lynnlinn's world

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/1105/06wild.html

A friend sent the above article to me. It describes a project that several African American educators are researching that looks at African Americans and their relationship (or lack there of ) to the environment via national parks and the outdoors. According to the article, 10 years ago Frank and Audrey Peterman, an African American couple from New Jersey decided to take a 10 week cross country trip to visit our nation's national parks. When their friends heard of their adventure, they were offered weapons for protection and received stern warnings to be careful. While taking the trek and visiting several parks, the couple realized the lack of presence by African Americans. In all of the parks that they visited, they saw only one person of African descent and that was in Maine. Clearly, African Americans were underrepresented. Eventually, the Petermans became environmental activists with Frank becoming director of public awareness for the Wilderness Society's Eastern Forest Program.

The article reminded me of my own twenty year relationship with the National Parks of North Georgia. As an African American photographer I frequented parks in North Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee practically on a monthly basis. I even did a series of illuminated photographs entitled "On the Peak of Time" that looked at the Black Highlanders in the Asheville, North Carolina area. At the time, the Wilderness Society certified my backyard a Backyard Habitat. My recycling efforts continue today, although it seems that few in my neighborhood choose to do so. The emphasis on environment in this country is sorely lacking.

I can understand how a person from New Jersey hiking the nation's parks would encounter only one person of African descent in of all places, Maine. Black people do not go to National Parks simply because they may not relate to the pleasurable aspect of these spaces as whites do. This begs me to ask questions about regionalism and how African Americans position themselves spatially in their environment. Does it matter where you live? How do African Americans relate to these spaces and what are their cultural practices as regards the outdoors?

In terms of regionalism, I think that African Americans in the south might have a closer relationship to the land and environment simply because of the large population of African Americans in the area and because of the overwhelming presence of agriculture in the region. This of course is fast changing but in an area such as Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia, the relationship of African Americans to the land is still great in some areas as many of the traditions such as hunting and fishing continue to play a strong role in social practices becoming a part of the overall fabric of the culture of the region.

In this regard, I think that African Americans relate to the land differently from whites in that the land is seen as providing sustenance and nurturing as opposed to providing a source of contemplation and pleasure, which is the way that the parks are viewed by whites. There is nothing wrong with this. It is simply cultural difference. African Americans do not relate to National Parks in the same way that Euro-Americans do not relate to front porches and social spaces beneath trees. I think that history might render some insight.

Historically, the land and forests were used for healing and were not thought of as a thing of pleasure, especially in African societies. However, Africans were connected spiritually to the land and the respect and honor of it came from that standpoint, very much like Native Americans. Many of the stories and myths are focused on the land and forests and indeed many of the deities are forest creatures. Traditionally African Americans adapted to the land rather than making the land conform to us. It was not viewed as a separate entity (such as a National Park) but formed a very important part of our cosmos. This segregation of land from people might certainly be one reason why African Americans do not relate to the land in the same way.

The trees and forests as part of our cosmology became "real" and people talked to trees and the trees talked back. Ritual specialists (an important part of the cosmology of the Africans) knew the forests and ceremonies were often held there. The herbs of the forest provided healing and harmful potions.

In Working Cures, Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations), Sharla Fett notes that "While slaveholders might experience the landscape from a cleared road or a shaded veranda, enslaved men and women moved through the fields and forests at eye level."(69) She states further that, "The keenest knowledge of the woods resided among the oldest members of slave communities. A former slave from Maryland recalled, "The old people could read the woods just like a book. Whenever you were sick, they could go out and pick something, and you'd get well." (72) Furthermore, captive Africans would escape to the woods to think and often caused slave owners much distress when they disappeared only to emerge renewed. In other words, they ran away--but not really--the forests becoming a sanctuary.

I have related to the forest in this way since childhood. Like my captive ancestors, the forests that surrounded my house provided a sanctuary--a place where I could go and think and emerge renewed. I talked to the trees and leaves and they talked back. Many of the stories that I made up were centered in the forest.

This centering for me became most important, especially as I grew older and learned the way in which the land was entwined in the stories of the Africans and thus their lives. Although these stories and myths have long ago disappeared, the remnant pieces of memory, I would argue are still there causing both admiration and fear of the forest. The contradictory aspect of admiration and fear was exacerbated by the violence that occurred in the woods. In the article researcher Carolyn Finney, a doctoral candidate in geography at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts states, "When we think of enslaved Africans working the land, when we think of '40 acres and a mule' and not getting that, when we think of Jim Crow laws and getting lynched in the woods, hanging from trees, that history has informed how all of us feel about wilderness. Many African-Americans feel excluded from that experience." It is clear that the forest might send mixed-messages to persons of African descent.

I think that while this might be a useful study, it tends to lean more to a Eurocentric way of viewing African Americans and their relationship to the land. It is as if African Americans must alter and assimilate our relationship to the land as opposed to looking at how we have traditionally viewed the land. Our traditions and relationship to the environment is a bit different from strapping on a backpack and heading for the woods, however, historically our spiritual approaches indicate just that. It is simply a difference in the way that we see.

In terms of imagery, I hope that the researchers keep in mind that African Americans are almost always presented in urban settings regardless of the subject matter so if images of them in hiking boots (Timberlands don't count) and backpacks are conspicuously absent from Ebony, National Geographic and other magazines, it is in keeping with conventional construction of racialized imagery in American society. The subjective image of African Americans is sorely lacking in the media, period.

Having said all of that, I do think that if all of us don't do something about the environment, we are doomed and arguments won't matter. In that regard, this study becomes extremely important. I applaud the effort to direct the African American community toward conversation about conservation. Here again though, I would encourage a look at how Africans have traditionally viewed their relationship with the environment and as well as an examination of the myths and stories that utilize the forest as metaphor. There is much to learn from diverse cultures and because so much African mythology uses the forest it is worthwhile to include it in any investigation. These stories provide a veritable running brook of knowledge that is often overlooked in favor of a more contemporary approach, which for me indicates an approach from the middle rather than from the beginning.