Trees as Embodying Local History/Knowledge/Wisdom: Unforgetting (Local) Histories and Imagining (Multispecies) Futures

• In Event: Teaching in the Ruins, Learning from the Land: Grounding Curriculum in Place and Possibility

Abstract

As the current polycrisis further intensifies, we find ourselves looking at local eco-community relations to (re)imagine more just futures. Inspired by the trees impacted by Hurricane Helene, this paper examines how trees and tree rings can help students contextualize local history and the more-than-human, as well as cultivate critical thinking and insight of social and environmental injustices of the past, present, and future. Given that trees are living historical archivists embodying knowledge/witnessing, we ask, “What might we learn from trees as teachers?” To answer this we draw from Land-based pedagogies (Basso, 1996; Tuck et al., 2014), oral history methods (Biró et al., 2024), EcoJustice Education (Lupinacci, 2020; Martusewicz et al., 2021) and Multispecies Justice (Rautio, 2017; Saari, 2024).

Authors

• Asia S. Thomas, Augusta State University

• Brandon Edwards-Schuth, Augusta University