This is one of the worst captions you could ever put on this photo. Here’s why:
These are old-growth sequoia redwoods. They exclusively live in coastal Northern California and Southern Oregon, and the majority of them are found in the area spanning Mendocino to Del Norte Counties (NorCal). I live in one of those counties (Humboldt). It is one of the poorest areas in the entire United States (especially the tens of reservations in this area); the unemployment rate for my home region is 85%, and the poverty rate is hovering around 75%. This is due to chronic and systemic violence at the hands of our fellow California citizens, our government (national, state, local), and environmentalists worldwide. Most of our towns are unincorporated areas (and thus don’t have municipal governments to be held accountable), and are hyper-rural (ie no access to health care, sanitation, clean water, education, law enforcement, etc). The United States’ relationship to those trees are the reason for it.
The history of this area, as with everywhere else in the United States, begins with colonialism and genocide. Massacres of the local indigenous tribes (Karuk, Yurok, Hupa, Wiyot, etc) continued throughout the late 19th century, as did indentured labor of Native peoples. While this colonial project was part of a much larger scheme on behalf of the US government, it is both intimately tied to a changing national conception of Nature as it relates to Manifest Destiny and whiteness, as well as a more regional understanding of what those trees are. The “wild” and “Nature” were concepts used as legitimation of genocidal colonialism, and thereafter were used to describe land devoid of Indians upon which white settlers and explorers could reaffirm their white masculinity via survival and a newly forged connection to the “American” land. This land was colonized as a means to access these trees, which were clear-cut harvested to build the wealth of cities like San Francisco and Portland, often in inhumane labor camps that would eventually become our region’s impoverished unincorporated areas of today.
Towns such as these became entirely dependent upon the timber industry, as did our whole region. When the timber industry collapsed in the mid-1960s, so did our economy. Thousands of jobs were lost for the sake of “conservation;” a concept deeply embroiled in racist, class-privileged, ideology in which Nature is conceived as separate from Society (this is logical fallacy, as concepts of Nature are produced by societal and cultural norms, and the concept of “barren” or “empty” land was only created recently to describe lands previously occupied by indigenous peoples—there is no such thing as Nature without ‘Man’). The creation of Redwood National Park destroyed our economy and our community, as more and more of the larger towns became gentrified by white environmentalists affiliated with the back-to-the-land movement. Timber communities were left in the dust. It was thought that tourism for the park would help sustain the economy, but the park has only one public access point, is only accessible by private vehicle, and has only one trail, despite being one of the largest national parks in the US. There is no publicity for the park at all. The park services recently built a building in a former mill town on the periphery of the park—the workers commute nearly 2 hours to live in a town away from the mill community, and don’t even eat their lunches locally.
In the mid-90’s through the early 2000’s there was a similar debate over the Headwaters Forest. People were murdered over these trees. People lost livelihoods over these trees. We are now instead dependent upon the drug industry (we’re the largest producing region of marijuana in the US). My generation is raised to be criminal because that’s the only means to a living we have left. Because of the struggles over these trees, and the persistent need for rich whites to “renew their spirit” in “untouched, wild Nature.”
We are constantly erased from the map, our struggles left ignored. This image is offensive and ignorant. Those trees, that “Nature,” has been rearranged by “Man” so many times over the last century and a half, and has been done so in such a violent manner each time, that it is truly hurtful to see images like this so uncritically propagated. It further erases us.
(via garconniere)
