New Trees to Call Sacred

• In Event: Echoes of Empire: Taming the Nature, Bodies, and Knowledge of Georgia's Black Sea Coast

Abstract

The term indigeneity itself denotes collective historical conceptions of ancestral, and sometimes familial, relation to place, yet individual or group interpretations of this memory can be subject to change. In the case of Abkhazia, over the past two centuries forced displacement and drastic alterations to the natural environment through environmental interventions have challenged previously held notions of ethnic and indigenous identity. Moreover, physically, ecologically, and even spiritually rooted identity-based connection to place has evolved at every stage of displacements and natural environmental alterations. The following paper will address these shifts as it relates to identity and the environment from 1870’s to the 1950’s, arguing that the non-native trees of coastal Sukhum/i, and the sub-tropical plantations of Gal/i introduced by the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union have become indigenous, and even sacred, to those displaced from and those who remain in Abkhazia. Conversely, the historically sacred native species of trees, and the swamp forests they inhabited, are now lost not only through the process of environmental extractivism, but in historical memory and conceptions of place-based identity. Ultimately, this paper posits the question: How does the settler become indigenous over generations in the context of ecological change and forced displacement?

Author

• Rowan Gabrielle Baker, Yale U