Join us on October 5th at 5:30pm in the Top of the Hop for our Fall 2026 George Link Jr. Environmental Awareness Lecture with bestselling author, Robert Macfarlane!
From the Elwha to the Klamath: on the lives, deaths and rights of rivers
A contemporary de-damming movement is sweeping Europe and the United States. Last year 542 dams were removed across 23 European countries, and 100 dams came down across 30 US states, reconnecting 4900 miles of waterway: more than in any previous year in history. New Hampshire is part of this shift, with dams coming down on the Cocheco, the Piscataquog and the Merrimack, among others. The de-damming movement has accelerated in tandem with, and often in partnership with, the Rights of Nature movement, which argues for a categorical shift in perception and treatment (legal, structural and cultural-imaginative) of ecosystems from resource to relative, object to fellow subject and use value to intrinsic value –– and proposes recognizing rivers always-already as the bearers of fundamental rights.
This 2026 George Link Jr Environmental Awareness Lecture by the British writer Robert Macfarlane will explore what flows from the recognition of rivers as having lives, deaths and rights. By means of story and reportage as well as history, it will traces some of the complex, contested histories of de-damming and river-rights movements, from the Elwha and Klamath rivers in the Pacific Northwest, the Mutehekau Shipu (Magpie River) in Nitassinan (north-east Québec), the Río Los Cedros in Ecuador, and the resurgent 'river-guardianship' movement in England. It will also argue for the vital roles of storytelling, music and art (or what Arne Naess called 'beautiful acts') in inspiring river-activism and, by extension, wider global currents of change.
Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth, the Department of Environmental Studies, and the Department of Anthropology.