Researching Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn, I grappled with the following questions: Who has the power to write history? How do stateless peoples archive their own history? What is the relationship between history and cultural memory? How is cultural memory embodied and enacted? How do cultural memory practices both challenge and constitute “official” history and nationalist discourse? What is the nature and use of a politics haunted by ghosts and oriented towards the past?

In the first body chapter, I draw from websites created by South Vietnamese veterans—what I call a “subaltern digital archive”—to recreate a biographical sketch of Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn. This sketch is interwoven with a narration of the geopolitical context—the different events that were happening in the Asian Pacific during Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn’s lifetime. I acknowledge that all of history is a construction—a process of editing and making sense of the past—and thus I construct a history that centers, rather than effaces, Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn. The other two body chapters examine the cultural memory production surrounding Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn. One chapter highlights the ways in which South Vietnamese Americans engage in cultural memory practices, carving out a space in the present for the ghost of Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn. In these memory acts, Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn becomes a symbol for the Republic of Vietnam—a way for veterans to resurrect the ghost of this now-defunct state. Although South Vietnamese Americans’ resistance to state imposed narratives is admirable, I acknowledge that not everyone has the privileged to be so vocal. Thus in the next chapter, I highlight the oral histories of Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn’s family members, most of whom live in Việt Nam, and thus are not allowed to publicly commemorate their loved one. These are stories that exist only in the space of memory—that are absent from both official state histories as well as the online timelines created by South Vietnamese American veterans—timelines that focus of Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn’s military valor. Instead, Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn’s relatives offer an alternate version of heroism—a more feminine version of heroism that appreciates Colonel Cẩn’s virtues and domestic contributions as well as his masculine victories.

[1] Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 7.

The historical section comprises an analysis of archives and published works about the Tongva and the federal recognition process. Starting by a brief report of major policies that have impacted Native American rights in the U.S. and the evolution of government relations with indigenous communities, the author looks at the legacy of the Tongva people in L.A. today, paying special attention to past efforts at obtaining federal recognition and political divides within the tribe. The analysis is structured according to the different levels of recognition that the author perceived through her research. “Capital R”, or federal recognition is explored through its impact on the individual and the group, and followed by an account of current efforts towards community recognition – “lower-case r.” The paper ends on recommendations for future policies and a personal reflection about the research and its results.

The main environmental impacts of oil extraction are oil spills, land use change, and gas flaring. Oil spills are very common in the Niger Delta. Cleanup efforts are often inadequate, resulting in loss of delicate ecosystems as well as fisheries and farmland. Large tracts of rainforest and mangrove ecosystems have been cleared or degraded by the oil extraction process. Nigeria flares more gas per barrel of oil extracted than any other country in the world, contributing to global warming and creating serious health hazards for communities located near gas flares.

Diversification of the Nigerian economy would help to alleviate many of the factors that lead to environmental degradation, including the dependence of the government on oil revenues, high unemployment, and rampant oil theft. Curbing government corruption is also vital to effective regulation of oil extraction. International consumers can help Nigeria head towards a less petroleum-driven future through an increased awareness of the origins of their oil and pressure on the Nigerian federal government and the multinational oil companies to extract oil more conscientiously or even to discontinue oil extraction. But most importantly, the solution to Nigeria’s economic concerns must ultimately come from Nigerians as international influence has been a major contributor to the environmental degradation in the first place.

The feed-in tariff model has been used in countries all over the world and in countless variations. The California model is certainly unique, using a dynamic combination of eligibility requirements, pricing mechanisms, and degression rates. Flaws can already be spotted in the system, but it is too early to tell what type of market effects will truly prevail. The key will be to analyze the market effects as they happen and adjust the tariff accordingly. In the meantime, it would be advantageous to pursue more aggressive green marketing campaigns in order to establish meaningful social norms in favor of environmentally responsible goods and practices. These strong social norms will help to ensure quicker and more effective transitions to green products in the future, including the complete transition to renewable electricity over the coming generations.

This report develops a wide-level framework of the motivations of and complaints presented by wind opposition groups around the state, followed by an analysis of opposition strategies commonly employed. These are contrasted with the tactics used by wind developers and their supporters to remediate or overcome this opposition. Next, this essay will offer a view of the state and local institutional settings in which these battles take place, and finally conclude with a brief analysis of various alternatives to utility-scale wind, offering suggestions for wind’s role in the future of energy in Vermont.

The current body of research, however, is flawed. In order to make fully informed decisions, land managers are in need of site or ecosystem-specific studies, which may not be available for the ecosystem in question. In addition, as is the case with investigations of the effects of extraction of natural gas, lack of baseline data and systematically controlled experiments lead to incomplete answering of questions pertinent to land managers.

To produce research that is more pertinent to land managers, researchers and managers can work together more closely. This could be facilitated if funding were available to BLM field offices to solicit investigation into questions they need answered locally. This may necessitate a certain level of decentralization or at least more discretionary power given to local managers within the agency. Close collaboration between researchers and land managers from the beginning would ensure the produced results could better inform management decisions.

Public land managers of the BLM cannot only consider scientific research when making land use decisions, however. Its multi-use mission statement requires an integration of conservation, restoration, recreation and resource use and extraction. This can lead to a number of conflicts or contradictions between goals. In addition, national, state, and local values and priorities play into which land use practices are deemed acceptable, often regardless of scientific research. In order to remedy the situation, boundary spanning, a transdisciplinary approach, and decentralization have been suggested.