[Yale-forests-reading-group] Week 3: A chance to reflect

Wed Jul 29 20:18:52 EDT 2020

We hope you’ve found the content of the last two weeks to be complex, rich,
insightful, and engaging. This week we are taking a small pause to allow
more time for reflection on the last two weeks, and an opportunity to
engage more deeply with sources you found especially impactful (you can
find an archive of the last two posts here:
https://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/yale-forests-reading-group/). What
knowledge did you find most impactful? What surprised you? What didn’t?

We will be back again next week to continue digging into a new theme with
another, longer installment.

While reflecting on past themes, here are some of the readings and videos
you shared with us this week engaging with the themes of geography,
erasure, and persistence. To all who have emailed with thoughts, comments,
and connections to related content, THANK YOU! We know that it can be hard
to engage in thoughtful dialog via either listserv or Instagram, but we do
want to hear from and respond to you as much as we can. Please continue to
share your thoughts and experiences with us as we shape this learning
journey together.

*Coverage of Sierra Club’s recent statement on its history, particularly
John Muir*

Many news outlets reported on Sierra Club’s statement last week detailing
some of its early history and relationship to John Muir. A number of the
pieces we included in last week’s installment on “Erasure from nature and
the creation of wilderness” discussed Muir’s racism and how it shaped his
conservation work. Thank you to those who pointed us to Darryl Fears and
Steven Mufson’s extensive reporting in the Washington Post on the Sierra
Club’s statement and the larger context of white supremacy and Indigenous
erasure in the environmental movement. Because the Washington Post has a
limit on the number of articles non-subscribers can read, we’re also
including links to reporting from other publications. As Debra Utacia
Krol’s reporting for the Arizona Republic explores, we also want to
highlight that Indigenous groups have been pushing for many years for
acknowledgement of this history and the way it continues to inform Sierra
Club’s mission and work, and the organization has only now responded. This
reckoning is long overdue, and we invite you to sit with the fact that it
took not only the persistence and strength of these Indigenous groups, but
also the strength of the Black Lives Matter movement in response to police
violence, and mounting public pressure for organizations to reflect on
their own roles in upholding white supremacy, for the Sierra Club to
acknowledge its history.

*"Liberal, progressive — and racist? The Sierra Club faces its
white-supremacist history" by Darryl Fears and Steven Mufson*

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/07/22/liberal-progressive-racist-sierra-club-faces-its-white-supremacist-history/

*"Taking Down Its 'Own Monuments,' Sierra Club Assesses The Racism Of John
Muir," by Jason Slotkin*

https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/07/22/894188718/taking-down-its-own-monuments-sierra-club-assesses-the-racism-of-john-muir

*"'Being very frank about our history': As Sierra Club acknowledges racist
past, Indigenous communities look for reckoning," by Debra Utacia Krol*

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2020/07/26/sierra-club-confronts-its-racist-history-tribes-see-reckoning/5494294002/

*Sierra Club’s statement, "Pulling Down Our Monuments," by Michael Brune *

https://www.sierraclub.org/michael-brune/2020/07/john-muir-early-history-sierra-club

*Examining and challenging the myth of "virgin" forests*

We included @Countrygentlemancook’s video "Pristine Forests and Other Lies"
(https://www.instagram.com/tv/CC6D53Dn4rq/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link) in
last week's installment. Thank you to those of you who highlighted this
additional, terrific installment. In "Virgin Forests and Related Nonsense,"
Justin Robinson builds on the same themes by discussing the problematic
language of virginity that is often applied to forests. Not only does the
discourse of a "pristine" pre-colonial forest erase Indigenous peoples'
presence and interactions with the landscape, but the concept of forest
"virginity" is rooted in a metaphor that implicitly devalues women and
elevates white, male, European "conquest."

*"Virgin Forests and Related Nonsense," @Countrygentlemancooks Instagram
video*

*https://www.instagram.com/tv/CDCeMLBnbRe/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link*
<https://www.instagram.com/tv/CDCeMLBnbRe/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link>

Thank you for joining us this week and for your continued engagement. We
look forward to continuing the conversation, and will be back again next
week!

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Thanks so much for following along this week! Have thoughts, comments, or
reflections you'd like to share? Are there resources you feel we should
have included? We hope you’ll send an email our way:
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We would like to express our continued thanks for those researching,
questioning, exploring, and sharing knowledge against harmful narratives of
Indigenous erasure. We would like to explicitly thank those creators whose
knowledge we have shared here. Additionally, we would like to send our
thanks to you! Thank you for joining us on this learning journey, and for
those who shared thoughts and resources with us: we truly appreciate it.
Thank you.
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