Position Title
Professor
Graduate Advisor
B.A., UC Davis, Nature and Culture
Ph.D., UC Berkeley, Environmental Science Policy and Management
Professor
2421 Hart Hall
brmiddleton at ucdavis.edu
Dr. Beth Rose Middleton Manning (Afro-Caribbean, Eastern European) is a Professor of Native American Studies at UC Davis. Beth Rose’s research interests include Native environmental policy, environmental health, environmental law, climate adaptation, fire policy, intergenerational trauma and healing, cultural land stewardship, rural environmental justice, Indigenous analyses of climate change, Afro-indigeneity, and GIS. Beth Rose received her BA in Nature and Culture from UC Davis, and her Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from UC Berkeley. Her first book, Trust in the Land: New Directions in Tribal Conservation (University of Arizona Press 2011), focuses on Native applications of conservation easements, with an emphasis on conservation partnerships led by California Native Nations.
Beth Rose has published on Native economic development in Economic Development Quarterly, on political ecology and healing in the Journal of Political Ecology, on Federal Indian law as environmental policy, and the history of the environmental justice movement in The CQ Guide to US Environmental Policy, on mapping allotment lands in Ethnohistory, on using environmental laws for Indigenous rights in Environmental Management, on the application of market-based conservation tools to Garifuna site protection in Caribbean Quarterly, on Indigenous leadership in the carbon market in the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, on challenges to cultural site protection in Native California in Human Geography, and on Indigenous political ecologies in the International Handbook of Political Ecology. Her second book, "Upstream: Trust Lands and Power on the Feather River," on the history of Indian land rights and hydroelectric development in northeastern California, was published in September 2018 with University of Arizona Press. A Q&A regarding the text and her current research is available from the Press: https://uapress.arizona.edu/news.
Beth Rose is currently mentoring graduate students and postdocs in Native American Studies, Ecology, Public Health Sciences, Geography, and Community Development, and welcomes students from other disciplines. Collaborative projects include creating curriculum on land transfers to northern California Native Nations in a multicampus research project called "Centering Tribal Stories;" developing articles and a book project on tribal leadership in dam removals with support from the Resources Legacy Fund and the Carnegie Fellows Program; expanding the Keepers of the Flame initiative on collaborative cultural burning for ecosystem and community health with support from the SW Climate Adaptation Science Center; identifying Forest Service policy levers that support Native American land stewardship with support from the US Forest Service; developing curriculum on African and Indigenous histories in the Caribbean; and collaborating with the Yurok Tribe Environmental Program on environmental health studies, with support from the Superfund Research Program and the UCD Environmental Health Science Center.
Beth Rose serves on two non-profit boards; the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment, and the Sogorea Te Land Trust, and on the California Rural Indian Health Board's Institutional Review Board, and she has served as an Advisory Council Member for the Wildlife Society's Climate Adaptation Fund. In addition, she volunteers for the Native Land Trust Council.
UC Davis courses Beth Rose has created include NAS 030, Homeland History (with Pam Gonzales, Kimberly Johnson, Jason Hockaday, and Diana Almendariz), NAS 161 and 162, California Indian Environmental Policy I and II; NAS 119, Introduction to Federal Indian Law; NAS 165, Keepers of the Flame (with past and current graduate students Chris Adlam, Deniss Martinez, Melinda Adams, and Nina Fontana); NAS 202, Indigenous Ecological Law and Policy; and NAS 240, Native American Public Health.
Beth Rose is passionate about caring for places in community, identifying and addressing harmful impacts of past policies, supporting sustainable economic development and environmental health in rural communities, building respectful collaborations with Native Nations and other partners, and fostering Indigenous/ Native American, African American, and other diverse perspectives in environmental policy and planning.