Teigha VanHester grew up surfing in Southern California. For her entire life, she has had a deep connection to water, to the extent that when she moved to landlocked Indiana, one of the requirements for her home was a pool. This close relationship has made water a second home and the basis for what could become part of VanHester’s life’s work.
Now, VanHester is a “disruptive and intellectual scholar” who has received a Ph.D. in English Studies and is an assistant professor of race, gender and sexuality studies at Butler University in Indianapolis. VanHester is currently researching the relationship between Black Hoosiers and water and how the relationship has been negatively impacted by legislation and urban planning within the city.
VanHester is looking to clarify why Black Hoosiers may have a negative relationship with water and enable them to take back ownership of that relationship and use water as a place for pleasure instead of discomfort.
“There’s this really tumultuous connection I think that Black people have with water that’s steeped in fear, and so I wanted to think, how can we reclaim it?” VanHester said.
For Indianapolis, VanHester will look closer at places in the city that played a part in Black people’s relationship with water. VanHester is also looking into organizations working to change it.
Belmont Beach and White River are historic places in Indy that VanHester plans to investigate to cultivate a better idea of the history of Black Hoosiers and water.
“Dr. VanHester’s research is grounded in the politics of pleasure, specifically looking at rhetoric and discourse around sites of leisure and also Black access to leisure, which has been limited by design. Her work in aquatic literacies and leisure for members of the Black community focuses on rights to water, leisure, and healing as liberating practices,” said Terri Carney, director of the Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies program at Butler University.
Vanhester is not only reading up on the history of these places for research but is also going in person to talk to those affected. Vanhester is discovering their histories through interviews, pictures and more helpful information provided by community members. This research also includes traditional written and recorded archives.
“When we think about the archives, they are a very kind of colonized space that are categorized by certain people who have certain authority to determine whether something is important or not,” VanHester said. “I have a colleague that really just illuminated something important for me, which is that archives are what we use to provide evidence to write history. So, if we think about who created the idea of the archives, the history of Black people probably is not very included.”
VanHester said part of the reason she started this line of research was because she did not see research connecting water to leisure despite large amounts of research on lack of access to clean water among Black communities.
Water, as it relates to leisure, is important to VanHester for a few reasons. The first reason is safety: VanHester believes water is essential for Black children and adults to know how to swim.
“It’s connecting the idea of, yes, leisure is important because we’re not just laborers’ bodies. I think water leisure is specifically important because it is a skill for survival that we need to have as well,” VanHester said.
VanHester also knows that this is something Black people deserve, regarding it as their birthright to understand their historic connection to water.
“How much of our history was lost in the sea? The Transatlantic slave trade, right? So much of our resilience and courage comes from people jumping overboard, and we hear these stories, but we don’t really have a history or research around it. We don’t talk about it in, I think, critical as well as legacy ways,” VanHester said.
VanHester hopes this research is the beginning of something much bigger that will illuminate a relationship left in the dark for decades.
Contact Racial Justice Reporter Garrett Simms at 317-762-7847.
