Listening with Water

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On Site Contacts

An interdisciplinary initiative

April 10-13, 2025

The “Listening with Water” initiative is intended to facilitate exchanges of knowledges about water in Wyoming to replenish understandings of our planet’s lifeblood. In concert with the international Dear Body of Water project and facilitated by Neltje Interdisciplinary Arts Fellow Gretchen Ernster Henderson, this initiative will engage arts-based methods to grow conversations toward collaborative care for watersheds and the unique role water plays in all aspects of Western life.

”Listening with Water” brings Wyomingites together to reflect on our relationship with water and the ways it flows through Wyoming’s collective histories, shapes present practices, and offers a wellspring of future possibilities.

This event is free - registration is closed.

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Schedule of Events Maps of Event Locations Coming to the Neltje Center (Forms and Details) About Gretchen Henderson

Knowledge Leaders

Gretchen Ernster Henderson

Facilitator

Interdisciplinary Arts Fellow Gretchen Ernster Henderson (MFA, PhD) is a body of water indebted to many bodies of water: from the Pacific to Atlantic Oceans, Chesapeake to San Francisco Bays, Missouri to Charles Rivers, Icicle to Rock Creeks. She is an intermedia writer, artist, scholar, and educator of ecological and community-engaged practices. Her fifth book, Life in the Tar Seeps: A Spiraling Ecology from a Dying Sea (Trinity University Press 2023), has been melting from Great Salt Lake into the public invitation of Dear Body of Water (in collaboration with the University of Arizona Poetry Center and Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center): to write love letters to bodies of water to grow a global poem concurrent with communal stewardship around WaterWays. A musician by training, Gretchen is interested in acoustic ecologies and communal practices of listening, meditation, and processes that sound the gaps of cultural and institutional histories, to facilitate participatory spaces for exchanging knowledges and renewing ways of knowing to collectively support our human and more-than-human world.

Alisha Bretzman

Piney Island Native Plants

Piney Island Native Plants, LLC (PINP) was founded in 2019 by Conservation Horticulturist Alisha Bretzman. Alisha combined her passions, education, diverse work experience, and professional network to form Piney Island Native Plants, LLC. PINP germinated with the help of the University of Wyoming’s Technology Business Center and 2019 Start-Up Challenge, receiving both finalist and audience choice awards (read more here). Currently, PINP operates in partnership with Sheridan College to lease facilities in the SC agricultural complex. Thanks to these opportunities, PINP has created a solid foundation and is taking root!

Hanns Mercer

City of Sheridan Public Works Director, Civil Engineer

 The public works department is involved in many aspects of the maintenance and development of the city of Sheridan. Mercer’s duties include overseeing the city’s engineering, planning, building, streets, signs and parks. You can learn more about the Goose Creek Ecosystem Restoration Project here.

Michaele Shapiro

Wyoming Room Supervisor- Sheridan Public Library

The Wyoming Room at the Sheridan County Fulmer Public Library is home to a wealth of resources on the land, water and those who briefly inhabit the landscape currently recognized as Sheridan County.  Michaele Shapiro (MA) is grateful to her kindred water allies: Piney Creek, Goose Creek, Clear Creek, Meadowlark Lake, Lake Union, Quartermaster Harbor, Lake Washington, Mud Bay, the Elwha, the Pacific, Lake Casitas, the Mississippi, Lake Pontchartrain, il Tevere, and the Giudecca canal.

Jason Robison

UW College of Law Carl M. Williams Professor of Law & Social Responsibility Adjunct Professor, Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources

Professor Robison loves western North America, and his writing revolves around water, public lands, and Native peoples in this magical part of the world, as well as comparative and international projects involving these areas. He authors the treatiseLaw of Water Rights and Resources, and he is the editor of Cornerstone at the Confluence: Navigating the Colorado River Compact's Next Century, and the lead editor of Vision & Place: John Wesley Powell & Reimagining the Colorado River Basin. Recent journal articles include Relational River: Arizona v. Navajo Nation & the Colorado, 72 UCLA L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming 2025); Equity Along the Yellowstone, 96 Colo. L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming 2025); and Re-Indigenizing Yellowstone, 22 Wyo. L. Rev. 397 (2022).

James Trosper

Eastern Shoshone Sun Dance Chief

James Trosper, the great-great-grandson of Chief Washakie, is the current Eastern Shoshone Sun Dance chief. He is widely regarded as “a respected voice on traditional Plains Indian spirituality.” He is Director of the High Plains American Indian Research Institute. HPAIRI facilitates a wide variety of partnerships between the University of Wyoming and the tribes of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Fort Washakie, Wyoming “to work together in ways that empower tribes, nurture innovation for American Indian sustainability, and demonstrate respect for Native peoples’ cultures, traditions, laws, and diverse expressions of sovereignty.” Listen to snippets of an interview Trosper gave to the Matheson trust covering many different topics related to the Native American spirituality and worldview.

Tina Krueger

Owner & Principal Hydrologist of Steady Stream Hydrology

Tina’s knowledge and understanding of design, permitting, and construction of wetland, riparian and stream restoration projects using natural channel design concepts allows her to work well with other professional entities including federal agencies, private landowners, contractors, and the public. Her collaborative efforts in this way produce reliable working relationships to smoothly complete projects while following regulatory policies and applying best land management practices.

Ray Daly

Cattle Rancher

Ray Daly has been in agriculture since his teenage years. He has built a successful cow/calf and yearling operation from the ground up. Leasing land in the Piney Creek Valley, Ray has worked to improve production through irrigation and water development to optimize the land. He has recently retired.