Ep 155: How the American Settler-Colonial Project Shaped Popular Notions of 'Conservation'

“Among these central ranges of continental mountains and these great companion parks…lies the pleasure-ground and health-home of the nation,” wrote journalist Samuel Bowles in 1869. “Mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life,” mused naturalist John Muir in 1901. “National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst,” opined writer Wallace Stegner in 1983.

North American and European traditions of conservationism, especially those in the U.S., are endlessly celebrated in Western media, with figures like Teddy Roosevelt and John James Audubon placed at the forefront. They’re not without their merits, especially at a time when some of the world’s most powerful countries refuse to take action on climate change. What often goes underexamined or ignored, though, is the deeply racist, settler-colonial history–and very much still the present– that has informed the “conservationist” movement in the US and much of the North Atlantic.

What have been and still are the ecological and human costs, particularly for Indigenous and Black people in the US, of this settler-colonial ‘conservation’ movement? Why, in the American collective memory, is the ‘conservation movement’ often credited to powerful white figures of the 19th and early 20th centuries, despite the extreme environmental and social destruction that they helped caused? And why should there be a need for a settler-driven conservation movement when the original inhabitants of, what we now know as the US and Canada already very often already had systems of ‘conservationism’ in place?

On this episode, we study the racist origins of Western conservation movements, primarily in the United States; how the conservation movement and romanticization of nature have served the settler-colonial project; how these histories continue to inform certain currents of the mainstream climate activism of the present; and what an inclusive, decolonial understanding of environmental conservation can look like.

Our guest is UConn professor Prakash Kashwan.

Guest

Prakash Kashwan is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Research Program on Economic and Social Rights, which is part of the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of Democracy in the Woods: Environmental Conservation and Social Justice in India, Tanzania, and Mexico (published by Oxford University Press) and a Co-Editor of the journal Environmental Politics.

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Show Notes

American environmentalism’s racist roots have shaped global thinking about conservation

Prakash Kashwan | September 2, 2020 | The Conversation

Environmentalism's Racist History

Jedediah Purdy | August 13, 2015 | The New Yorker 

How Conservation Became Colonialism

Alexander Zaitchik | July 16, 2018 | Foreign Policy

The Great Outdoors Was Made for White People

Marya T. Mtshali | May 28, 2021 | The Nation

Return The National Parks To The Tribes

David Treuer | April 12, 2021 | The Atlantic

Can Indigenous Leadership Save Our National Parks and Monuments?

Jacqueline Keeler | October 11, 2021 | Sierra

The Racist Legacy Many Birds Carry

Darryly Fears | June 3, 2021 | The Washington Post

The Myth of John James Audubon

Gregory Nobles | July 31, 2020 | Audubon Magazine

Pulling Down Our Monuments

Michael Brune | July 22, 2020 | Sierra Club

Sierra Club Says It Must Confront the Racism of John Muir

Lucy Tompkins | July 22, 2020 | The New York Times

Revealing the Past to Create the Future

David Yarnold | Fall 2020 | Audubon Magazine

People of Color and Their Constraints to National Parks Visitation [PDF]

David Scott and KangJae Jerry Lee | 2018 | The George Wright Forum

How This Photo of Theodore Roosevelt in Hunting Gear Helped Jump-Start the American Conservation Movement

Philip Dray | May 1, 2018 | TIME

The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of Overpopulation

Charles C. Mann | January 2018 | Smithsonian Magazine

Prince William Says African Population Pressures Affect Continent’s Wildlife Conservation Efforts, Critics Say Remarks are ‘Underpinned By Race and Class Prejudice’

Nicole Duncan-Smith | November 28, 2021 | Atlanta Black Star

Experts critique Prince William’s ideas on Africa population

Edna Mohamed | November 30, 2021 | Al Jazeera

Wallace Stegner : Environmentalism Remains the Key For the Emblematic California Writer

Steve Proffitt | June 7, 1992 | Los Angeles Times

Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner, and Other Essays - A Tribal Voice

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn | 1996 | University of Wisconsin Press

Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India’s Poorest Districts

P. Sainath | 1996

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here.

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