So, how was your trip? The question we each are inevitably going to be asked by the people around us. “Good” is not exactly the answer people want to hear. I figured a good way to see what we’ve been doing is to share some of the things we are learning and processing. What stuck with us? We had been asked to consider what has been important, meaningful, difficult, easy? How do we make use of the knowledge and experiences we’ve gained in a meaningful way? Everyone’s answer to these questions is different, but I wanted to share some of the things we have been talking about throughout the semester and what we collectively discussed towards the end of our trip.
I split this recap into the four categories, or classes, that we were focusing on during our 98 day trip.
Environmental Conflict and Cooperation
A large theme that we discussed around this section was the detachment between consumers and resources in our society. We visited many places that showed firsthand the complexities behind production and the impactful ways that things are obtained.
For example, the way water has been diverted from the Owens River in Eastern California to Los Angeles for over 100 years. As a result, Owens Lake has dried up and dust clouds cause health problems for locals. We drove through fields of dirt being sprayed with sprinklers sticking out of the ground where the lake once stood as a dust mitigation attempt from the City of LA. Most people in LA would probably not guess that the water they use every day and the water used to grow the food they eat was stolen and had traveled over 300 miles through the desert to get there.
In the Klamath River Basin where neurotoxins from intense chemical use for agriculture pollute the water to the point where it is dangerous for people to even be near the water. Farmers water their crops with this water to produce things like potatoes for Lay’s and Kettle Foods potato chips. The combination of these toxins, dams, habitat loss, and water allocation issues have caused 7 species of fish to be locally extinct or facing extinction. According to Dr. Alex Gonyaw, the Senior Biologist of the Klamath Tribes, a species called the short-nose sucker, or c’waam, has virtually no newborn fish survive through their first year and there are less than 30,000 adult fish left. He expects that they will become extinct in the next 5-10 years. There is a toxic lake and total fish die-offs all for potato chips and hay.
Another aspect of conflict and cooperation is the disconnect between knowledge and power. We have talked to so many people working hard to try to make a positive difference in a place. A common thing they all talked about is the difficulty of actually having the power to do things. They know what needs to be done, but everything must go through many steps in the government before action can be taken. The Klamath is once again an example of a community in constant conflict over what to do with the situation. Once a compromise is presented, it could make it all the way to congress and then just be dropped completely, which makes remediation projects like this very difficult.
Public Lands
In relation to public lands, we talked a lot about how the names of places change how we view them and sometimes how we treat them. When a place is designated as a National Park, do you think of it differently than perhaps a National Monument or BLM land? Why is that? Why should some places be more protected than others? Should we make certain places more accessible than others and how do we decide this? We found ourselves considering the ethics of experiencing our public lands. What does it mean to build the economy through tourism and recreation on land that is not ours? There is always something being compromised in order for us to experience landscapes. Education is a huge aspect in this. How can we be better educated about public lands and teach ourselves important history and how to practice respectful ways to interact with land?
There are no clear answers to these questions. They are questions that we spent an entire semester considering and are very important to the future of a lot of people and places.
The Indigenous West
On our journey we talked to members of several different tribal communities about environmental problems and the projects they have been working on to remediate colonization rooted issues. Indigenous communities are far from a thing of the past. There are currently almost 600 federally recognized tribes that are very much still here and still want their land back.
The following quote is from the LANDBACK movement website and outlines just one of many Indigenous movements that work towards dismantling the oppression of Indigenous people globally.
Landscape and Meaning
Capitalism and colonialism are the foundation of the west, and America in general.
In the first week of our trip we visited the Buffalo Bill Museum and gathered an idea of what the rest of the world sees as “the Wild West”. An imaginative world of cowboys, Indians, romance, anarchy, violence, and rustic individualism. Really talking about it, seeing it, and experiencing it is so much different. The Wild West is more so colonizer-caused environmental issues and the fight for money and power, no matter the cost. In one word, the west is “complex.” Every place has a deep history of people, nature, exploitation, restoration, remediation, colonization, conflict, cooperation and so much more.
I think one of the most important things that we did on this trip was learning to constantly question the things around us. I’ve learned more by asking these questions and actively finding answers than I ever have in a regular school setting. Everywhere has a story. Being intentional about the way that we move through the world is a really important part of relating meaning to landscapes and our place within them. Everything is strangely interconnected and you have to pay attention to notice it.