Am Land - Chapter 3

Baptize Morizot

Philosopher who said that our hands are shaped the way they are because of our relationship with trees (gripping them, climbing them, etc)

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Methusaleh, the oldest tree on Earth currently recorded (4581 years)

How have trees impacted human imagination ?

Trees have memories, meaning culturally or historically, and they have inspired many pieces of art

Billie Holiday - Strange Fruits (1939)

Song that uses trees as a manner to express the tragedies ensuing the common practice that used to be lynching (metaphor for black bodies hanging)

Impact of the colonizers on the land (consciously)

Deforestation, through for example the burning of forests (as a game to hunt in an easier fashion) + the need for wood to survive (now there are acts to protect the oldest forests)

Little Ice Age

Deforestation caused the landscape to change and killed lots of people, disturbing the Earth’s climate, leading to huge swathes of abandoned agricultural land being reclaimed by fast-growing trees and other vegetation

Relocation of the indigenous people

Colonizers did so to reappropriate the land for railroads and industrial means

1600s-1700s

Natives rose up against white domination, causing wars + diseases spread and killed natives

1830

Indian Removal Act to remove Natives from their territories (Trail of tears)

1840-1850

Westward expansion, buffalo herds destroyed, railroad companies appearing

1876

Little Big Horn (battle)

1887

Allotment/Dawes act, Natives were forced to speak English and had new names

1890

Wounded Knee

1934

Indian Reorganization Act (self-governement)

Boarding schools

Relocation of Native childrens to euro-american boarding school to learn the European way

Wounded knee massacre

Involving nearly three hundred Lakota people killed by soldiers of the US Army, real massacre

Ecocide

The increase in deforestation : virgin forests are very rare, 75% of old forests have disappeared

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Almost 154 US National Forests have been impacted by humans over the centuries, only 36% of the US today is forested

Reforestation

Great Depression - boosting of the economy by pushing people to replant trees (220 millions trees were replanted)

The threat on National forests

Due to human greed and climate change, bark beetles keep destroying Pinetree forests + fires becase more drought

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Maple tree, Hazel tree, Walnut tree, Oak tree

Trees as sites of memory

Natives bending trees to find their way across the forests, leftovers from the dead cut trees (like sequoias in the 20th century), lynchings, native burial grounds where trees are planted above the ancestors

Henry D. Thoreau

American naturalist and essayist celebrating the forest and living in the woods who was quite political - thought everything should be simplified, helped slaves and went to prison for a night because of a refusal to pay taxes (then wrote Civil Disobedience), refused to drink tea and coffee due to exploitation

Braiding Sweet Grass and trees

Kimmerer talks about how her grandfather survived the Trail of Death thanks to nuts being present - therefore only making pecan pie for Thanksgiving

Julia Butterfly Hills

Stayed in a tree for two years as means to resist against them being cut down

New narratives of the forest

Numberous books and pieces of art have been created with a focus on trees, showcasing how humans are more afraid of other humans than the actual forest

The Overstory by Richard Powers

How the trees communicate with each other, how they have memories, etc

The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel

Christopher Knight lived 27 years in the woods of Maine and survived by stealing stuff and accumulating them - part of a survivalist tradition

Ghost Forest

By Maya Lin : an art piece in the middle of town of trees that are endangered today

Erased Lynching by Gonzalez Day

Collection of pictures of people looking up at a tree but there’s nothing - point is to show how white people were bystanders of lynchings

Circle of trees in Brussels

A reminder of people who died in the terrorist attacks