Our thirteenth SDUK broadsheet dives into approaches for navigating social and ecological crises. WADING complements the Blackwood’s summer and fall presentation of Lyfeboat prototype and event series, Nearshore Gatherings—both platforms for community engagement with ecology and environmental activism. This issue traverses further from the shoreline into the vast oceans of inquiry on land-based education, institutional critique, biocultural diversity, food and land sovereignty, and equity in the outdoors.
Education is crucial in addressing the climate crisis; at its best, it can provide the knowledge, skills, and values to shape agents of change. Departing from the human-centric discourse of the Anthropocene, Fikile Nxumalo’s essay asks: How might centering the more-than-human world in education support a justice-oriented response to environmental precarity? Citing the omission of Black land relations in environmental education, Nxumalo advocates for the integration of Black ecologies into primary school curricula. Lianne Marie Leda Charlie shares an account of fishing and trapping at the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning, demonstrating how land-based learning can facilitate Indigenous peoples’ connections to land. Carolynne Crawley’s Water Invitation similarly encourages readers to slow down and reflect on the land and water, to better defend and protect it.
Environmental stewardship is a shared responsibility. In many Indigenous worldviews, knowledge is relational, shared amongst all. Through this lens, how do we collectively wade through climatic and sociopolitical challenges together? Céline Chuang considers water as a common ancestor and truth-teller; she compels readers to turn to water’s wisdom to unlearn colonial pasts, and rewrite present and future histories. Magdalyn Asimakis reflects on gardening as a key cultural practice of stabilization and survival for many diasporic communities. Maggie Groat’s collages take inspiration from the “butterfly effect,” reminding readers that the actions we take yield divergent dystopian and utopian visions across varying time scales.
Amidst current global upheavals and the ongoing pandemic, how are artists, researchers, and educators navigating institutions? Scholars Aimi Hamraie, Maria Hupfield, and Zoë Wool discuss how they are re-figuring research, collaboration, and community involvement in their research labs. In an interview, The Forest Curriculum asks the co-creators of Omehen (a teaching garden and art project) to reflect on activism and solidarity within a university environment in the Philippines, while poems by Madhur Anand straddle poetic and scientific knowledge systems in reckoning with environmental collapse. Extending these contributors’ dialogues, Christina Sharpe speculates on alternatives to the logic of renewal that continues to mask ongoing institutional violence, extraction, devastation, and exhaustion.
The security and sovereignty of our food webs are deeply tied to environmental instability. Considering the intersection of food systems and ecosystems, readers might ask: how are food cultures and movements responding and adapting to the climate crisis? Filling Spirits reflects on how community-informed practices such as cuisine, gardening, and local farming support food sovereignty, equity, and self-determination. Asunción Molinos Gordo’s Peasant CVs acknowledge the contributions of rural communities by calling attention to the knowledge and skills that are passed down intergenerationally through small-scale farming.
This broadsheet concludes with a glossary intended to further illuminate, complicate, and enrich the contents of this issue. Visit the Blackwood website for an extended lexicon featuring concepts that animate the SDUK series and broader gallery programs.