The Rite of Water: Other‐Than‐Human Refusals in the Bow Valley

ABSTRACT In the summer of 2013, the Bow River in Southern Alberta, Canada, experienced a significant high‐water event caused by a large rainstorm, which had widespread impacts on infrastructure throughout its watershed. However, viewed through an other‐than‐human lens, these moments of infrastructural disruption caused by the high waters can be interpreted as generative acts. Using this flood as a case study, this paper introduces the concept of other‐than‐human refusal, suggesting that the infrastructural disruptions caused by the agency of the waters of the Bow Valley can be interpreted as a rejection of settler colonial infrastructure. Not only did the flooding cause discontinuities to the infrastructure of the settler state, but it also fostered emergent ecological futures and instigated productive interspecies discourses and collaborations. Bringing together frameworks from Indigenous studies and posthumanism, this paper seeks to broaden understandings of infrastructure and refusal, calling for a reimagining of landscapes that embrace other‐than‐human agency.