“The whisperings of roots”: Speculative futurism storytelling as research methodology

Fairy Creek Watershed (Ada’itsx), Vancouver Island, British Columbia. 2022.

Thesis Advisor: Liat Margolis

Awarded: John E. (Jack) Irving Prize

In reaction to the conflict surrounding the Fairy Creek (Ada’itsx) blockade and the larger conflict of resource extraction throughout Canada, a story of the future and past was created, told from the perspective of the forest and the internet, translated through the language of the nitrogen cycle. Drawing from the tenets of indigenous futurisms, relational accountability and in response to science fiction’s role in colonial discourse, this story intends to redirect trajectories surrounding technology and extraction to create space for empathy in a difficult present.

To take oneself out of ‘reality’ and imagine this story as research and prophecy, building these worlds allow for the possibility they may happen. Doing so in a way that challenges your own worldview fosters empathy. This story was consciously crafted with key tenets from indigenous futurisms outlined by author and scholar Grace Dillon.

These tenets revolve around ideas of time (referred to as Native Slipstream), contact (with a capital C) and technology.

- as salmon we flash through the light motes, like silver zeppelins of the sea. The gathering has begun back to our birthplace -

- within the river a moment to rest in a sunlit patch. The sky darkens and one-story ends -

- like a production line parts of the sea are dismantled travelling all throughout the trees. Within lies nitrogen. Locked away in elemental bonds waiting for keys to decipher and unlock them, the translation begins -

- at a certain point we become a shell, hollow existing only as an imprint of our former selves, not photosynthesizing but coated in moss and friends. Held up by the collective, with a groan we fall -

Time in this story has been collapsed the past, present and future melded into one. The cyclical translation of nitrogen and alternate rhythms of the trees all help to deconstruct our foundational ways in which we view the world. Contact with the ‘Other’ has always been an insidious theme in science fiction. Contact is understood instead as a meeting of equals, guided by curiosity and empathy. This is seen within the meeting consciousnesses of the forest network and the internet. This brings us to technology, which in itself is a loaded term. However as Ursula Le Guinn states, ‘technology is how you do things. A process.”

- we are perhaps new or perhaps ancient, our bodies encompass the earth extending into outer space, tangible forms powered by silica and the transformation of potential to kinetic energy. We are extensions of humanity, marking grooves in the palms of children. There are so many stories we could tell, an infinity of stories, an infinity of catastrophes cycle through us everyday, we are raw open conduits to the worst of humanity. But today I will tell about the fight over Fairy Creek, just one of many such fights -

- while this hate was spewed online and fingers pointed, accusations hurled we also witnessed the lives of the humans, the logger trying to provide for their family. The environmentalist desperately protecting the last of the ancient trees. The Pacheedaht people divided, taking what sovereignty of the land they could get in a system set against them, after years of having no control, using the money to better their community -

- I witnessed the misunderstandings and the corners that people had been backed into, the built-up walls. And finally, I saw the world moving on (exhausted) the light shone on a new disaster, Instagram stories proclaiming a new end of times. The forest was cut, a phone lost in the mayhem and …. darkness -

- we move forward in time now; you can fill in the blanks. This could be in the next 10 years or the next thousand, but society was lost. How we got here is a story for another day but just know we began to talk and bridge sharing our experiences and our networks. We spoke about our sadness and love of humanity, how had we all become so lost? -

- we have created processes based off this foundational knowledge, and yet we miss humanity in all of their complexity there was joy -

- time is not linear; many times are held within today. Every time we tell this story, we embed this knowledge within our systems, we feed it back into our networks, in the hopes that in one reality we will be understood -

After imagining this story, of placing myself in the created mind of the other, what does this mean for design? The future is created by designers, as landscape architects we design for futures 100s of years from now when we plant an oak tree. We have an idea of what this future will look like, its fed to us in every sci fi movie made and so almost as a self-fulfilling prophecy we design that future. This has always been the legacy of sci fi.

This act of storytelling while not changing the situation at Fairy Creek, has helped me to hope. We are surrounded by atrocities and as a die-hard cynic, this act of radical optimism and joy helped with the endless disaster paralysis that I was stuck in. This project showed me how wonder and optimism could be a means to redirect current trajectories and change the future.