Absenting is used as a verb by Fikile Nxumalo to describe omissions of Black presence and history in environmental education. Departing from “absence” as passive or innate, Nxumalo suggests that omission is an active process worthy of critical examination; in her example, the erasure of Black land relations in Canada begins conspicuously in elementary and middle school education. See Nicholson (SDUK12) for poetic writing on Black land relations in Canada.
Conceptualized by artist and researcher Kevin Gotkin, access magic recounts a moment of crip connection in virtual space. By equating access with magic, Gotkin reframes accessibility as a joyful and expansive act of collaboration rather than a gesture of compliance. Conjuring feelings of proximity across time and distance, the magic of accessible remote spaces works against ableist technologies to support principles of disability justice (see Hamraie; cripping).
Experiential learning: participatory, collaborative, and self-reflexive methods of teaching. Animating diverse spaces to facilitate learnings—indoors, outdoors, rural or urban—experiential learning defies the static and hierarchical notion of the classroom; often employed as a strategy for cripping and decolonizing curriculum and pedagogy. See Charlie for experiential learning guided by intergenerational teachings, hands-on work, and learning from the land.
Fluid is a substance; and a descriptor for substances whose particles move freely among themselves. Often employed figuratively to refer to intangible things that are not fixed, firm, or stable. Water is fluid, and a fluid; Groat discusses ripples as unpredictable effects of fluidity, and Chuang reflects on water as a medium to carry notions of freedom and memory.
Food desert: An area with restricted access to healthy and affordable food, resulting from racist, colonial and capitalist policies that under-serve neighbourhoods, subsidize industrialized farming, and limit residents’ access to arable land through financial and bureaucratic means. As such, food deserts overwhelmingly affect Indigenous and racialized communities, creating barriers to adequate nourishment and traditional food practices; for initiatives that resist this narrative, see “Filling Spirits.”
Forest therapy is a practice for supporting wellness through immersive engagement in natural environments. Fostering physical and mental health through guided outdoor walks, gathering(s) and exercises, forest therapists offer multisensory experiences that encourage slowness, tranquility, and attunement to nature. Commonly considered to have emerged in the 1980s from the Japanese notion of shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing,” forest therapy—as Crawley highlights—is merely a new term to describe longstanding Indigenous practices of healthy and reciprocal relationships with lands, waters, and all beings.
A garden is a source of food, and thus survival. Though Western landscaping practices historically framed gardens as symbols of class and control over the environment (see Anand), other forms of community-driven gardening show that they can be places of multifaceted growth, spontaneity, interspecies collaboration, and healing. Indigenous gardening practices are integral to maintaining cultural teachings and resisting colonialism (see The Forest Curriculum; Gordo), while diasporic gardeners can cultivate connections to their homelands (Asimakis). As access to food and land continues to be unequally distributed, gardens serve as spaces of political action (see weeds; food desert).
Knitting, knotting, and quilting are forms of handicraft using threads and yarns; they are also embodied ways of knowing, cultivated through teaching and practice, that have often been excluded the narrow frame for cognitive development set by Western knowledge systems. Craft can be a transformational way of teaching and learning (see experiential learning; Charlie; Wool et al.), and for nurturing cultural practices for diasporic and Indigenous communities (Kurd, SDUK12).
Maroon: a community of African people and their descendants founded to escape the transatlantic slave trade (see Nxumalo; Fekete). Maroon settlements are found primarily throughout the Americas with origins dating back as far as the sixteenth century. Deriving their name from “maroon” as being left “isolated in a desolate place,” maroons are remarkable for their survival and resilience amid insufficient living conditions and persistent threats of retribution from enslavers and colonial governments. Many maroon communities developed distinct languages, religions, arts, and cultures, rooted in the varied African traditions of their founders, and influenced by participation and trade with Indigenous peoples. Maroon legacies continue today through remaining settlements and family ties.
Memory: The cognitive processes that acquire, store, retain and retrieve information for later use. While seemingly straightforward, memories are not infallible—forgetting and misremembering are common. Collective memories are formed when a group’s shared experience circulates in a public or semi-public sphere. Generational memory (a closely related concept) connects experiences beyond individuals’ lifespans; SDUK contributors frame it as a necessary tool to support decolonization (Chuang) and resist epistemological erasure (Afful et al., SDUK11). Collective memories are shared through many means including language (Dion Fletcher, SDUK10), embodiment (Beeds, SDUK11), and ritual (Asimakis).
Nibi (“water” in Anishinaabemowin) is a lifeforce that sustains, nourishes, and connects all living beings. As many Indigenous communities continue to face polluted drinking water, and devastating droughts and floods ensue on a global scale, water protection has become critical to slow the climate crisis. Organizations such as Kahnekanoron—“water is precious” in Kanien'kéha (Mohawk)—offer reminders of water’s gifts in programs that share food and medicine teachings ("Filling Spirits"). On walking as a practice of water protection, see Beeds (SDUK11).
Ode is Anishinaabemowin for heart. Scholar Andrew Judge remarks that, when spoken, its sound mimics the rhythm of the beating organ, pumping blood and giving life. Ode’min means strawberry in Anishinaabemowin and translates to “heart berry” in English. The fruiting plant is regarded by Elders as an older sibling with lessons to share (see “Filling Spirits”).
Self-care is a term popularized by Black feminist writer, poet and educator Audre Lorde, referring to self-preservation amid activist cultures that often undervalued personal healing, wellness, comfort and care. The term has since come to encompass many forms of self-preservation far beyond Lorde’s original intent. Critics of self-care (in its everyday usage) highlight the neoliberal urge to find virtue in aestheticized acts of leisure (see Sharma in Take Care broadsheet). In light of its ubiquity and misuse, what could self-care look like for people facing precarity and marginalization? What can sustain the self in an oppressive world? What can community care do that self-care can’t? (see Sharpe).
Popularized by postcolonial scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, subaltern refers to individuals or groups marginalized through colonialism and cultural imperialism. Spivak’s analysis originates in the varied colonial contexts across Southeast Asia, where subaltern social classes—such as Indian citizens amid British rule—are denied self-determination and political representation. Beyond governance, subalternity has social and cultural effects, where traditional knowledge systems or lifeways are suppressed. Subaltern peoples are characterized as a distinct group with unique oppressions and desires, as opposed to generalized class groupings such as the “working class” (see Asimakis; Gordo; see also hegemony; epistemology; margin).
Weeds are plants that quickly root in an ecosystem, often abetted by evolutionary advantages such as hardiness and efficient seed dispersal. In ecological succession—the study of how ecosystems develop, change, and adapt—weeds are the first to grow in a barren area. However, the linear logic of succession is often challenged by human interventions such as transplantation, plant trade, and urbanization. Weeds are thus commonly understood as the undesirable plants in a planned growing environment. Many voices challenge this characterization, however, based on their edibility, usefulness, or hard-earned opportunism (see Garden; “Filling Spirits”; Liao in SDUK12; Cooley in SDUK04).