Black Nature Narratives: Recent Episodes
Wild in the City
Black Nature Narratives explores black perspectives on issues relating to the natural world and our relationship with nature.
My name is Beth Collier, I'm a Nature Allie d Psychotherapist and ethnographer, teaching woodland living skills and natural history. I'm Director of Wild in the City, a London based non-profit supporting well-being through relationship with nature; using the skills of our ancestors to develop a closer connection with the natural world and a sense of belonging to communities past and present.
Here we'll celebrate our love of nature and share inspiration from black leaders within conservation, ecology, outdoor education and environmental justice talking about their work and journeys into a field with low representation of black people; highlighting voices less heard within the environmental field.
I'll also be exploring the historical legacies and lived experience which impacts on how we see ourselves as part of nature or as belonging within natural spaces and environmental organisations; giving consideration to how our presence and perspectives can become politicised when our lived reality diverges from the mainstream narrative.
Frank Muramuzi is the Executive Director of the National Association of Professional Environmentalists in Uganda. He has over 20 years experience furthering indigenous rights and nature conservation. NAPE advocates for the rights and protection of both humans and nature, as a sustainable model of conservation based on cultural heritage.
In this episode Frank talks about the threats to land rights faced by indigenous communities, many are loosing ancestral land to oil extraction, plantations and industries, resulting in the loss of cultural heritage. For indigenous people forests supply medicine, food, shelter, community and connection to ancestors - dispossession from land, and therefore culture and nature, is a death.
Frank talks about community conservation which promotes environmental models which respect the indivisibility of nature and culture and challenge unsustainable investor led models which result in forests being cleared to plant non indigenous trees for export, under the banner of environmentalism. Actions which displace both people and nature.
NAPE supports indigenous communities to share knowledge about environmental challenges, one of the ways that they do this is through the community green radio which serves rural areas.
In this episode I'm talking with Violet Matiru. Violet is a Kenyan zoologist and veteran wildlife researcher and campaigner. She has over 20 years experience as a conservationist and community educator.
As Executive Director of Millennium Community Development Initiatives (MCDI) she delivers community conservation programmes which address natural resource management challenges in Kenya. Starting her career within the Kenya Wildlife Service as a researcher on the Elephant programme, she has gone on to become a consultant evaluating programmes for many intergovernmental bodies and NGO's including UNDP, UNEP, IUCN and WWF.
Here, we talk about the exclusivity of access to nature and environmental governance in Kenya – through biases towards western interests within game parks, funding and organisational leadership.
We discuss the failure of western funding and conservation models and the in inequity they produce, and unpick the tripartite collusion of conservation, colonialism and corporations on severing people from nature whilst creating the illusion of protection and care.
Violet talks about her inspiring conservation work with local communities and reconnecting urban populations with wildlife and calls for the diaspora to reconnect with nature on the continent through culture and embracing our heritage.
Violet refers to 'The Big Conservation Lie', by Dr Mordecai Ogada and John Mbaria.
Themes; Human/wildlife conflict – western conservation models – colonialism – racism - guerilla war – freedom fighters - Big game – indigenous knowledge – traditional ecological knowledge – Kenya – East Africa – Trophy hunting – Elephant – Research – Extraction – Diaspora – culture – heritage - decolonialising conservation - Forests – Wangari Maathai – Karura Forest – community conversation – Thogoto Forest – politics of funding – failed conservation models - bio-cultural diversity - evictions – trauma – African Philosophy
Welcome to the second part of my conversation with Dominique Bikaba, in this episode Dom talks about his personal relationship with the forest and his journey into conservation work having learnt about wildlife from his grandmother and his chosen Batwa 'mother' and setting up his first conservation organisation at the age of 20. Dom talks about the brutal eviction of forest peoples, including that of his family. We discuss the need to decolonise conservation – for the sake of biodiversity and to challenge racism towards black led organisations.
Listen in to hear about successes within community based conservation work and indigenous leadership, including reversing the decline of the Eastern Lowland Gorilla (Glauer's Gorilla).
Themes: Great Apes conservation - Forest habitats - Kahuzi Biega National Park - community based conservation – chiefdoms - indigenous knowledge - traditional ecological knowledge - illegal mining – wildlife trade - failed conservation models – culture - bio-cultural diversity - Batwa pygmy – culture - generational knowledge - politics of funding - Congo Basin - Democratic Republic of Congo - Eastern Lowland Guerillas – evictions - decolonising conservation – trauma – African philosophy
Dominique Bikaba is Executive Director of Strong Roots, a conservation NGO working in the Democratic Republic of Congo to protect Great Apes and their Congo Basin Forest habitat for the benefit of humans and animals. Dominique received the Whitley Award in 2018, in recognition of his innovative community based conservation prioritising indigenous knowledge and concerns.
He was speaking with me from Bakavu, a town not far from the forest where he was born. Dominique's family lived in what is now Kahuzi-Biega National Park, he learnt about wildlife from his grandmother who would take him into the forest from which she was evicted in the 70's under the banner of conservation. The area is now under threat from illegal mining, and ill judged western led conservation models which exclude the Batwa Pygmys who live there. In contrast local chiefs are providing protection by allocating their ancestral land to extend wildlife corridors which support biodiversity and the Gorillas, using traditional ecological knowledge within a model of community based conservation, which also protects humans from nature loss and emphasises the cultural value of biodiversity.
Our conversation is split into 2 episodes, in part 1 we discuss Great Apes conservation, threats to the Congo Basin Forest, the politics of funding, failing western conservation models, indigenous ecological knowledge and community based conservation.
In part two we talk about Dom's personal relationship with the forest, the eviction of forest peoples and the disenfranchisement of Batwa pygmys from their ancestral land, and continue our discussion about colonialism, racism, conservation methodology and the importance of preserving habitats for people and wildlife.
In this series we'll hear African perspectives on conservation, colonialism, indigenous knowledge and environmental issues effecting local communities.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with leading African conservationists about their work and the environmental issues effecting their regions and local communities. Experts from Kenya, Uganda and DRC shared innovative and traditional approaches to caring for species and habitats and discussed the wider political dynamics of colonialism that contextualises the work of black African conservationists.
A shared aim within their work is to support bio-cultural diversity, recognising the integral value of nature to cultural life and respecting indigenous communities' intimate knowledge of ecological systems and the symbiosis which sustains both biodiversity and human communities. As researchers, conservationists and educators, they share a wealth of knowledge about community based conservation drawing on the expertise of the indigenous communities that they work alongside.
We explore the damage of a continuing colonialism which affects access to funding and who gets to lead within the environmental field and imposes western models of conservation which ignores the views of indigenous and local communities and disregards traditional ecological knowledge – unless appropriated. This is a toxic 'divestment conservationism' that has led to the disenfranchisement of Africans from nature and their ancestral land, inflicting twin traumas upon forest peoples; the trauma of being separated from the land – nature is integral to life - and trauma from the manner in which people were separated from nature, through violence, deceit and disregard for the culture, livelihoods and lives of forest peoples.
A consistent theme that African environmentalists face are the obstacles created by western interests and colonial mindsets, which get in the way of caring for the environment. Conservation work is navigated through needing to advocate for a plethora of rights; land rights, human rights and indigenous rights, just to be able to reach the work of supporting biodiversity and communities.
In this episode I'm talking with Nana Firman who is the Muslim Outreach Director at GreenFaith, an international non profit multi-faith climate and environmental organisation.
Listen in to find out how religious congregations can contribute to education and social engagement on environmental issues, and the importance of highlighting and interpreting the value of nature through existing theology.
In this episode I'm talking with Eboni Preston, Director of Programmes for the Greening Youth Foundation, a national non-profit in the US. Listen in to hear how this Atlanta based organisation has partnered with the National Park Service to increase opportunities for African American young people to enter environmental careers.
In this episode I'm talking with Dr. Ka'mal McClarin, a Frederick Douglas scholar and Curator of the Frederick Douglas House Museum within the US National Park Service in Washington DC.
Douglas was a highly accomplished man; having escaped enslavement, he was an intellectual who became a statesman, advancing the cause of abolition and social reform - he also found time to pursue his interests as a keen naturalist.
New research is helping to build an even richer picture of Douglas' life. Listen in to hear Ka'mal's research on Douglas's life in relation to the natural world, as we sit talking at Cedar Hill - Frederick's home and smallholding.
I recently made a trip to the States to connect with colleagues working within the environmental field, it was a really powerful experience, meeting incredible people making a difference to local communities and in conserving natural heritage.
In many ways communities of colour in America are much further ahead than we are in the UK in challenging the existence of racism within the work and in the impact that attitudes, policies and processes have on black communities, and in creating disparities and inequity.
Where the push back to mentioning race here in the UK is typically either to be ignored, or perceived as creating a problem rather than reporting one, Environmental Justice on racial grounds is an established field of study and practice in the States, where the 1964 Civil Rights Act is used to challenge health disparities and Dr Dorceta Taylor's seminal 2014 report 'The State of Diversity in Environmental Organisations', has laid the ground for confronting racism and a lack of inclusion within the environmental sector.
In this series I'll be sharing some of the conversations I had with African American academics, practitioners and activists working within nature education, environmental justice, youth engagement, faith and civil rights organisations.
My guests are speaking on themes of black history, black centred activism, black leadership within predominantly white environmental organisations, civil rights legacies and encouraging greater black participation within the environmental field.
Hi my name's Beth, welcome to Black Nature Narratives. This podcast offers black perspectives on issues relating to the natural world.
I grew up in the countryside immersed in nature and felt the deep significance of nature as both something we're part of and something we can have a relationship with, a principle which is now the basis of my career. I'm a Nature based Psychotherapist and Anthropologist.
My work explores our emotional and intimate relationship with the natural world. As an ethnographer I'm interested in our relationship with nature as people of colour and white attitudes towards our presence in green spaces, and in creating space for explorations of black perspectives about the value and role of nature within our lives.
If you want to hear more from black practitioners about how they experience nature and navigate the environmental field, then this podcast is for you.
In this episode I'm talking with Katherine Egland, Chair of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Committee. Katherine is a veteran civil rights activist who 'took her earrings off' and stepped into environmental justice activism after Hurricane Katrina devastated her home community in Mississippi; just 5 years later the BP oil spill contaminated the same area.
In a current campaign she raises awareness of how UK import practices aimed at reducing emissions are negatively impacting black communities in the southern United States.
Katherine's journey into activism was greatly influenced by her early experiences marching with Dr Martin Luther King and attending the funerals of her community leaders, Vernon Dahmer and Medgar Evers both of whom were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Listen in to hear Katherine's insights as an elder who's work has fought for principles of environmental justice to be held as inseparable from civil and human rights.
In this episode I'm joined by Destiny Hodges and Audre'ana Ellis, students at Howard University and leaders within the environmental justice movement. Listen in to hear what studying at an HBCU means to them, their sense of responsibility to the community in DC, their thoughts on the idea of environmentalism as a white endeavour and their hopes for careers within the environmental field. We were speaking together during a break at a Smithsonian conference for Women Environmental Leaders.
In this episode Beth is talking with Dr. Mamie Parker, a biologist and the first African American female Chief of Staff at the US Fish and Wildlife Service and former Head of Fisheries. She considers her first mentor in the outdoors to be her mother who would take her fishing as a child and share life lessons. Listen in to hear Dr Parker offer inspiration about navigating white dominated spaces, as the first child to integrate her school in Southern Arkansas and in her career progression within the environmental field.