"There's Nothing Left Here Anymore": Schooling, Agriculture, and the Loss of Community in Northern New York

• In Event: 54.080 - Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: 54.080-20 - CANCELLED: Stories of Love and Loss From Inuit, Tajik, Buddhist, and Rural American Perspectives: Living Well in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This paper echoes many of the themes raised in my Inuit and Tajik colleagues’ narratives, but from an examination of a very different cultural context, a small rural town in Northern NY. While I recognize the critical historical and cultural differences in our life stories—I am a direct descendant of the devastation perpetrated by white European settlers—there are connections both in the land-based value systems learned as children, and the systematic undoing by expansionist capitalism of those patterns of relationship that protected social and ecological well-being in our communities (Tuck and Yang, 2012; Varacini, 2010). Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives including ecofeminism, (Plumwood, 2002; Cuomo, 1998), environmental ethics (Abram, 1996; Smith, 2005) and the work of conservationist poet and novelist Wendell Berry (1996, 2004), I too tell the story of two different educations received as a child. The first was informal, made of lessons learned primarily from my mother; the second came from school.

Author

• Rebecca A Martusewicz, Eastern Michigan University