yesterday, i decided i might try to be a writer! this was motivated by a submission deadline for the wonderful magazine Orion. so i got my wits about me, collected some inspiration and hit the keyboard. and i pulled it off! whether they accept it or not, this morning i submitted my first post-doctoral manuscript. woo hoo!
It’s called “Environmentalism and the ghosts of White settlement: A play with actors.” The “prelude” follows:
Environmentalism and the ghosts of White settlement: A play with actors
Prelude
I write this with the intention of constructing a container large enough to hold two deeply transformative, and seemingly contradictory, experiences in my life and world simultaneously: ecopsychological sensitivity and the ongoing realities of an Indigenous presence. Throughout this decades-long awakening, one of my feet has been in the more-than-human world, listening to wind dance with mountains, witnessing salmon leap upstream returning to places of origin, feeling gently held by lush softness while lying on the ground in an ancient forest. Somehow, another foot has been awakened to an ancient Indigenous landscape, certainly hearing stories of rich ancestral relationships, as well as those of historical amnesia, massacres, and never-ending colonialism.
I share this story of walking in these two worlds with the community of environmentalists, for at least two reasons: I have witnessed others speak to this dilemma before, and yet it does not seem to stick; and, second, if I take the time and effort to learn to listen to the land, to be present to a grander narrative, how can I justify the absence—no, the exclusion—of the stories of settlement that haunt every corner of this country?