On Environmental Interpretation

My brother’s boats

What I’ve Learned (Final Blog post)

My personal ethic is that human beings need nature and that it is our separation from nature that is the source of many of this world’s problems from pollution and climate change, to food security, wellness issues, and even lack of purpose. When we are able to access nature in meaningful ways we are not only healthier and more mindful of the world around us but we develop a relationship with nature and learn to care about it. As interpreters it is our role to help people make, or expand, that connection with nature.

As an Indigenous Person I am aware of the bounty that nature has provided my family and my ancestors in order for us to thrive for generations. Nature has not only provided us with food and resources but it has also given us traditions and skills to share through the generations that allow us to support each other. In many ways our relationships with nature provide us with a sense of meaning and purpose. It also comes with a responsibility to protect and defend nature.

Often when I consider my responsibilities to the future, I think of the Haudenosaunee philosophy of the Seven Generations. Onondaga Elder and Faithkeeper Oren Lyons explains the philosophy as such, “make your decisions on behalf of the Seven Generations coming, so that they may enjoy what you have today” (Lyons as cited by the United Nations Development Programme, 2020). For me this is twofold, first we must develop a relationship with the natural world so that we understand its importance to care for it and protect it so that future generations may also benefit from its richness. And secondly, we must teach those around us, especially the younger generations, to develop their own relationship with nature so that they too will care about it and protect it when they are of age.

Growing up in Labrador I had no shortage of access to nature. I grew up in what Jacob Rodenberg aspires to create:  “nature-rich communities where kids feel a deep and abiding love for the living systems that we all are immersed in” (Roddenberg, 2019).  My family home is located on the edge of a community of 450 people on the banks of a lake. In winter I can cross-country ski from my front step for hours, and in the summer I am minutes away from kayaking. Five years ago I moved to Montreal but I was able to go home several times a year with work, but since the beginning of the pandemic I have not been able to return as often as I would like. While reading our text book I was struck by the passage where Beck et al. describes the soothing and healing nature of nature and nature interpretation during times of crisis (Beck et al., 2018). These past two years have become the most city-bound I have ever been and it has made me realize a few things.

When I began reading Gallavan’s Helping Teachers Unpack their “Invisible Knapsacks”, I really thought at first that as an Indigenous Person I would not approach settler audiences from a place of privilege in nature interpretation. Although as I read Peggy McIntosh’s concept of the Invisible Knapsack that “the construct of privilege entails a set of beliefs and practices that are assumed or taken for granted by everyone throughout society” (Gallavan, 2005), I realized that I do come from a place of privilege when it comes to nature. I have a life long relationship with nature that has been passed down and shared in my family for countless generations, to the point that I don’t remember anyone introducing me to nature, it was just always there in my life. Not only that but every place we went to in nature had a story about a relative, ancestor, or friend who was once there. These past few years in the pandemic have made me realize that it can be very difficult to access nature for many people, and as such they don’t have these relationships or connections with nature that I was fortunate enough to have had. 

I am also very privileged to have what Larry Smith would call, “a great career” (Smith, 2011). This great career is as a journalist covering Indigenous news. I started with APTN and have been freelancing for the last five years. I come from a long line of storytellers, and writing has always been something that comes easily to me. While I love walking in nature and interpreting for everyone around, it’s really the written word where I shine, where I can reach the most people. I see many parallels between interpretive writing and journalistic writing, especially when the subject at hand is science or nature. As a journalist there’s a lot I can learn from the field of interpretation. As someone who practices science and environmental journalism, this passage from our textbook describing Alan Leftridge’s take on interpretive writing as a style and genre really stood out for me. Beck et al. (2018) writes, “Leftridge (2006) explains that interpretive writing is a genre, a definable style of writing. It is “intended to make intellectual and emotional connections between the reader and the resource, and it is goal-directed, with the intent of eliciting a pro-social response from readers” (chapter 14). For me this is also the essence of good science journalism, but I have never seen it put so succinctly. Science and nature journalism are fields that need more journalists who understand research. There is an epidemic of sensationalized and inaccurate science reporting as people try to get the most clicks possible. What good journalism and good interpretation have in common is that they spark curiosity. If we want to get people to care more about nature, then nature journalists need to heed the words of Larry Beck, “ interpretation offers more than instruction through facts. It uses facts to pass on the meaning of something and to develop deep understanding” (Beck et al., 2018, chapter 1).

This has been a very interesting course and I feel that I have learned so much from it to make myself both a better journalist and a better interpreter. I am looking forward to reading everyone else’s posts!

Thanks!

-Ossie

References 

Beck, L., Cable, T., & Knudson, D. (2018). Interpreting Cultural and Natural Heritage for a Better World. Sagamore Publishing.

Gallavan, N. (2005). Helping teachers unpack their ‘invisible knapsacks’. Multicultural Education, 13(1), 36-39. http://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A137921591/AONE?u=guel77241&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=9fe2f151 

Rodenberg, J. (2019, June 17). Why Environmental Educators Shouldn’t Give Up Hope. Clearing Magazine. https://clearingmagazine.org/archives/14300 

Smith, L. (2011, November). Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career [video]. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_have_a_great_career?language=en 

I really like the Seven Generations approach of the Haudenosaunee.  I think that the deliberateness, mindfulness, and long-term planning that’s involved is really valuable.  I feel like it’s a scale of planning that hasn’t existed or has been drummed out of Western philosophies, that most of the time people talk about leaving things to living descendants (grandchildren or great-grandchildren) but don’t go beyond that, or they approach development in a cradle to grave way rather than a cyclical fashion.  (There’s a 2002 book called Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things that looks at shifting that paradigm, but it’s almost two decades later at this point, and I think it’s fair to say that it hasn’t revolutionised Western development practices and that there are systemic barriers to enacting that change. It’s a bit like trying to push through electoral reform; people in power tend not to be interested in radically altering the systems that put them there.)  I think that environmental protection is best supported by meaningful cultural and systemic changes, and that part of that is shifting away from a kind of advertising-fuelled emphasis on immediacy and consumption. 

What good journalism and good interpretation have in common is that they spark curiosity. If we want to get people to care more about nature, then nature journalists need to heed the words of Larry Beck, “ interpretation offers more than instruction through facts. It uses facts to pass on the meaning of something and to develop deep understanding” (Beck et al., 2018, chapter 1).

That’s a really interesting way of thinking about that.  I think that it encapsulates the kind of duty of care that both journalists and interpreters have, that there’s a responsibility to present the factual and to use facts to reveal meaning and that great journalists and interpreters help readers make connections that weave that meaning into part of a greater framework. 

Hey Everyone!

I am excited to be coming to the end of this journey with all of you. This course has been so great at providing us with the opportunity to connect with each other, even as a distance education course and as a result I am very excited to read everyone’s final posts this week!

I have a lot of thoughts for this final blog prompt, so let’s get right to it!

What beliefs do I bring?

As individuals, we each bring our own ideas and beliefs around everywhere we go in the same way that we carry around our own invisible backpacks that we talked about earlier in the course when discussing privilege. Our beliefs are not things that anyone can see, but they do affect many of the things that we do. So as an interpreter, I must be aware of my beliefs because they will affect the way that I interpret to others. One of the beliefs that I plan on incorporating into my interpretation is respecting the environment. I believe that, as humans, we have a very important role to play in the respect and protection of the environment. As a species, we have done so much to harm the environment already, so I believe it is our responsibility to learn and grow from our mistakes in order to try and fix what we have done and preserve our beautiful planet. Therefore, environmental stewardship is something that I will definitely be promoting as an interpreter. And for me, that isn’t necessarily lecturing people on the harm that we have done to our planet but instead providing people with a connection with nature so that they are inspired to become stewards.

Another belief that I want to incorporate into my interpretation is that that there needs to be more collaboration between Indigenous knowledge systems and modern scientific knowledge systems. From being taught majority from modern scientific knowledge systems, I fully acknowledge that there is still so much more for me to learn about the environment and how we should be treating it. So, I believe that we should be listening more to what Indigenous communities are saying about the state of our environment and that we work together with both knowledge systems. That is something that I really want to bring into my interpretation, the blending of the two knowledge systems. So, before I go out and try to educate others, I first must take the time to continue to educate myself, especially as a middle-class white woman. Incorporating Indigenous knowledge systems into nature interpretation will help bridge the relationship between science education and environmental education that Wals et al. described as “distant, competitive, predator prey and host-parasite” (Wals et al., 2014).

What responsibilities do I have?

I hope to one day be a nature interpreter that works with the general public. Because of this, I have a responsibility to make sure that I can teach in a way that will allow for people who learn in different styles to be able to enjoy and learn from what I am presenting. I have a responsibility to create a presentation that incorporates a variety of learning styles so that anyone and everyone can have a worthwhile experience (Beck et al., 2018).

I also feel that as an interpreter, I have a responsibility to instill hope into the people that I am interpreting to. I often look at the news, social media, and at all of the scientific research about climate change and get so discouraged about the future. It can be hard to stay hopeful when we continue to treat the environment very poorly. But I think that as an interpreter I can try to inspire people to do better. An example of this would be with interpreting to children. I think that allowing children to have a connection with nature through interpretation programs really does provide hope for the future. In our unit 10 reading Jacob Rodenburg said “Eventually, children will learn even to go beyond sustaining and to engage in acts of regeneration.” I think that it is my responsibility to encourage people of all ages, not just children, to partake in both sustainability and regeneration practices so that we can continue to have a connection with nature. Hope is important for environmentalism because when people start to look to the future with despair, they often start to have a “well whatever I do won’t make a difference anyway” kind of attitude. But every little change can make a difference so by inspiring people to take steps to treat the environment better, we can all start to look at the future with hopeful eyes instead of being discouraged.

What approaches are most suitable for me?

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t want to be an interpreter that simply lectures to people. That approach may work for some people but would not work for me. Instead, I want to be the type of interpreter that people aren’t afraid to interrupt in order to ask a question, the type of interpreter that keeps an audience captivated and curious, and the type of interpreter that leaves people with a sense of awe and wonder. I am an extroverted person, so approaches that allow people to be interactive and be involved in their own learning experience is what I look to incorporate. An example of this type of approach would be like the Ontario Science Centre. As a kid, I always loved going to the Science Center because it allowed me to play and learn at the same time. So, an approach similar to that would be most suitable for me. An approach that allows people to learn and have fun is what I will be striving for.

Thanks everyone for such a great semester. I look forward to reading about everyone’s personal takes on this blog prompt. 

I wish everyone the most luck with future endeavours, maybe I’ll see you out there in the world of interpretation!

Please enjoy this photo of my dog to help you get through exam season.

Lauren :)

References

Beck, L., Cable, T. T., & Knudson, D. M. (2018). Interpreting cultural and natural heritage for a better world. Sagamore Publishing.

Rodenburg, J. Why environmental educators shouldn’t give up hope. Clearing. https://clearingmagazine.org/archives/14300 

Absolutely.  I think that there’s a lot of emphasis on doing outreach to children, because they are the future, and that we sometimes forget to focus on the adults who are by that metric the present.  There can be a bit of a veiled message there that we have in fact given up on the present, I think, which isn’t a helpful approach.

One of the things that struck me, reading other people’s blogs here, was the number of people who wrote that they came to be interested in the outdoors later in life, after they’d left childhood behind, and I think that may speak to a need for more introductory programs for adults.  I think that approaching that through the lens of advertising and marketing research may be useful; some product-targeting occurs around life events when people are making big changes and forming new consumer habits, like college freshmen or newly pregnant people.  I think that there’s not just an opportunity to sell someone a new detergent then, but to engage them in environmentally focused activities and community.  

There are times when people reflect on how they’re living their lives and are looking for community and those are times when engaging them in environmentally conscious practices might be more successful.  I think that as things stand successful engagement with retirees is pretty widespread, but I think that there are demographics that haven’t been explored in the same way.

Like, moving to a new place is a big event, so thinking about what the engagement possibilities are there and finding out what people do when they move somewhere new could be important.  For me its figure out the trash situation, get a new library card, find the grocery stores, and see what recreation services there are.  Looking at those things from an organisational outreach perspective I’m probably looking at community partnerships, seeing if I can get informational brochures (about local recycling services, trash pick-ups and other programming) into recycling bins from my local ward councillor or hardware store (or becoming a source of those items), and seeing if there’s programming that can be run through or with a library or grocery store or recreation centre may also be a way to connect with people early on as they settle in.  

I am an extroverted person, so approaches that allow people to be interactive and be involved in their own learning experience is what I look to incorporate. An example of this type of approach would be like the Ontario Science Centre. As a kid, I always loved going to the Science Center because it allowed me to play and learn at the same time. So, an approach similar to that would be most suitable for me. An approach that allows people to learn and have fun is what I will be striving for.

There are sensible critics of viewing nature through poetic comparison or anthropomorphism. The Earth, its Byzantine architecture of interconnected life, its inert tons of molten stone, its invisible pull of gravity, of magnetism. It is not literally our mother. Yet, it is.

Every facet of our species is shaped by the physical/chemical nature of Earth. We see this in the family resemblance among all our planet’s life forms. Calling the Earth our mother is a concise route to an overarching truth. That’s the point of metaphor.

The drawback is in using poetics to shut down curiosity, study, or specificity. To say, “the Earth is our mother, so let’s close the book on geology.” This would be a misuse of metaphor. This would be painting a landscape over a window.

My summer, 2021

Inspired by this tweet

Hello friends, I am going to share the COOLEST NATURE FACT I have learned in one of my favourite university classes. In order to do this, I am going to need you to use your imagination here. It’s a hot and sunny mid summers day and you decide to take a road trip to visit the conservation area just outside of town. You pull into the parking lot, grab your backpack, and set off on a hike. About 1km in you come across a beautiful meadow full of wildflowers. They are in full bloom showing off their tones of pink, blue, purple, and yellow. You decide to take a break here to admire the sheer beauty. Looking closer at the sea of flowers, you notice honeybees flying around and visiting the flowers. Moving a bit closer, you notice individuals visiting the exact same flower species and avoiding the others. Why is that?

Maybe they prefer that flowers colours. Maybe they like how the plant species has a lot of flowers. Maybe they smell the sweetest. All three are correct but, how do these things benefit the bees and how do they all know to visit that particular species?

Honeybees are a eusocial species. This means that adults live in groups, everyone takes care of the young, jobs are divided among individuals based on reproductive organs and age, and generations overlap (Plowes, 2010).

There are 3 castes or specialized groups within a colony: the queen, drones (males), and workers (nonreproductive females). The workers carry out the day to day hive tasks including foraging for water, propolis (plant resin), nectar and pollen. They are optimal foragers who want to collect as much pollen and nectar as possible in the shortest amount of time so they can make it back to the safety of the hive. When a forager finds a flower that produces a lot of high quality nectar and pollen, it goes back to the hive to share the information. If the flower is less than 80 meters away, it will perform the Round Dance. If the flower is over 80 meters away, it will perform the Waggle Dance. Check out this fun video that explains the two dances!

These dances are magical and impressive leaving me in awe (Beck & Cable, 2018, p472). I told my parents about the bees dancing, I told my boyfriend and his whole family, I told a few friends, and here I am telling all of you.

So, we have answered the question of how and why the bees exhibit flower fidelity or consistency, but how do flower colours, amount, and smell come into play? Most flowers rely on pollinating insects, like honeybees, to perform pollination. Different colours and smells attract bees while foraging. If the flowers secrete a lot of sweet nectar, they will look for those colours and smells and return to that particular species. Some flowers also have UV coloured lines that guide foragers inside the flower to the nectar. Plants that grow a lot of high quality flowers are also attractive to bees as they make their foraging trips more efficient.

If you want to learn more about the plant strategies to attract pollinators, visit this website and click on the visual cues and scent tabs.

Next time you visit a conservation area, park with gardens or wildflowers, or a nearby apiary take a few minutes to watch the honeybees foraging and see if they all visit the same flower species. If you live somewhere with a yard, you can plant bee-friendly plant species and watch them forage right in front of you!

Guzman, E. (2020). Honey Bee Types, Nest, Colony Cycle. Personal Collection of E. Guzman, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON.

Don’t you just love the big fat bumble bee who is flying all over the place and looking just drunk of pollen!!! 

@sdowsettenvs3000f21 say that again to their frankly adorable faces:

[Description: a photograph of a great golden digger wasp (Sphex ichneumoneus) facing the camera with a fuzzy golden head and orange-red legs perched on a purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) and; a zoomed-in photograph of a Chalcidoid wasp (Superfamily Chalcidoidea), I think - it is on a common milkweed plant (Asclepias syriaca) and is rounded in appearance, incredibly tiny with a delicate waist, its head and abdomen are a metallic jewel green colour, and it has a bulkier-looking thorax that looks almost like deep bronze armour.]

I’ve got a bit of a bee in my bonnet over all the anti-wasp sentiment in the world, especially in North America, and especially when it’s a side note that’s part of a larger discussion about honeybees.

Because, okay, here’s the thing: honeybees aren’t native to North America.  According to the U.S. Geological Survey, you shouldn’t introduce them into areas where your goal is native bee and plant conservation; they’re competitors [1].  Apis mellifera, the western honeybee, is a livestock animal, like cattle; it’s domesticated [2].

We have a lot of really cool native bees, like the City of Toronto’s Official Bee, the Bicoloured Agapostemon (Agapostemon virescens) [3] – its head and thorax are a metallic lime-y green and its abdomen has black and yellow stripes.  It’s very neat-looking [4]!  And there are tons more: blue and red, super hairy and not so much, social and solitary, living in all kinds of different places.  

I’m a little frustrated that the honeybee seems to be the poster child for the save the bees movement in the country, because it is a bit like saying “save the birds” and holding up a picture of a chicken.  And I’m frustrated that there’s so much wasp hate, because it’s such an arbitrary line to draw:

Some bees aren’t great pollinators  – Nomad bees are kleptoparasites, stealing from other bees [5].

Lots of wasps help to pollinate, and pollination isn’t the only valuable service; wasps are great pest controllers [6]. 

Species diversity makes for healthier ecosystems; if you took wasps away you’d be losing a lot – a lot of wasps and a lot of important species interactions.

A lot of people seem to be worried that wasps can sting you multiple times; so can bumble bees [7].  Insects attack when they’re threatened and most of the time they’ve got better things to do than beat you up.

A lot of the conversation around helping bees is useful and productive and helps lots of species, but wasps really don’t deserve the bad rap that they get [6].

We’ll get back to Mary Anning later. 

Close your eyes. Picture yourself walking into a forest. What do you hear? The leaves rustling in the wind, the birds chirping in the trees, and the sound of small creatures foraging. These are the voices of the forest. All though not the human voices that we are used to, but voices of the wild that combine in layers to make the music of the forest. We know this of course, after this week's readings define a song as ”any rhythmic repeated utterance, whether by a bird, a frog, an insect, a whale or a human being”(Gray et al., 2001). It is not the typical music and melody you might be used to, but the combination of the sounds is what makes the unique songs sung by the creatures of the wild residing in the area.

You can probably guess from my example, but my favourite nature song is sung in the forest. I love the sounds that are made by the trees when the wind passes through. For the most part, the sound is peaceful. The wind is reassuring and gives me a sense of joy when I hear the trees rustling. The wind passes through the trees gently, moving from branch to branch gently moving the parts of the forest. It is like a happy song. To me, the wind is a friend that is passing through sharing their happy tune to the rest of the forest and moving through the different bodies of the forest.

But sometimes, the sounds can give off fear and warning. Before a storm, the wind is more aggressive and sings a different song. The wind blows aggressively and blows leaves and branches off the trees. Times like these remind me of songs of anger, and sadness, as the wind is causing harm and moving with intent, instead of moving gently without effort.

Music in nature can be influenced or reflected by a mood in a person. Calm noises provide a sense of joy and relaxation, just as a happy uplifting song provides you with the same feeling. In the same way, harsh conditions can remind someone of a bad time, just like a sad song.

Alternatively, nature is present in music. It is always not direct, but I find when I listen to songs, I can place myself in a piece of nature. For example, when I listen to “Mariposa” by the Peach Tree Rascals, I can picture myself walking through a field of flowers. This song is very uplifting and has a happy tune, and reminds me of how in movies people walk through fields of flowers.

Alternatively, thinking of Adele and her melancholy songs, you can see how she uses nature to reflect her mood. She uses the rain, dead leaves of a forest, and harsh winds to convey the sadness and anger she has felt and is singing about.

Music in nature is present every day for those who are patient enough to listen. I don’t even think most people realize that they are listening to the world's best tracks, and overlook them daily.

There’s a bit from the Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow soliloquy in Macbeth that runs “[…]It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.”

And it’s a tragedy, and he’s just between being given the news of his wife’s death and of Birnam Woods’ march on the castle, but it makes me think of how a lot of us don’t anthropomorphise as a rule and also don’t interpret the parts of our surroundings that aren’t human-made, how many of us aren’t conversant in what the sound of the wind means and what weather it brings.

Alternatively, thinking of Adele and her melancholy songs, you can see how she uses nature to reflect her mood. She uses the rain, dead leaves of a forest, and harsh winds to convey the sadness and anger she has felt and is singing about.

Music in nature is present every day for those who are patient enough to listen. I don’t even think most people realize that they are listening to the world’s best tracks, and overlook them daily.

Pathetic fallacy abounds in media, and we’re profoundly affected by our surroundings – an untidy area contributes to depression and a lack of sunlight fuels Seasonal Affective Disorder, for example – but there seems to be an invisible barrier keeping us from engaging with our surroundings.  It makes me think of 18th century factory work, where you’ve got knocker-uppers waking people up and disrupting the natural sleep cycle so that workers can be awake for shift work, and you’ve got an increasingly polluted environment with terrible air quality; I think people were being separated from the world that they knew and checking out of their new world in order to survive, because it was reasonably terrible and sometimes avoidance is the only way to make something bearable.

I think that an inability to find meaning outside of human terms is part of the legacy (and tragedy) of the industrial revolution.  There’s a language we need to relearn, I think, and music is a path to that, because it is a shared language.  Music is hopeful.

“There is no peculiar merit in ancient things, but there is merit in integrity, and integrity entails the keeping together of the parts of any whole, and if these parts are scattered throughout time, then the maintenance of integrity entails a knowledge, a memory, of ancient things. …. To think, feel or act as though the past is done with, is equivalent to believing that a railway station through which our train has just passed, only existed for as long as our train was in it.” (Edward Hyams, Chapter 7, The Gifts of Interpretation)

This quote poignantly summarizes the importance of keeping history in context with all its parts and emphasizes that erasure of certain points in history is unacceptable. For hundreds of years, colonization has suffocated and erased cultures and communities that lived on land that was thought to be of importance to the colonizers. In our history, we have treated Canada as a train station that only existed when we got here and colonized it, not acknowledging that it was present and inhabited long before we arrived.

Having experience as a costumed, third person interpreter at a historical site, I have conflicted feelings about historical interpretation. I value my experience and the opportunity to learn and connect with visitors from many different places and cultures, but I do feel somewhat guilty. The past few years have made me a bit disillusioned from history and anthropology as it has been structured by colonization in the effort to claim stolen land and push Indigenous cultures and communities into museums while they still live and breathe.

Lately I have been finding it hard to appreciate even our green spaces, conservation areas, and parks as I learn more about the atrocities of European colonization. Paintings done by the Group of Seven depict Canada as a vast open space full of wonderful natural features just waiting to be explored and “discovered”. This romanticizes the fact that these settlers were claiming territory they had no right to and completely writing off those who lived there already.

This also brings up another thing I feel unsure about which is authenticity. When reading the textbook, it mentions all the different types of authenticity and how these can add more value to an interpretation and a lot of it has to do with things being “unique”, “untouched by human hands”, and “never before seen by human eyes”. We as visitors hold historical sites to a certain standard and expect interesting, unique, and accurate interpretations, but I feel as though we can’t provide those if we are not honest about how we came to be on this land in the first place. While artifacts can be interesting and give “life” to an interpretation, we should be careful with how they are presented and retrieved.

There were many periods in Canadian history when settlers decided to steal and collect as many Indigenous “artifacts” as they could because they believed that these were dying cultures. This only allowed them to continue to assimilate and destroy whole cultures and act as though they were the ones saving them from being forgotten. The quote above mentions integrity of objects and I believe that Indigenous art and cultural objects being put in museums has removed their integrity by implying that those peoples no longer exist. I appreciated the textbook mentioning that some Indigenous knowledge is sacred and sometimes should not be shared. There are some depictions of sacred ceremonies and dances that have been removed from archives because they are not ceremonies that can be shared with the public. Many are private ceremonies that only certain members of the Indigenous community are able to witness and we need to make sure that in our quest for authenticity we don’t forget that these communities still reside on land we interpret on and they have every right to privacy.

Your metaphor of Canada as Hyam’s metaphorical train station hits hard and resonates with my own experience with historical interpretation.  I feel like I have read so many texts, walked so many exhibits, and sat in so many lectures whose version of history has gone: hey, here’s a little taste of the geologic history of this region!  Also there were some people here before us and they left some cool rocks behind!  And I just, I am so done with that version of history and how heavy, glaring, and colonial its edits are.  

I spent some time today on native-land.ca, looking at the map of the area I moved to this fall, reflecting on how I was taught in school of the first settlers of my area, but nothing of treaties or the people who lived there before then.  I’ve spent some time today thinking about the land that my family has owned on this continent, how much they might have paid for it and the motivations of the sellers.

I’ve spent some time this week thinking on the performative nature of land acknowledgements, and how they need to be supported with actual engagement with present issues, not just lip service to a past that many of us weren’t taught about.  

I’ve also been thinking of how some of the framing of indigenous communities focuses on the services that they have provided, that there’s this lens of what can we learn from their historical practices and values that sometimes commodifies them, like they’re helpful forest elves whose knowledge we can harness and not sovereign people whose rights we’re currently infringing upon.  It’s got some of the same feel sometimes as the bones of members of extinct tribes sitting in museums, where they shouldn’t be.

It is a situation, to put it mildly.  

I think that negativity is called for, because our past and our present contain negative things.

I’m going to throw two links in here, because it seems like the thing to do:

Truth and Reconciliation: Calls to Action

Did you know?

You can now add alt text to every photo and GIF you upload to a post with your Tumblr iOS or Android app. This feature isn’t yet available on the web broswer version of Tumblr.

How this helps disabled people

People with vision impairments such as low vision and blindness may use screen readers in order to access the internet, or just have trouble distinguishing images. That’s why you’re encouraged to write a short description of your image in your submission. Then a screen reader program can read the plaintext of a post out loud for them, or it can translated into braille on a refreshable braille display.

How do you add ALT text to your image?

Easy-peasy. When you add an image or GIF to a post or reblog on Tumblr in the iOS or Android app, you’ll see a meatballs menu (●●●) pop up in the lower right-hand corner of your image or GIF. Tap it, then select “Add alt text.”

If you’re not on mobile, you can’t add ALT text but you can include an image description in the body of the post.

What’s the difference between ALT text and an image description?

Alt text tells people what is in an image, such as text or basic essential details. If an image fails to load, alt text will display in its place. Search engines also index alt text information and consider it a factor when determining search engine ratings.

What is an image description?

An image description gives more details than alt text and allows someone to learn more about what is in an image that goes beyond alt text. Alt text gives the user the most important information while image descriptions provide further detail. For example, alt text tells someone that there’s a puddle on the floor, and image description tells someone that the puddle on the floor is in the middle of the floor and it’s orange juice.

Features of image to describe

When composing image descriptions, it may seem difficult to decide what to include. Here are features that can be included in image descriptions- write about these when applicable:

Placement of objects in image

Image style (painting, graph)

Colors

Names of people

Clothes (if they are an important detail)

Animals

Placement of text

Emotions, such as smiling

Surroundings

What not to describe

Likewise, there are some things that should be left out of image descriptions. These include:

Descriptions of colors- no need to describe what red looks like

Obvious details such as someone having two eyes, a nose, and a mouth

Details that are not the focus of the picture

Overly poetic or detailed descriptions

Emoji

Multiple punctuation marks

Length of text

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but there’s no reason to write them all out and leave the user waiting for the descriptions to end. It is strongly recommended that alt text be 125 characters or less to ensure compatibility for popular screen readers. Image descriptions can be longer, but I recommend keeping them the length of a tweet, or about 280 characters.

So now what?

Now that you know what it is, please use image descriptions and ALT text to make your posts more accessible! Yes, this even applies to selfies- if there’s no description at all, Blind people won’t even know that your post is a selfie!

I am in my last semester of my undergrad and have applied to teacher’s college and a few environmental college programs. These won’t start until the fall next year so I will have the entire winter off! With all of this downtime, I want to start reading books again for fun. I have a few books on my list so far but I wanted to reach out to everyone for book suggestions :)

So far, my list includes these;

Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer Gathering Moss – Robin Wall Kimmerer The Hidden Life of Trees – Peter Wohlleben The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs – Tristan Gooley

As you can tell there is a bit of a theme here. These are a few books I have read already and recommend if you are also interested in the same types of things!

The Secret Wisdom of Nature – Peter Wohlleben This book contains a bunch of short stories that discuss the relationships between animals and plants. The stories are easy enough to understand and are very interesting!

Wenjack – Joseph Boyden This book is very short but very beautifully written. It is based on a true story about an Ojibwe boy named Chanie Wenjack who escaped a residential school and attempted to run home. The book is written from the perspective of Chanie and the animals he encounters on his journey.

I have some of the same books in my to be read list as you do and a few others in the same vein:

The Diversity of Life by EO Wilson

The Once and Future Great Lakes Country: An Ecological History by John L Riley

Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard

I think that of the things that I have read, the one environmental science book that I am just about always going to recommend is:

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson