I would like to acknowledge that this project was developed on and concerns the ancestral lands of Coast Salish peoples, land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip, and Muckleshoot nations past and present. As this project develops, I recognize that it is crucial to honor with gratitude the land itself and the Coast Salish peoples.

Forage Narratives

August 13, 2019

Thank you for your help with this project. I welcome your feedback, insights, and questions!

CONTENTS

These materials include:

• Introduction

• Background

• Possible Partnerships

• Revised Timeline

• Possible Futures

• Questions

• Heuristic

INTRODUCTION

Why? Why is this project important? What is at stake? What motivates this project? What do you want to accomplish? What are your aims, objectives, and desired outcomes?

By inviting people to walk together, notice together, and share (if they so choose) diverse ways of seeing and knowing plants, this project opens up a shared space for discussion and co-creation of narratives about the past, present, and future of plant-human entanglement, interdependence, and interactions in this region and beyond. Plants have accompanied humans everywhere, and as our constant companions, they reveal our history as well, offering mute evidence of settler colonialism, redlining, gendered labor, etc. The aging fruit trees that lean over alleyways, the ruderal species that flourish alongside railroad tracks and freeways, and the volunteers that sprout from the pavement also attest to regional (and global) histories of interdependence. Of course, these entanglements draw attention across distances, linking people and plants across time and across geographic space as well.

What? What form will this project take?

The project itself will consist of a series of curated public walks, setting out from and returning to places like public libraries or museums, and guided, to the greatest extent possible, by community leaders from partner organizations. During the walk, community leaders will draw attention to plants that are present or conspicuously absent, talk about a particular community’s relationship with that/those plants, and invite participants to reflect on what they feel, notice, or think about as they walk. The walk will end with a chance for participants to share their reflections, and each participant will receive a slip of paper they can write on and use to preserve and further share these reflections.

BACKGROUND

Initially, I was hesitant to include anything about my own background, but I was inspired by other fellows, particularly Meshell, Jason, and Candice, whose willingness to share salient information about their own personal and professional histories helped me to better understand the trajectory of their projects. As I’ve worked on developing this project, I’ve begun to realize how much my personal and professional background have informed this project.

In the spirit of acknowledging and exploring multiple ways of knowing, I want to begin by divulging some of the family history that has a direct bearing on my work. All of my great grand-parents were living and working in the Pacific Northwest by the early 1900s, and as I grew up in a rural working-class community in South King County, on (re)forested¹ land that bordered a large tract of protected wetland², intergenerational knowledge shaped my relationship with the forest that surrounded our house and yard. The stories my grandparents told me about the plants and animals we encountered may have been part of my inheritance, but they were neither produced nor owned by my grandparents—they were collaborations that combined inherited plantlore drawn from a range of places and people and passed down orally. This oral tradition comprised exchanges of knowledge within and across communities, first-hand experience, and in later generations, book learning. Over time, I began to see that this way of walking, seeing, and knowing that I had always taken for granted—a whole way of being and perceiving—which had initially seemed entirely separate from my scholarly work, was actually present in academe, albeit in fragments, scattered across different fields of study, uprooted from the places it sprang from, and separated from the voices that produced it.

Meanwhile, mobility and displacement (among many other factors to complex to unpack here) have made it hard for many people to maintain these kinds of oral traditions, and when they are not shared, they cannot cross-pollinate with other traditions, and as a result, whole bodies of knowledge along with their stories of entanglement are lost. My project is an attempt to draw together different strands of discourse into a variegated whole, create spaces where people can share plant narratives of all kinds, increase attention to environmental justice across communities, and attend to their surroundings.

ARTEFACTS AND DELIVERABLES

Every participant in a walk will receive a card with information about that specific walk, the project itself, and space for their own reflections. The card will also contain contact information about how to share their reflections, either in a written or spoken form (this is why I may have to make a podcast to support this project—see below in the “Possible Futures” section.) I want to accommodate the mode of response most comfortable for participants, so while some kind of online presence seems necessary, I’ll want to tailor that presence to the needs of participants.

SOME POSSIBLE PARTNERSHIPS

Who are your collaborators? In what ways will they be involved? What relationships and what forms of relationship does this project necessitate? What understandings underpin your collaboration?

Locations

Seattle Public Libraries, Seattle Parks, King County Parks, Hugo House, Othello UW-Commons, African American History Museum (grounds and neighborhood), Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center (grounds and neighborhood), Wing Luke Museum (neighborhood), MOHAI (grounds), Nordic Museum (grounds and neighborhood)

Possible Community Leader/Partner Contacts

Obviously, the organizations above may have suggestions, but I’m also researching individual artists and scholars, visiting authors, etc, and I’m open to suggestions

REVISED TIMELINE

Summer Quarter

Continue to research and develop partnerships, draft a document with partners delineating shared expectations. Work with partners to scout locations and draft a few planned walks. If community leader partners agree to be recorded, draft an agreement about how they will be used, and possibly begin recording on-site interviews.

Autumn Quarter

Contact host locations for walks, and propose dates and times for walks in the spring. Continue work with community leader partners. Do some practice runs to anticipate potential problems.

Winter Quarter

Start publicizing walks, develop press release materials. Develop online presence. (This could also be a time begin developing the Outside/Inside Art Museum Walks.)

Spring Quarter

Walking tours commence! (Possibly accompanied by an ongoing podcast—see below.)

POSSIBLE FUTURES (MORE ARTEFACTS AND DELIVERABLES)

Right now, I’m still brainstorming possibilities. During this past Spring Quarter, I participated in the library’s Digital Storytelling Fellowship, in order to learn about podcasting, since that seems like one direction I could take this project. What a podcast lacks in embodied experience of a place, it makes up for in reaching a wider audience. A podcast can also allow listeners to hear many voices, and if those voices were linked to an online map (perhaps with photos of plants in places), it might be possible to create something like an audio walking tour of different places. To this end,

QUESTIONS

(See presentation)

HEURISTIC

What are the potential benefits, both in the short term and in the long term? Who benefits? Who should benefit?

In the short term, this project invites people to pay attention to each other and the plants they may encounter everyday (perhaps without noticing them.) This project is really about attention: these walks are a chance to pay attention to the living beings that surround us now and have been where we are before us (human, plant, and animal.) Ideally, this attention benefits all participants, and hopefully, eventually, the entire region benefits from slightly raised awareness of human and environmental concerns.

What are the potential detriments, both in the short term and the in long term? How might we mitigate against potential drawbacks and/or obviate pitfalls?

One concern is that one narrative or particularly loud participant will eclipse others—while I feel equipped to handle that kind of interaction in a classroom, I feel less practiced in supporting other speakers to handle those kinds of situations.

Another concern is that attention to some narratives may obscure others. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about inclusion, and also about the understandable reticence some may have about participating in something like this. I’m still thinking.

Who’s represented? Who’s invited to participate? Who is authorized to take leadership roles? Who should be involved and in what capacity?

What forms of accountability or mechanisms of transparency will need to be established?

I’m working on a document to share with all partner organizations, but it’s a work in progress, that is evolving as I work on developing those partnerships. I want to work with those partners to develop a set of expectations and protocols that work for everyone involved.

What are the logistical challenges involved? What institutional or bureaucratic barriers might present themselves? How might they be addressed?

Publicity! One of the challenges I anticipate lies in crafting materials that appeal to everyone interested. I also agonize over things like what time of day is most convenient for people who have different kinds of community, family, and work obligations. However, conversations with community partners should help with this.