Wilderness, Nature, Rural? Making Sense of the Production of Space Within the Settler Colonial Imaginary

• In Event: (Re)Placing Rural Education: Unpacking Place at the Intersections of Rural and Indigenous Education

Abstract

When I first returned to my community (Navajo Nation) to work, I committed the colonial sin of thinking that non-urban space means emptiness. I remember driving through the reservation and wondering if there was anything ‘going on,’ only to realize a few weeks later (and many invitations later) there were actually a ton of community events happening in this rural space. So where did the feeling of emptiness come from? Was it because I didn’t grow up on the reservation? Or because I was coming from the urban space of Syracuse, New York? Or was I assimilated into thinking that community looks one certain kind of way? It only took me a little while spending time with family, friends, and community (human and nonhuman) to realize I needed to widen the scope of what counted as community and relationship to better relate to my nation.

Understandings of place are intimately connected to the larger imaginary story of American identity; these myths are learned through the way education describes how lands came to be “American.” Drawing from settler colonial studies, Native scholars have critiqued the notion of American land and nature showing how these ideas inform a mythical United States creation story (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014, Deloria, 2008). Drawing from the argument that wilderness, nature, and space are produced through Indigenous erasure, (Spence, 1999; Voyles, 2000; Tuck & Yang, 2012) this paper will critique various national narratives that influence our understanding of non-urban spaces (read: wilderness, nature, and rural). The author is particularly interested in understanding the connection between American understandings of non-urban place that contribute to the notion that rural is synonymous with whiteness or settler agriculture. Additionally, the author links this discussion to multiple sites of education--including formal schooling and educative materials within rural spaces. For example, thinking through the educative exhibits, museums, signs, place-names, monuments, and businesses that influence the collective narrative of wilderness and/or rural spaces as white spaces. Native peoples, stories, and relationships have been largely absent or purposefully erased within educational materials that create an identity and understanding of non-urban spaces.

Author

• Kelsey Dayle John, University of Arizona