NAMIBIA

My second EE was to the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia in July of 2022.  We (Tasha Anderson, Megan Burkhart, Katie Cacchillo, Allie Coronado, Kelly Drabik, Kiah Eilenfeldt, Tanner Fangman, Nicole Fredrick, Liliana Hidalgo, Meredith Houghton, Adam Kerins, Ginger Levinson, Katie Mauro, Kyle Nickel, Ali Patton, Jessie Schrauger, Julie Theim, our instructors Jamie Bercaw and Linda Castañeda and me) explored how an organization is working to protect a critically endangered great cat and as they do this they are working to protect the entire ecosystem. 

I have not completed my journal for this course, so I included my final reflection for the class which was completed after returning from the field.

It is even hard to imagine that we were all in Namibia, halfway around the world just a few months ago. It has definitely increased my desire to travel more to see more of the world.

Today, on Indigenous People’s Day, I am reflecting on the experience we had especially up on Leopard Hill, with Iggy when he described the genocide of the Namibian people and reflected on how he teaches and explains these ideas. It was a powerful example of how being in a place can help us to connect and learn more about that place. I have been even more aware of colonial language in the media and general conversation. For example, I have been watching “For All Mankind” about a fictional world in which the Soviets landed on the moon first.  That catalyst allowed NASA and the writers to also imagine a world in which women and persons of all ethnicities were also allowed to be astronauts and leaders, including a female president and a Black commander of the first spacecraft to land on Mars in 1995. And yet, even in this show, they correlate the mission to Mars with the exploration of Columbus, going to a place no one had yet been and how courageous this was.  I can’t imagine that the writers of this show were trying to cause harm, and yet, this shows how ingrained the idea of colonization and erasure of indigenous persons is in the mainstream media and consciousness. 

I wonder where these types of words and thoughts are in my own language, in places that I do not even notice? I know that I am noticing more and also reflecting on different ways of knowing and being in the world that I can bring out and focus on. Colonization seems to be a place where people are disconnected from where they are and see the earth and planet as a resource or object to be taken or used for the purposes of humans.  Yet, as we all know, not all humans see the earth like this, and when we were up there on Leopard Hill, listening to Iggy read sections of Chief Seattle’s speech, “How can you buy or sell the sky?”, I have to wonder how we are going to get back to a place where this type of learning and way of knowing is the main and dominant one? 

This weekend I was at a conference at Lake Tahoe.  It was a conference for naturalists and people who feel connected to the land.  The organizers invited members of the Washoe tribe to open the conference, speak and tell stories of the land.  This was a great start and these people reflected in their talks that they did not feel like afterthoughts or late add ons to check boxes.  There was also a talk by an Indigenous Californian who is also a professor who consults on native burns to support and care for the land in California. I am seeing more crossovers and connections and yet when I read documents, it is not enough and we still see fire and lack of attention to land as a major issue still. So, I will also continue to learn and teach that we can look at problems from other perspectives and that we can continue to lift up voices and people that have different worldviews. At this conference, the keynote speaker was José Gonzalez, the founder of Latino Outdoors.  He spoke about a paper, "Healing Severed Connections,"  he had just published in Medium about how we can heal our connections to the planet. This paper is kind of long, but you might enjoy reading this view on how we can shift our worldviews.

I am so glad I got to spend time with you all in a beautiful place and that we got to connect and consider our place in the world. Namibia was a place I was able to learn, connect and be somewhere so different.