What’s this? A weekly roundup on a Wednesday? Yes, friends. Sometimes, when the world hands you centuries of systemic racism, schedules get thrown to the wind. I did some reading and researching after I wrotelast week’s post about the invisibility of POC in mainstream nature writing and the outdoors, and I found all kinds of good stuff to share with you. Follow these links, and you will find new understanding, helpful resources, and dare I say it, hope for a better future. Click and share liberally.
This Outside piece by Latria Graham, “We’re Here. You Just Don’t See Us.” is required reading for anyone who loves spending time in nature, or who has ever seen, interacted with, or even heard of the concept of nature. Everyone should read it, is what I’m saying. Born and raised in the South, Graham writes beautifully about her family’s farm and her own love of the outdoors, while providing powerful insight into how lack of access and representation create and perpetuate the idea that Black people just aren’t that into nature–the “no reason” I alluded to in my own piece. Graham’s article was originally published back in 2018, and it feels even more relevant now.
Last week, I felt my country crack open. Not along a new fault line, along an old one– the oldest one of all, in fact. And now, as we have lived through days and days of tremors, I am tired. I. Am. Tired. Not from this most recent version of these events, but from the reverberations of institutional racism and ignorance that have echoed through my body my entire life.
Today I am remembering the time I drove through Yosemite with a friend, and remarked on how there wasn’t a single person of color in any of the crowds that stood marveling at the granite expanse of Olmstead Point, the glacial waters of Tenaya Lake, the broad refuge of Tuolumne Meadows. “Does that matter?”, she asked, “I mean, we’re just out in nature. Just because people aren’t here doesn’t mean it’s for a reason.” No reason. No lack of access. No absence of outreach, no failure of inclusion. No subtle suggestion that white people value nature more than people of color do, that they deserve it more, that they are it’s rightful protectors. No no, nothing like that. A coincidence!
This, I have come to understand, is what many white people think of the inequalities that are present in our outdoor spaces, if they notice them at all. They see no source, no history, no pattern–no reason. Maybe Black people just don’t like hiking–no reason! Maybe Mexican-Americans just couldn’t make it to the lake today–no reason! Maybe one hundred percent of the great American nature writers are white just because–no reason!
Tse’Bii’Ndzisgaii (Diné/Navajo), aka Monument Valley (Photo: Cayetano Gil)
I remember my old boyfriend, who balked when I said I didn’t like how Edward Abbey spoke about Navajo people in his books–as though they were mute, ignorant lumps, pushing sheep around blindly across the desert, an aberration in a majestic Southwestern landscape. “Maybe that’s just how people thought back then,” he replied, irritated by another example of me ‘always looking for the negative’. And that’s where his examination ended, with how those people thought back then. No reason to follow their thoughts to their actions, no reason to trace those beliefs to the official government policies that dehumanized, removed, or aimed to outright exterminate those faceless sheepherders. No reason to think twice about a white writer implying that the very people who had inhabited his beloved Southwest since time immemorial were undeserving of the land, unable to properly utilize or “appreciate” it, the way white people could. No reason to let obvious racism get in the way of enjoying some great nature writing. No reason for us to argue. No reason, just me again, negative, noticing, always noticing, who knows why–no reason.
Coast & Climb 