Anfinson, S. 1997

7. Tall Grass Prairie Big Bluestem With Blooming Blazing Star

8. Big Stone Wildlife Refuge

9. Nature Impels Us Not to Admire a Small River ‘that Ministers to our Necessities’ But the Nile, the Ister [Danube] and the Rhine.” Loginus(18 th Century Landscape Painter)

10. Industrial Agriculture Mono-Crop Pesticides Fungicides Herbicides Artificial-Fertilizers Genetic- Engineering Drainage : Surface and Subsurface

11. Potentially on of the most beautiful prairie rivers in the nation, the Minnesota functions as a drainage ditch for farmers and a toilet for many rural Minnesotans. Its cleanup poses daunting challenges and costs.

12. Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Zone

15. Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) Ecological Anthropologist & Communication Theorist Major Works : “Steps to an Ecology of Mind” (1972 [2000]) “ Mind and Nature” (1979 [2002])

19. Gregory Bateson’s Living Systems Approach to Ecological Restoration Dynamic Equilibrium through Self-Organization: “ Ecosystems such as a seashore or a redwood forest are undoubtedly self-corrective. If in a given year the population of some species is unusually increased or reduced, within a few years that population will return to its usual level… [or] when the growing seedling bends toward light, it is influenced by difference in illumination and grows more rapidly on the darker side, thus bending and catching more light- a substitute for locomotion. Gregory Bateson