Headwaters Magazine – Fall 2018

Headwaters The University of Vermont’s Student-Run Environmental Publication

Inside: The Emerald Ash Borer in Vermont

Fall 2018 Issue

Featured Artist: Alexis Martinez “Being an artist has always been in my nature; being an environmental artist has been something I am learning about and expanding on everyday. I struggle with the concept that the physical art I create is not necessarily sustainable. This has made me realize my transition from being an artist to an eco-artist. One environmental issue I am particularly concerned with is water. Water scarcity is an extensive worldwide issue that lacks serious attention, involvement, and solutions. I hope to bring visual thought to that issue and have the audience—the world—connect emotion through it.”

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Feature 8. A New Dawn: A Portrait of Vermont after the Emerald Ash Borer

By Avery Lentini

Contents 4. New Birds in New England

By Jasper Barnes

5. Smoke and Mirrors: Reframing Wildfire Coverage in a New Climate Era

By Emmett Gartner

12. In the Name of the Land: Colonial Roots of the Conservation Movement

By John Strek

13. Navigating the Wilderness: Uncovering Sexism in the U.S. Forest Service

By Nina Loutchko

15. Dance for Resilience: Reflecting on Sexual Violence behind the Extraction of Conflict Minerals

By Brenna Reagan

19. Thoughtlessness and Nourishment

By Jessica Savage

23. Collages in Crisis

By Mak Baker

29. Taken: A Closer Look into the Global Wildlife Trade

By Julia Criscuolo

31. Renewed Colonialism: Examining the Global Implications of Renewable Energy Development

By Lindsey Stinson

34. Becoming

By Brooke Van Buten

Photo by Katelyn Lipton

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Dear Reader, Thank you for opening this magazine.

We hope you can resonate with the ideas produced by the network of writers, editors, artists, business people, and designers that placed their talented and steadfast hands on the copy you hold with your own.

We grapple, as editors, with the boundary between honest environmental angles and work that perpetuates the fear and anxiety characteristic of our time. We place a critical eye on the writings of global wildlife trade, deadly mining, and art featuring life after the ozone.

We cannot assuage the reality of a changing climate, but we can find nuance—we can reveal pockets of hope and interest beyond our seemingly settled dread.

We find deep love and passion for this magazine through its contributors. Each writer and artist delves into the great challenges of our time with brilliant inquiry and curiosity. Headwaters is a house for people who seek truth and understanding, and to uncover creative perspectives. We run with stories that may impassion others to find new birds in their local wood, to speak out against all forms of injustice, even in the remote wilderness, and to sit around the dinner table, full of desire to find connection and meaning in a daily meal.

We are a band of learners and we ask you to sit with us for a little while and engage with the thoughts and inner workings of those who can only be entrusted with the delicate home we all share.

Our ideas and art flow from ourselves to one another, and now, thankfully, to you. We do hope you enjoy, and we cannot wait for you to come back to the headwaters of the world’s new and fierce environmentalists.

With love,

Masthead Editors-in-Chief Jess Savage Julia Bailey-Wells Treasurer Jessica NeJame Managing Designers Gretchen Saveson Katelyn Lipton Managing Editors Brenna Reagan Caelyn Radziunas Emmett Gartner Jessica NeJame Maya Bostwick McKenna Murray Business Associates Abi Baker Grace Mungenast Jill Reynolds Rebecca Goldstein Sydney Decker Designers Adela Miller Braden DeForge Eileen Brickell Jay Griffith Taylor Ehwa Cover Art: Acrylic painting of an emerald ash borer

by Katelyn Lipton Copyright © 2018 Headwaters Magazine UVMHeadwaters.org Find us @UVMHeadwaters on Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram

Jess Savage and Julia Bailey-Wells University of Vermont ‘19 and ‘20 Editors-in-Chief of Headwaters Magazine

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Please pass this magazine on to someone new!

NEW BIRDS IN NEW ENGLAND

BY JASPER BARNES

T

ake a walk in Centennial Woods in spring or summer and you will find many birds. You may hear the repeating “teakettle-teakettle” song of a Carolina Wren, the territorial “peter-peter-peter” cries of the Tufted Titmouse, the varied mimicking sounds of the Northern Mockingbird, or the distinctive whistles of a Northern Cardinal.

Maybe you will see a Red-breasted Woodpecker on a tree, or a Turkey Vulture soaring overhead. These are common birds in Vermont, and people might be surprised to hear that all of them would have been a rare sight in the Green Mountain State just a hundred years ago.

The ubiquitous, aforementioned Northern Cardinal is a good example of this northward range expansion. Books published in the 1800s report them as being extremely rare north of New York City, and many considered them escaped pets when observed in areas like New England.

One book, Frank Chapman’s Bird Life, even says that the Northern Cardinal “seems...out of place amid snowy surroundings.”

So, when did this all change? The first edition of the Atlas of Breeding Birds of Vermont reports that Vermont’s first cardinal sighting was in the winter of 1958, at a Montpelier feeder. By the atlas’s publication in 1985, the birds had spread to all but the northeastern part of Vermont, and had 74 possible breeding sites. By the second edition, published in 2013, they had expanded even further. A whopping 229 possible breeding sites were found across Vermont.

This rapid expansion begs the question, though: why did Northern Cardinals start to move north? There are three possible reasons, none of which are mutually exclusive. Warming climate is an obvious one, especially since the bird is native to the southeastern part of the continent, according to the Audubon Society. Increased numbers of bird feeders may also provide an explanation, since they offer a year-round source of food for seed-eating birds like cardinals. Finally, there has been an increase in suitable habitat. Cardinals prefer edge habitats, which are widespread in Vermont, but can also tolerate others, including subur-

Art by Adela Miller

ban areas—which are increasingly common in the state.

The decidedly less charismatic Turkey Vulture provides another fantastic example of range expansion into the region. It was only rarely found in Vermont until the 1960s, when it began to appear in much greater numbers.

Although the exact cause is debated, it has been suggested that warmer temperatures, a rise in white-tailed deer populations, and increased amounts of roadkill as a food source might have played a significant role in this bird’s northward movement.

Finally, the Red-bellied Woodpecker is worth noting for its rapid expansion into Vermont. No individuals were recorded until 1978, and between 1985 and 2014, the Red-bellied Woodpecker population increased by 1,800 percent.The woodpecker’s northward movement is notable for another reason, however. It has to do with a biological concept known as Bergmann’s Rule. Essentially, the rule states that animals in warmer areas have larger extremities and smaller overall size to facilitate heat loss, while individuals in cooler areas have small extremities and larger size to conserve heat. A 2014 study showed that northern and southern Red-bellied Woodpeckers have very similar proportions. Were Bergmann’s Rule in effect, the birds would be larger and stockier in the Northeast, but its absence indicates that the warming climate may be a factor in range expansion.

Picture yourself in the Vermont of 100 years from now.

The forests have been changing in composition, moving from the beeches and maples of today to the oaks and hickories of tomorrow. Bird species will probably have changed, too, but in what way is anyone’s guess. Maybe, for example, more southerly species could spread through the state. May we hear the excited chatter of the Acadian Flycatcher or the “bob-WHITE!” of the Northern Bobwhite in addition to the calls of familiar species like Blue Jays and chickadees?

Alternatively, could human influences make it hard for all but the species most accustomed to us to survive? Only time will tell. H

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&

SMOKE SMOKE

MIRRORS MIRRORS

REFRAMING WILDFIRE COVERAGE IN A NEW CLIMATE ERA

By Emmett Gartner The smoke clears and they appear, prodding around in the ash-laden muck. It is an image we have become accustomed to over the past few decades; stoic figures clad in bright yellow shirts and pants, tools in hand, capped with a colorful collage of hard hats. A few action shots of arms or legs in motion, then the camera pans out, swapping the hero with the beast. Towering flames fill the screen, flicking through the hazy sky like a jubilant dog’s tail. Perhaps we witness a plane or helicopter blitz in from out of frame, confronting the beast from above by spitting a concoction of water, retardant, or foam as it dips down just beyond the tail’s reach. Our newscaster appears. They package the images we saw with an acreage amount, containment percentage, list of evacuated areas, total structural damage, and an interview or two with a government official or devastated local resident. Afterwards, weather at six. The fire story is quickly forgotten.

When a wildfire is reported on national television, this is the approximate formula the network will follow.

Google search NBC, CNN, or ABC in conjunction with “wildfires,” and you will find an ocean of video clips with raging flames on each cover, affirming this narrative. More science-motivated news networks may include statistics on wildfires and their relation to climate change, mentioning that plants and downed timber—prime fuel for wildfires— are getting drier each fire season, and that lightning strike

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frequency increases by 12 percent with every one degree Celsius rise in global temperature. An angle like this may appear to be more analytical and satisfy the question of why wildfires are happening, but something is still missing.

What news outlets often leave out of this narrative is the human impact felt in the aftermath of these infernos.

We fixate on chaos and destruction for the same reason movies like Geostorm, The Day After Tomorrow, or 2012 premiere each year, despite exhausting the same ordinary, tired plot. Chaos and destruction sell.

To get a firsthand perspective on how this narrative impacts fire prone communities, I spoke with Darcy Long-Curtiss, a city councilor for The Dalles, Oregon. She is familiar with a news cycle that offers “a quick blip of repeated clips and pictures” of fires followed up with the obvious fact that “there are bigger fires in Oregon than ever before.” Her city sits on the Columbia River Gorge in Wasco County, where the nearby Cascade Mountains halt precipitation rolling in from the Pacific Coast and transform land covered with towering old growth forests into beautiful, rolling shrubland in a matter of kilometers. The dry but fertile land of Wasco County is home to 236,435 acres of crops and a host of wildfires each summer.

On July 17, 2018, a fire sparked near a Wasco County electric substation. In a matter of 48 hours, the entity known as the Substation Fire scorched roughly 50,000

Art by Braden DeForge

acres of land. One individual died on their tractor while they attempted to protect local wheat fields and gut the organic material between the fire to cut off its fuel source.

This is as far into the story as CNN was willing to go, offering only the picture of an undamaged tractor and billowing smoke behind it for dramatic imagery. NBC and ABC published similar profiles. The story of the nameless individual was not investigated by any of the networks.

In another story on wildfires this summer, titled, “Why Wildfires are Becoming the New Normal,” CNN displayed a rapid barrage of highlight reels no different than what you would expect to see Monday morning on SportsCenter.

Just like that, Long-Curtiss’s news prophecy was fulfilled.

Wasco County residents suffered this summer—anyone with a working knowledge of fire knows it. So why doesn’t the media offer something beyond surface level reporting? After reading stories like CNN’s, it is clear to see where Long-Curtiss’s frustration emanates from, as the important details are almost always glossed over. Unless you grew up around these conditions, this can be hard to realize, even if one day you encounter them first-hand as I did last summer.

In the spring of 2018, I accepted a position with the US Forest Service to work on a trail maintenance crew based thirty minutes outside of Wasco County. I paused my life on the East Coast but took my mid-Atlantic perspective with me.

I first heard about the Substation Fire and the human life it claimed while driving back from an average day of work in the Mount Hood National Forest with my trail crew partner. To break the silence of the car trips, we put on public radio and let it fill the air. That day’s fire report baffled me. Who in their right mind would get between a blazing inferno and its prey with no protection? Are economic profits ever worth risking one’s life? Where were the firefighters to prevent this from happening? One month in Oregon, and I thought I understood the complexities of this brand-new land.

The news reports I grew up watching did not train me to investigate this disaster with care, nor did my time out West orient me towards the daily fear many Oregonians face each summer. One month before the Substation Fire sprung, I attended a week-long training to become a basic wildland firefighter, in case the Forest Service ever needed to yank me from the trails and drop me on a fire line. I

camped out with 40 other state and federal employees at a Boy Scout retreat on the east side of Mount Hood to absorb hours of powerpoints, lectures and demonstrations by seasoned wildland firefighters with the ultimate goal of sending us out to fight a half acre fire and earn our certifications. When that day came, I felt like a soldier on the morning of a battle: nervous and afraid, but hungry for glory. Fire became my nemesis and I was its conqueror. Fighting this speck of a fire instilled a false sense of security and superiority within an environment rife with flames. Like the grandiose imagery that circulates across TV screens, I let fire feed my eyes and ego, not my conscience.

I did not understand that I was also a victim in and perpetrator of the sensationalism of our media circus. For this piece, I originally intended to unearth the courageous identities of wildland firefighters that I met during my basic training, with the ultimate goal of explaining their deity-level importance in this age of heightened wildfires.

Their humble realities made me reconsider.

My first interview was with the lead instructor of my fire training, Rick Fletcher, a permanent forest officer for the Oregon Department of Forestry. The interview started with some basic questions about his job and followed the path I hoped it would: where and when his fire habit manifested, how he moved up the ladder of fire positions, a description of the largest blaze he ever came face-to-face with, and the flourishing comradery that comes along with the job.

When I asked “How does the inherent danger of your job impact your life?” I felt a stark shift in the conversation.

Fletcher hesitated for a second, then broke down the misdirection within my words: danger exists everywhere, and in firefighting, like any job, you are trained year-round to handle the responsibilities that come with it. We explored how my train of thought led to the assumption that in a burning world, those trying to extinguish it deserve the spotlight.

Fletcher explained that there are a couple of extremes the media tend to embrace when covering wildfires. The first is the perception that wildland firefighters are innate heroes and belong on a pedestal, even though they are simply doing what they get paid to do: a job much less hairy than it is made out to be. This misplaced emphasis neglects those truly suffering from loss in an incident. Explaining the second extreme, Fletcher exposed a tendency for the

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media to blame firefighters when fires explode out of control. Reasoning for these bursts in growth does not lie in complacency or neglect, but a thinly spread reserve of personnel that are doing the best they can among intensifying fire seasons. The media does have some positive impact on the firefighting world, Fletcher added.

It helps “boost public relations” between them and the civilians they protect and gives “positive attention when more funding is required for fire resources.”

When I talked to Long-Curtiss and Fletcher on the phone, they painted an outline of the coverage that should be broadcasted after a fire passes. All mentions of the fire should be accompanied with directions on how to provide aid to victims. Instead of highlighting the fire’s peak, we should see a reporter standing in the center of its aftermath with the sea of crispened hills cascading behind them, because a simple acreage statistic does not portray this image.

To explain what these dead zones mean to communities, there should be a detailed description of the following travesties that Long-Curtiss’s neighbors face: wheat takes two years to cultivate, and any economic recovery from the fire’s devastation will take three years, if not more, to initiate. If farmers want to receive compensation for their lost crops on any given year, they have to guess how much insurance they will need from insurance companies before disaster strikes. A swell in unpredictable fire seasons shrouds this figure and caused many Wasco County farmers to lack sufficient coverage last summer.

Tom McCoy, a farmer who lost 300 acres to the Substation Fire, had a $91,000 insurance policy, but fears that it will not equate to the excess yield he anticipated from an especially prosperous season. During events like the Substation Fire, ranchers drop everything to go and save someone else’s field, even if it means risking their own lives. Wildfires as destructive as this one do not translate to speed bumps in profits, but a complete derailment of multi-generational lifestyles.

Searching for humanity in wildfire stories is not a groundbreaking concept. Templates for this level of intricacy already exist but are not widely circulated. Local news stations in Oregon and beyond provide a level of investigation that probes these questions and puts the victims at the forefront. KGW, an Oregonian NBC satellite, conducted extensive interviews with those afflicted by the Substa-

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tion Fire. In the national sphere, news organizations like PBS and the Associated Press have multiple “returning to rubble” stories that profile residents and the restructuring process they initiate in the wake of wildfires. However, national stories like these tend to focus on one state: California. Stories outside of California that involve just as much destruction and invoke just as much heartbreak as the Substation Fire are diluted by images of Californian tragedy.

As wildfires increase in frequency and severity, there should be a referendum on the current commonplace model in reporting them. Our world would benefit from a news angle that takes into account the whole picture: before, during, and after catastrophe strikes. That is the only way to fully comprehend the havoc wildfires wreak and the urgency that must be taken in addressing them.

In case you think that living on the East Coast relieves you of this burden, know that wildfire smoke was detected as far east as Maine this summer, with residents in Washington D.C. and Baltimore emerging from their homes to the smell of smoke one August morning. Wildfire emanates through the air we breathe, is combated with the taxes we pay, and felt by friends and family across the country.

Similar to climate change, our collective blind eye does not diminish fire’s threat in our world today. H

A New

Dawn A Portrait of Vermont after the Emerald Ash Borer

By Avery Lentini

Humankind stands—and has always stood—in the midst of a crossroads, an almost impossibly intricate collection of systems called Earth. As the Abenaki creation story goes, humans were first made from pipestone and then from the ash tree. The ash reflects an elusive, yet undeniable aspect of humanity, and is something that links us as a collective people to the natural world.

The grim reality, however, of human presence on this planet is that our actions eventually catch up with us to threaten the integrity of our only common home. In Vermont, we face an especially critical moment, one in which an invasive species known as the emerald ash borer threatens to wipe out the ash tree, the very species from which the earliest humans were believed to be made. Historically, it is because of events like this, ones that result in overwhelming environmental loss, that we begin to detach from the world past our doorsteps. The landscape consequently loses

its wonder and instead becomes a stinging reminder of our own shortcomings.

When we lose this deeply-rooted connection to the natural world, we inherently lose a part of what makes us human. I am not from Vermont, but the intense bond to the environment—and particularly its forested ecosystems—was tangible from the moment I arrived in this state. It spans cultures, socioeconomic statuses, and generations, and while each connection is unique, at the very core is an intrinsic reciprocity and respect for the land. It is for this reason, the fact that this inexplicably intense bond between Vermonters and the environment has now been cast into jeopardy, that I find the story of the emerald ash borer to be so compelling.

In the early months of 2018, the non-native, wood-boring emerald ash borer beetle first reached Vermont. The insect, originating in China, was brought to the United

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Map by Gretchen Saveson and Braden DeForge

States in the early 2000s and now threatens something many Vermonters hold so dear—the integrity of the forest.

While research is still being done, studies predict a complete loss of ash trees in 20 states as soon as the year 2050. I sat down with Anthony D’Amato, Director of the Forestry Program at the University of Vermont, to learn a bit about what this means for the state of Vermont and the future of its forests.

D’Amato begins by painting a vivid picture of the magnitude of this recent ecological threat, from its first landing on American soil in Detroit, to its quick spread throughout the country to over 30 states. “Despite almost

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two decades now of effort to try to contain it and limit its spread, it just seems to show up in a new state every year,” D’Amato tells me in a tone both serious and matter-of-fact.

The speed at which the insect seems to be spreading and infesting ecosystems across the United States is alarming, and I ask him how the ash borer presents a unique set of concerns here in Vermont: “I think the concern with any of these introduced species, whether it’s a plant, insect, or disease, is the enemy release hypothesis—that there is no longer any of the natural parasitoids or other controls that would have kept it in check in its native range. And then once it is there it’s quite effective in killing ash. It tends to kill the largest ash first and work its way through some of the rest of the population.” He does not seem grim or pessimistic in his delivery of this information, but he certainly does not sugar-coat the reality of the situation.

D’Amato then goes on to speak about how we arrived at this predicament: “It’s certainly not a new thing, but I think the challenges, really [began] in the 1980s with global trade increasing.” With this increase in globalization, we have seen a correlative exponential increase in the number of non-native insects and diseases introduced each year.

Speaking a bit on the origin of the ash borer, D’Amato adds, “They think it came with shipping crates. Wooden pallets tend to be the main introduction for a lot of these very insects.”

We talk about the reaction Vermonters have been having to the introduction of the emerald ash borer, and D’Amato expresses his concern about our present treatment methods. His tone shifts slightly, and I can tell that he is worried: “[We need to make sure] that our reaction to the threat is not creating greater ecological impact than the actual threat. I feel like we know so much about how to manage ecosystems sustainably, that sometimes we just throw it all out when there is a new threat.” D’Amato is talking about how, in response to the threat of the ash borer, property owners are taking matters into their own hands and chopping down the ash trees before the insect even reaches them—perhaps a bit prematurely he believes. “A lot of us think we should pump the breaks a bit on this; you can cut your ash trees, but make sure you’re doing it with the greater ecosystem in mind.” I can see that the issue of the emerald ash borer hits home for him on a personal level—he later goes on to tell me that this is true. He quips on a closing note, “don’t be rash about your ash!”

As with most environmental issues, the emerald ash borer presents a complex threat that does not have one clear-cut answer. I speak with Walter Poleman, another ecologist at the university, to get some perspective. Pole-

man’s expertise and passion within the field lies at the intersection between humans and the environment. In his own words, he studies where “human culture meets natural systems.” His background lends a particularly valuable lens towards understanding the complexity of the issue of the emerald ash borer, because it is so closely links to the cultural, environmental, and socio-economic institutions of Vermont.

We begin to talk about the many different uses the ash tree has in the state, painting a more vivid picture of what life would look like if the ash was lost completely: “It’s the perfect wood for baseball bats and hockey sticks and is used for many more utilitarian purposes where you need a strong, light wood. And it is very easy to split with an axe.

It just sort of pops when you do it because it’s very straight grained, and so a lot of people have a relationship with ash as a source of firewood. That’s been a double edged sword because it’s such an important source of firewood that it gets transported around the landscape and that becomes a vector for the spread of the ash borer. But as we also know, to the indigenous peoples of Vermont, the Abenaki, the ash is an incredibly useful material for making baskets.”

Poleman, though never wavering from his calm and collected exterior, expresses fear and concern regarding the future of the forests in light of this new threat, like many other Vermonters: “With all of our other environmental issues that are related to climate change, weather patterns, invasive species, and loss of native species, these are all just going to be another wound in the system, and I think for our collective psyche it’s going to have an impact.

“I just hope on some level that it might elicit our collective instincts around compassion and resilience because in the face of something like this, it’s easy to just throw up your hands and say, ‘there’s nothing we can do.’ But there are lots of things we can do. We can live with problems.

You know we can live in that messy area, and we can thrive there. There can actually, in some ways, be some silver lining to it, and maybe it’ll be in behavioral change and the way people think about our relationship with the natural world.” Poleman’s parting words resonate with me. After discussing such a heavy topic, one that elicits an almost universally dismal response about the future of our forests, it is comforting to hear the reminder that not all is lost.

Perhaps an important lesson to us all is that there is always something that can be done to save the integrity of the things closest to our hearts.

Different walks of life experience threats to the natural world in ways as diverse and complex as humankind itself. When the emerald ash borer’s presence in Vermont

is spoken of, the conversation is almost unequivocally one centered around scientific language, and little room is left for a less utilitarian perspective. It is true that the Emerald Ash Borer threatens the ecological balance of our forests, but is that all of the pain that would be felt with the loss of the ash tree? Isn’t there something more to the loss of a species, something, perhaps, more elusive than a set of numbers and statistics? Something felt more deeply at the core of our beings?

A valuable perspective too often left out of the whitewashed conversation around environmental issues in our own state is that of Vermont’s indigenous peoples. To whitewash is to neglect to give a platform to perspectives, stories, and voices that fall outside the white, typically Western, perspective. The vivid and, at times, painful histories of the treatment of people of color are pushed aside in order to make realities easier to swallow for those traditionally holding positions of power. It is commonplace for the blatant fact that land was stolen from indigenous people to be left out of the colonization narrative entirely.

It is for reasons like this that indigenous peoples continue to fight for recognition and to fight against injustices that still pervade today.

In order to understand a place and to thus connect with it on a deeper level, one must not forget the origin story of the white people’s arrival to the ‘New World’. To ignore those whose roots to this place trace back generations does a disservice to both the place so many of us call home, as well as to our collective humanity.

In hopes of better understanding the reach of the ash borer’s impact, I spoke with Don Stevens, Chief of the Nulhegan band of the Abenaki tribe. Having served within numerous organizations such as the Vermont Commission on American Affairs, the Attorney General’s Racial Disparity Panel, and the Sea Grant Panel to clean up Lake Champlain, Stevens is a very busy man. At the core of all his work, however, is a devotion to his culture and advocacy for Vermont’s indigenous peoples. I was honored to speak with such an important figure within the Abenaki community and learn about the unique ways people like Stevens have been working to ensure that Abenaki culture is passed down to future generations, especially in wake of threats like the emerald ash borer.

Our interview begins with a conversation on identity. As a non-Abenaki identifying individual, I present him with the question, “What does being Abenaki mean to you?”—a question I was aware was perhaps too complex to boil down to one simple answer, but one he answers both poignantly and candidly. “I guess that’s kind of a tough

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question because I never really thought about it. It’s just who you are. It is just like you being you, being proud of your heritage and somebody else being proud of theirs. To me, it’s just part of who you are so you need to be proud of your roots. If you don’t know where you’ve been, you don’t know where you’re going. You need your roots and foundations. It’s a blessing as it connects you to your ancestors and your people. It’s sometimes tough when you’re singled out because you’re different. And that’s what a lot of the people in our culture struggle with, because you walk in two worlds and you have a lot of outside pressures trying to suppress. I think it’s important though because if we don’t champion our culture then it will become extinct. It’s very important that we take the time to do what’s necessary, so our children have an easier time.”

As I mentioned earlier, the cultural bond Vermonters seem to have with their forests has been something I find beautiful. I ask Stevens to speak a bit about this from his own perspective: “Vermont is a special place because this is where our ancestors walked. We’ve been here for thousands of years, so all of the lands and forests…[connect] us together.

“The forest itself sustains people. We are people of the pines, and our people still walk among the forest now when all of that was taken away from us. The Creator gave us the responsibility to be stewards of the land, and if we were stewards of the land [it] would take care of us. So we took care of it, and it took care of us. That’s why we we’re so close to the land. When it was taken from us we could no longer access that land, [and] we felt like we had a heavy burden because we couldn’t be [the] stewards of that property because we couldn’t access it. So we felt like we let The Creator down. For us it gave us [a] connectedness with our ancestors and our roots.”

Stevens expresses a similar concern as both D’Amato and Poleman in his next few statements: “People have short-sightedness. Mother Earth will correct herself no matter what the situation is. It’s what we do to the earth.

We may not survive it.” His words come as both gentle and foreboding, a reminder that our individual actions have far-reaching implications.

“It would be a shame if we lost all those trees, which are part of our creation stories and also part of our culture. But we are [losing them]. The frustrating part is native people don’t have any control over that because if it was up to us we wouldn’t do that. But we can’t stop people from doing it because we don’t have control of those lands and those trees. It pull[s] your heart out, not being able to do anything about it. We’d rather work with people as much as we can to kind of say, ‘Do we need to destroy them all just for the potential that something might happen?’ Can we find another way?

“Part of our creation story is: the first humans were

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made out of pipestone and the second humans were made out of the [ash] tree… The promise of the ash tree [was] that it would always help us gather and be useful to work with us since we were all the same. [Black ash] were given to us in order to use to help us. So that’s part of our creation story. They’re our brothers and sisters because that’s where we came from. But they also are used for making our cradles... Everything that you could think of that we could make for utility, we would use ash and especially black ash.

So [losing these trees] would be devastating to our whole culture.”

Our conversation concludes as Chief Stevens tells me a beautiful story about caring for a seed, a metaphor for how we inherit the natural world from our ancestors and take upon the burden of protecting our home planet. The story he tells is one he teaches often to children within the Abenaki community, but its message resonates in the wake of the threat of the emerald ash borer as well. The transmission of this insect to the United States was not intentional, but the carelessness and hastiness in human actions are the reason that we are scrambling to pick up the pieces as ash trees, one of the most charismatic and utilitarian species in the forest, are dying. Humankind was given the responsibility to be stewards of the land, but, Stevens warns, we are losing touch with the lakes and streams and lands and forests that support us.

When we feel less of an emotional connection to something, we are less likely to take up the burden of its preservation. The emerald ash borer is a lesson in understanding, both of the complexity of the natural world’s function, as well as of the ways in which we carry the burdens of a changing world. At the very core of it all, we must face the reality that we lose a piece of ourselves, a piece of our humanity, when we lose a piece of the forest.

It is easy to revere the magnificence of the natural world when it is intact, when it is cared for and supported. Our almost blissful ignorance begins to slips away when we to realize that the Earth is a fragile network and our rose-tinted vision gives way to a slightly more ominous reality. It is easy to feel a connection to the Earth when it is beautiful, but how do we react when that beauty lost? Do our core values and better judgement maintain when we encounter something that causes us great fear, something that we have never encountered before? As we progress and advance as a species in our own right, we inherently must face what scares us the most head-on. H

In The Name of the Land Colonialist Roots of the Conservation Movement

By John Strek Cash-cropping large plots of land, wide-scale deforestation, the mass hunting of native species—though early colonial powers practiced these and other forms of environmental degradation, this era also gave rise to control and alleged protection of natural reserves through conservation. Colonialism is defined by Mirriam-Webster as the economic, political, and social policies by which an imperial power maintains or extends its control over other areas or peoples. It impacts environmental degradation and induces terrible social injustices.

Colonialist ideology appears in past and current conservation as the disregard for the indigenous in the alleged pursuit of environmental protection, and perhaps more genuinely, in pursuit of maximizing control. Although many of today’s environmentalists may believe that we are philosophically and practically far from the colonial powers that openly pillaged the land, conservation as advocated by some members of the modern environmental movement remains a manifestation of colonialist spirit through the alleged protection of land at the expense of its people.

Conservation can serve as vindication for colonial powers’ control of land and disregard for its native people. This power imbalance between indigenous groups and European settlers unfolded in the Caribbean Leeward Islands, which attracted Western powers with the rich natural resources in their dense rainforests. Colonizing nations issued environmental protections limiting resource extraction, but more to establish control the over the land and the people of the islands than to facilitate genuine ecological preservation. For example, in 1702, Great Britain began logging in the Leeward Islands, on the grounds that the practice might flood towns on lower ground and cause soil erosion. Though ecologically true, similar protections quickly diffused to surrounding islands, fueled by the same scientific knowledge and desire to protect economically valuable resources. Initially, the British Crown directed their colonists to allow the native Carib people to “remain undisturbed in their cottages and grounds,” that is, until mid-18th century, when the settlers realized that the land inhabited by the indigenous people would serve them better for natural

resource development in its extent and quality. At this new knowledge, the British drew up plans to expand into and settle on the Carib land, betraying their initial boundaries with native groups and exposing their hopes to control the land rather than protect it. The age of colonialism provided an incubating space for the budding conservationist mindset, which excuses the expulsion of native peoples in the name of environmental preservation.

The current environmental movement, some sects of which strongly support conservation efforts, demonstrate this same colonial disregard for indigenous peoples. In April of 2016, the United Kingdom Rainforest Foundation released a report that details the conflict between state sanctioned “eco-guards,”park rangers and local people in the Congo Basin. In wildlife reserves, indigenous groups cannot exercise sovereignty over their native land because they are threatened by rangers and guards armed with military-style equipment and weapons intended to protect the reserve from poachers. In December 2013, a local man was shot and killed by guards of the Kaziranga National Park in the Congo Basin when he attempted to retrieve his livestock that had wandered into the park.

In another incident, a seven-year-old boy from a nearby village was walking home on a road that borders the park when he was shot in the leg by guards. The park acknowledged their mistake and paid for his medical expenses, but the boy may never walk again. While efforts seek to end poaching in the hopes of preserving animal species, such efforts often instead disrupt and damage local indigenous communities.

To brandish weapons in the name of conservation is to embody the flagrant disregard for human life and history that brought us here. Modern conservation embodies colonial power dynamics by emboldening outsiders to exploit native people under the veil of natural preservation. Preserving biological diversity carries ecological importance, but there must be a shift towards environmental preservation that accounts for human rights so that the alienation and abuse of local communities comes to an end. H

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Navigating the Wilderness Uncovering Sexism in the U.S. Forest Service

By Nina Loutchko

Photo by Nina Loutchko

I

t is 0830 hours on June 29, 2018, and I have almost completed my first full month as a wilderness intern for the US Forest Service in Colorado. My task is to hike every inch of trail in the La Garita Wilderness, to find remote campsites, and assign each a report of use and resource erosion. On this particular day, I have hiked to 13,150 feet, the highest elevation during my latest five-day hitch with my trail partner, Sav. As I peel off my pack and throw on another layer, I decide to snap a picture of the mountain range behind me and the zig-zagging outline of the Continental Divide Trail. While the view is breathtaking and I am astonished by my body’s ability to carry me this far, my mind wanders with dread about my return to the district office.

For the first three weeks, Sav and I were blocked from jumping into our field work until a seasonal ranger, all of whom were male, could accompany us into the backcountry. Meanwhile, a team of two college-age researchers were allowed to enter the wilderness by the end of their first week. The researchers were boys; we were girls. Hand-holding, as Sav and I called it. Gender discrimination within the Forest Service has been in the public eye since 1972,

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when Gene Bernardi filed a lawsuit against the agency, prompting a consent decree that required the Forest Service to hire more women and minorities. Seemingly a victory, hundreds of women were hired as rangerettes. They were adorned with chic skirts and pins, not Forest Service badges. Even worse, the Forest Service failed to train these rangerettes, which elicited the impression that the women were incapable of the work they were hired to do. Female rangers were not taken as seriously as their well-equipped male colleagues in the field; they were the airline stewardesses of the wilderness, only lessening respect and authority of women in the field. Women were assigned a fluffy role, one for abating criticism rather than inciting genuine change.

As it did then, the Forest Service needs women, not as emblems or to fulfill consent decrees, but for the contributions that they bring to the table. Women provide new ideas, perspectives, and passions that the Forest Service have neglected through decades of exclusion and discrimination, setting the agency at a disadvantage in an increasingly complex forest management field. A more representative workforce is essential for the success of the Forest

Service and management of the environment.

Without knowing anything about my trail experience, male rangers in the district lent unsolicited advice regarding the very basics of camping and wilderness ethics. “Do you know how to use a bear barrel?” “Let me show you how to use a stove.” Or the occasional, “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

A seasonal ranger transported Sav and I to and from the wilderness trailheads all summer. The rides in the passenger seat were never shorter than two hours one-way, and as Sav says, “never without a story by a seasonal ranger that had to do with a woman and included the word ‘bitch’.” According to these rangers, women were simply that. Bitches. One ranger was especially keen to debase a women’s successful promotion to a high position at the district’s dispatch center. Sav and I were forced to listen to him humiliate and demean this woman, which was a typical for a ride into the backcountry. The summer was filled with aggressions of this nature, all of which deemed woman incapable or unappreciative of wilderness work. The comments came not only from inside the district office, but also from ranchers and hikers that Sav and I encountered on the trail.

In mid-July, a lead ranger on our wilderness team was shuttling Sav and I to our next hitch beginning at the La Garita trailhead, a bone-dry gravel lot with a lone sign reminding hikers of wilderness ethics. As we barreled down a dirt road, hours away from the closest town, a pair of ranchers flagged our truck down.

“What are you doing out here with two beautiful ladies?” the rancher asked our lead.

Sav and I answered timidly, our explanation countered with a laugh and a disbelieving head nod. I had never felt so disrespected in an outdoor setting—for the first time in my outdoor career, I questioned my own ability. For the first half of my internship, the sense of capability I gained from summiting mountains and passes in the wilderness had outweighed the underhanded comments I had encountered since my arrival at the district, but the reward of wilderness empowerment suddenly wasn’t worth my disappointment in the way rangers and outdoorsmen treated me as a woman.

My experience this summer was not an isolated event.

Women throughout the United States face all types of disrespect in the woods.

In 2014, a band of female forest firefighters in California filed a class action complaint against the Forest Service claiming gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the hopes of highlighting the modern struggles of being a woman in this trade.

Reporting sexual assault, harassment, and discrimination often results in retaliation from supervisors and colleagues. Retaliation comes in the form of verbal threats, stripped duties, bullying, and even demotions, all of which

discourage victims from pursuing justice. The Forest Service has shown a lack of accountability through poor investigations - perpetrators retire, are promoted, or change districts to dodge the consequences of their actions. The discrimination female pioneers in the agency face is discouraging, and often pushes them out of this line of work.

Young women entering the field seek female role models where there are few, which creates a vicious cycle where even fewer women are drawn into the field. Jonel Wagoner was one of the first women hired after Bernardi’s case in 1972. Throughout her career, the men she worked with humiliated her by forcing her to watch pornography, weighed her down by putting rocks into her pack, and endangered her by attempting to fell trees onto her head. As a result of this abuse, she retired after 37 seasons and finished her career by partnering with two other female firefighters in 2014, filing a complaint to the Equal Employment Office for sexual harassment and retaliation.

I had always dreamed of working as a ranger. In April 2018, when I was offered a wilderness internship at Gunnison Ranger District of Colorado’s Grand Mesa Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests, I was ecstatic to accept the opportunity and spend my summer contributing to the protection and management of public land. I saw myself as the perfect candidate for the job, yet within the first three days the male rangers around me had me convinced that I was maybe not even a fit at all. Why? Because in their eyes, I was just a naive 20-year-old girl who was going to struggle for three months in one of Colorado’s most remote wildernesses west of the Continental Divide.

The Forest Service attempted to rebound from decades of criticism by updating its anti-harassment policy in September 2016 and launching a national harassment reporting hotline in November 2017. Late 2018 will mark to first time the agency will require all employees, permanent and seasonal, to undergo identical sexual harassment training.

During the district’s seasonal training, the district officer spoke about sexual harassment and discrimination specific to the Gunnison Ranger District for roughly an hour, and his call to make the district a safer and more equal one was passionate and genuine. Yet, the discussion that followed only revealed that the men were completely unknowing of any harassment and discrimination that was occuring. The Forest Service’s recent measures are long overdue, but there is far more work to be done to address sexual assault, harassment, and discrimination.

With increasingly complex environmental problems, new perspectives and approaches are key to innovation and improvement, things that women in the male-centric Forest Service undoubtedly provide. The Forest Service must seek genuine female representation for their own sake if they wish to live up to their motto to care for the land and to serve the people. H

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DANCE for RESILIENCE Reflecting on Sexual Violence Behind the Extraction of Conflict Minerals

BY BRENNA REAGAN When we dance, we consent to our movement with surrounding sound. We give our skin to the surrounding air. We feel our bones, organs, senses move together. We may feel the warmth of the sun, of lights, of a full room, of our rising internal temperature. When we dance, we remember to breathe—it is in the rhythm. This time, breathing reminds us how close we are to our own body, to feel the space we fill. Each breath is a moment of healing.

It can take a long time to dance after rape, after the disregarded agency, the silenced attack, the loss of feeling in the body. But even that process is a dance, a process of movement towards finding that sound, that rhythm, bringing that agency back. Resilience is a dance, of losing, talking, screaming, crying, healing, running, listening, learning, finding. In some circumstances, however, resilience is an end typically unforeseen when culture generalizes sexual violence, an ongoing act of decades of war.

The Democratic Republic of Congo lays within the Congo Basin, home of the world’s second most diverse rainforest. This landscape is intimately connected to the extraction of conflict minerals, which continue to support and empower those perpetuating violence, poverty, and sexual assault in the Congo. I question whether this systemic dominance, where violence dwells in the extraction of earth and bodies, will move towards a space of resiliency.

For me, learning about conflict minerals all started with a dance.

I did not realize until recently that as a consumer of everyday technologies, I am connected to rape and violence against women in communities across the globe. When I think of dismantling rape culture and the systems behind

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gender inequality, I think about the “Me Too” movement, about supporting and believing victims, and about rewriting the way we analyze the expression of bodies in our media.

When you think of rape culture, do you see the daily tools, the phones, the infrastructure, you hold in your hands? When you think of your access to global connectedness through a screen, do you trace the origin back to corruption and violence? The ecofeminist movement proposes that the domination of women and the domination of the environment are intimately connected, and that the process of overcoming ecological crises is connected to overcoming the oppression of marginalized peoples. This philosophy is intersectional and interdisciplinary, and is thus a helpful lens to support our understanding of what is happening in the Congo. There, a web of domination lives on the same landscape; made by extracting the backbone of our industry of technology, of decades of war, of government corruption, of sexual violence. As consumers, we are starting to support transparency of the sources of our technological lifestyles. Yet, the question that remains is whether this domination, this rape, can transform from the enigmatic, in Eaton’s words, to the concrete, to the solvable.

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s mining industry economically fuels government militia and rebel violence through the mining of five conflict minerals: coltan, gold, diamond, copper, and cobalt. Coltan is made of the metals colombite and tantalum, and contributes to what is industrially known as the 3Ts: tin, tantalum, and tungsten. Tantalum is necessary for holding electrical charge, and is used in the circuit boards of almost all cell phones and laptops.

“Domination has a long and intricate historical path. The origins are buried in both an enigmatic past and within the recesses of human consciousness.”

–Heather Eaton, in Introducing

Ecofeminist Theologies

“In effect, the process of development leads to turning away from the soil as a source of meaning and survival, and turning to the state and its resources for both. The destruction of organic links with the soil also leads to the destruction of organic links within each other.”

–Vandana Shiva, in

Masculinization of the

Motherland

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Tungsten is the metal that makes cell phones vibrate. Tin is used as a solder to hold the pieces of our phones, devices, and cars together.

The Congo’s present conflict speaks to its historical struggle with violence under colonization in the late nineteenth century. King Leopold II of Belgium, who colonized the Congo, mainly capitalized on the rubber industry. He ruled viciously, and was known to order soldiers to amputate limbs when harvest quotas were not met. Throughout his control from 1885 to 1908, an estimated 20 million people were killed or worked to death in Congo. By 1959, the country mined 10 percent of the world’s copper and 50 percent of our cobalt. The Congo’s transition into an independent state in the 1960s continued the path of corruption and violence rooted in its prior colonization. Wars and

violence erupted in 1997 have continued for decades. Today, President Joseph Kabila and his administration, who took office in 2001, are viewed as corrupt by many internal and external observers for remaining in power by exceeding term limits since the first election in forty years in 2006.

By 2016, the year that legally should have concluded his administration after a second term, Kabila signed a deal to delay elections to April 2018. Elections have now been pushed back to December 2018, although Kaliba has announced that he will not seek reelection.

Targeting women with the threat of rape and sexual violence has been a weapon of war in the Congo since conflict began in the 1990s. This is gender-based sexual violence.

According to the UN, armed rebel groups and govern-

“This freedom, equality and self-determination, which depend on the possession of money, on purchasing power, cannot be extended to all women in the world...Within a world system based on exploitation ‘some are more equal than others’...Within an exploitative structure, interest will necessarily be antagonistic….The interests’ approach must be replaced by an ethical one.”

–Maria Mies, in The Myth of Catching-Up Development

“The earth and the South have paid heavily for 500 years for the white man’s burden. Probably the most significant step in striving towards re-establishing an earth community is the recognition that the democracy of all life is inconsistent with the idea that this beautiful planet is the white man’s burden. Unlike the mythical Atlas, we do not carry the earth; the earth carries us,” –Vandana Shiva, in Decolonizing the North Art by Jay Griffith

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ment security agents alike raped more than 8,000 women during fighting in 2009. In 2011, the American Public Journal of Health estimated that almost two million women suffered sexual assault in the Congo that year. The study furthered its findings to an average of 48 women raped each hour, which totals to 1,152 women raped every day.

In 2017, the United Nations reported 2,593 cases of sexual violence, yet noted that the issue of rape had only intensified.

In November of 2017, the Vermont Ibutwa Initiative, a non-profit dedicated to empowering survivors of sexual abuse in the Congo, held the Dance for Resilience to raise awareness and funding for their work.

Across the wood-tiled floor, a four-piece local improvisation band, Revibe, set up on stage. Lights affixed to metal beams terraced the ceiling, distributing bright, warm light throughout the room. I sat on a bold orange bench to gather my whereabouts and wrote a message of support on a free-trade card that would be sent to a woman and her family in the Congo. Shortly after, the room quieted to hear the opening remarks for the event.

“Hi everyone—my name is Kyendamina Cleophace Mukeba and many of you may know me as the founder of the Vermont Ibutwa Initiative,” said Mukeba. He described his academic journey, from his start as a refugee from the Congo to his pursuit of a PhD and an environmental law career in Vermont.

“That’s not important,” Mukeba paused. His eyes, focused and softly smiling, scanned the room. “We didn’t come here to sit. But to dance. For the resilience of women.”

The Vermont Ibutwa Initiative was founded in 2011, originally as a student-run initiative. Mukeba named the organization Ibutwa, which translates to renaissance. The organization’s mission is to give Congolese women a second chance to live and survive in the Congo. Ibutwa has successfully partnered with medical professionals and schools to provide comprehensive services to these survivors.

“I am doing this work to honor my mother,” explained Mukeba in an interview with the Main Street Landing organization of Burlington. His mother was killed on her way to the market when Mukeba was 26 years old. Mukeba notes how her role in his household growing up was as an object—simplified to a caretaker, a reproducer, a wife to her husband. “I feel like my mother would be still alive because of the work I’m doing.”

So the dance progressed; about thirty people remained in the art gallery throughout the night, peeling from the edges of the room to dance center-stage to Revibe’s performance. A group of musicians from the Congo who arrived with Mukeba laughed as one of their band members walked

up to join the performers with a ngoma drum. Smiling beneath a bright red beanie, he syncopated the rhythmic backbone of the song and a new collaborative sound resonated through the bodies in the room.

At this dance was my first time learning the filthy details of the conflict minerals industry and its relationship to mass corruption and weaponized rape. My life thus far has been so convenient and so connected, whether it be by way of televisions, cell phones, laptops, or the Internet. Struck with an honest discomfort, the next day I asked Lily Mason, former Outreach Coordinator of Ibutwa, about why we gathered to dance.

Mason told me the Ibutwa organization hopes that this event of expression and dance would be a place for people to come together, to physically release the guilt of learning about the violence around conflict minerals. Systemic racism, rape culture, human degradation, and environmental injustices are lethal problems addressed by The Vermont Ibutwa Initiative’s work in Vermont. They promote the healing process here in Burlington through community events, which in turn support their work in the Congo.

Music, art, and dance are manifestations of the process of building a network of advocates and consumers here in Vermont.

“It’s a shift in awareness from being a national citizen to a global citizen, and it’s nurturing that shift and helping people to feel excited about it. And hopefully inspired to share this idea that ‘I don’t just belong to Vermont. I don’t just belong to America. I am of the earth, and we are all just clearly connected,” Lily explained.

The organization currently serves 76 children and their mothers in the Congo. The women, who may have experienced a lifetime of abuse, often require more resources than the children do. Ibutwa starts with healthcare, including both transportation and treatment. As women continue to heal they can join the Sustainable Livelihood Program, where they work to empower themselves in their communities by finding time to heal while sourcing employment and improving the livelihoods of their children. While women are in the program, Ibutwa covers the full cost of education for each one’s children.

Currently, the Vermont Ibutwa Initiative works to forge a network beyond its current grassroots-standing through social media and academia. As an organization named after “renaissance”, which translates to rebirth, the organization continues to address the ancestral wound of gender-based violence and systemic racism at the forefront of extraction and violence in the Congo. This pain pulses all the way from the Congo to Burlington, Vermont, through the movement in our bodies and Tungsten in our phones. H

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THOUGHTLESSNESS AND NOURISHMENT

By Jess Savage

The last thing I ate?

A piece of homemade bread and warm soup with friends. Or, a fistful of unabashed hope that you and I will regain agency in our food systems and in our Earth. An overflowing meal of fierce trust and love in the ways humans will shake out and sit down to meals that will serve them and that will return humans back to a working relationship with our planet. What happens around the table at dinner time poses a great threat to our land and livelihood.

I am writing this piece because I have fought with the food system and because in my common habits, I am fighting with the Earth. You and I operate in a world that cracks under the pressure of our presence. By carrying on with our daily lives, we enact a strain on our resources and the systems that deliver shelter, food, water, and comfort. I write this because you and I need to start thinking about ways to listen, to deeply understand, rather than to fix, obscure, and further obliterate the systems in which we live.

When I write with the words “our” and “we,” I mean me and the rest of the perpetrators of environmental harm and personal negligence. I am not referring to the individuals who are at the mercy of the consequences of my actions, nor am I referring to the individuals who do not have control over the ways they must act to survive in this world.

People who were evicted from land that was then plowed over to grow soy-cornwheat, people who come home late from work every day and cannot choose how to feed their families, and people who are living in houses under a constant waft of toxins from power plants are not the people who should be working to fix the systems upon which their lives are subjected.

Only the people who have the agency to change their actions shoulder the responsibility to do so. We are not a group of people with equal agency, and those who know how they can change and still do not do so are a part of the great challenge we face.

I will emphasize that this is not a piece driven solely by scientific language, nor is it a piece that speaks single truths. This is a piece that works to tease out thoughts and tries to isolate broken parts of a system and seeks to explore what might be done to reconcile these broken parts. This is a piece that wants to savor systems of healing and recognize the ways we can repair our perceptions and our behaviors.

Art by Adela Miller

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We all are sent into our experiences and our perceptions from different directions, and whether or not you had an eating disorder, you have eaten something that you could not place the origins of, and you have lived in a city or town that in some ways paved over ecological systems that you will never know or walk through. You sit on stolen land and you eat food from forsaken soils and you are a participant in a world that tried to fix problems with industrialization and commodification rather than with deep listening and deep systems thinking.

You have stake in your experiences and you deserve to know what role you play in the food system, in the earth system, and the intricate and delicate system that is your body.

What happens when we peel the skin off lush green lawns and perfectly slender young women?

My own experience began suddenly, and I am still living with the consequences of the spiral my mind, body and behaviors traveled. I remember being isolated, scared, and confused as to how I learned to keep my body alive while depriving it.

I was in high school and I had little to no control over what I ate. My mother went to the supermarket and bought 99 cent chicken breast and small breakfast donuts. I went to high school and I ate a warm salad or a slice of pizza on a Styrofoam tray. My friends and I went to Dairy Queen and Nick’s Roast Beef.

What makes up these meals, and where did they come from? Did any of us have a choice?

In a world of uncertainties, in a nation filling its shelves with commodified, processed, industrial foods, I had lost control of where my food was coming from, never had control, and it was just too convenient to eat Cheez-its or pour a glass of milk for myself without thinking about each and every process, each hand or machine that a slice of turkey touched to get to me in my deli sandwich.

It scares me to think about the magnitude of the uncertainty involved in the food system. With uncertainty comes ignorance, and when we as consumers cannot trace their meals back to their origins, we lose a sense of connection to our diet, to the land that supports the fruits, vegetables, and animals consumed.

Ultimately, we learn how to ignore the destruction caused by agriculture and industrial food systems.

I learned how to ignore my body. I learned how to run up to my bedroom after a half dinner and shut the door, and lay on the carpet next to my bed, try to ignore my growling stomach. It got easier and easier to do so, until I forgot how to nourish my body completely. I had gained total control of the malnourishment of my body. I had finally succeeded and my healthy form slipped away and I became tired and brittle and my brain thought of nothing other than the selfishness, the greed involved in removing food from one’s life indefinitely.

The systems upon which America are built, the systems that pull our land to pieces, that build concrete cities and lush golf courses and massive farms on our land, the systems that pull humans away from the land their food was grown on, the systems that remove humans from agriculture and run computer-controlled tractors across miles and miles of corn and back, lead humans to ignore their bodies.

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The 1960s brought powerful strains of wheat. The 1960s brought burning coal, brought monstrous machines, brought solutions solutions solutions we can feed our families we can revolutionize agriculture! We are fixing problems we had with ‘solutions’ that will rot, that will insidiously propagate more problems.

We made ourselves sick with the glut of corn. We snuck it into everything, and the winners made money and the losers made dinner in the microwave, made dinner from what they could pull from convenience store shelves.

When I regained trust in the food I ate, I could eat again. I got a summer job as a farmhand and worked for hours under the sun, walked out to the fields and harvested cabbage heads before the sun could get to them.

When I held a watering can over the lettuce seed I pulled out of my shorts pocket and pushed into the soil, when I came back a month later with my field knife and peeled away the leaves enjoyed by bugs, when I came without a lunch to the farm and filled the front pocket of my overalls with tomatoes and carrots and an onion, I felt like the questions and fear and distrust I had with my food had soothed.

I want to know if I lived despite this eating disorder because I loved my land and I loved the grass under my head as I lay under the fragrant linden at lunch.

I want to know if my literal survival hinged on my considerations of the land.

Eating disorders can be quantified by weight lost, calories consumed, or amount of time spent in the hospital for failing organs. Environmental degradation can be quantified by acres of trees cut down, tons of carbon emitted, or amount of species sent to extinction.

We face the impossible task of caring for ourselves and for our land. We might even have a moral obligation to do so. A common sentiment is that we just do not have time to forge that bond. We simply cannot carve enough time or space into our days to be intentional about our place within the world, our role in caring for the suffering earth, which heats up and rages with storms and lets go of species and lets shores be covered up and put to sleep by the ocean. We wake up and we rage through the kitchen, through the bathroom and bedroom and workplace, rage on the road in the car and then rage through the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom again until we wrap our tired bodies in the sheets. We have no time to wake up slowly with the morning dew and to fog our glasses with coffee. We have no time to wiggle our fingertips into melting spring earth pushing buds up to the sky.

Let us peel away at the way broken systems that have been ‘fixed.’ I hope that we can ask questions of ourselves and of our meals, of our towns and schools and streets and cities and ask if we are ignoring, or if we are listening. And if we are listening, are we understanding? Are we moving?

Farmers are inherently nurturing, and the farmer gene theory, a rural legend, claims that some people have the unique ability to farm and nurture their land.

When they lose their land, they lose their sense of identity and some die by their own hand. Even if farming takes away freedoms and can be damaging to a farmer’s spirit, they care for their land beyond their capacity.

The question to ask is this: would humans commit so much damage to their land if they were inherently closer to it? If they cared for it to their own detriment? If they found such an identity in the land they walk on, would they be more or less inclined to ignore its needs or to induce broken systems upon it?

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A friend and I sat over lunch one day and we spoke in quiet and fierce words about how we became accustomed to the world in a backwards way. We both learned to distrust the food we ate, to distrust the people around us and the care they fostered for us, and to let the anger and confusion flare up for years. We both forgot the goodness of nourishment and the simplicity of listening to what a body needs to stay awake and play, to drive to school and laugh with friends.

My friend and I both learned the earth through our summer jobs on farms and learned the ways hands can push seeds, pull weeds, pull carrots. I woke up early, walked out on sleepy legs to the rows of beets and bent to shake out the dirt between the roots of weeds. You must take care of your food before it has had a chance to grow.

You must be cognizant of your earth and how to exist in it perpetually before it has the chance to change in your lifetime or in the lifetime of any of your grandchildren.

A friend and I sprawled on a messy bed before dinner and we talked about the intricate web connecting farmers, supermarkets and corner stores, and people just trying to make the best choices they can to feed themselves and their families.

Her passions lie within the intricacies of a food system, and the stories of people who interact within these systems. She tells me of school children who grew their own vegetables and learned how to sell them at the end-of-the-year farmers market, farmers whose farms have been taken away from them and who lose themselves in the process, and the network of students, teachers, and researchers who influence her studies and teach her that there are infinite systems to pull apart and view from every angle.

A friend and I sat at her desk, long lists in both of our heads were cast aside as we considered the challenges humans face to regain a relationship to food and to the land. We drew together on a sheet of paper, our pens connecting scales of nourishment. Do we nourish ourselves when we survive the day, or are we nourishing ourselves when we care for friends and family? Are we only truly nourishing ourselves when we are actively fixing the broken systems of the Earth?

This a world of people trying to do their best. This is a world of people growing and learning and working on understanding their surroundings. We meet people who are in a deep struggle, and we meet people who can guide us through our own challenges. Each person has a brain in their head and a story to share about food around a table or about a time spent thinking about the world around them. I want people to think about the ways in which we struggle with food and the ways in which we struggle to support the planet, and to think about how they personally interact with the systems that impose social, political, and environmental pressures and oppressions upon them.

Every time you come home late from work and do not feed yourself dinner, recognize the small ignorance you are committing to yourself. You are living within a society that does not upkeep the systems of the Earth. The entire society we exist in is unsustainable, is cracking, is rotting. Our collective humankind is committing a terrible ignorance unto our home. I want you and I to actively engage in living within these systems, being present in our bodies and in our communities, and learning to care for and to be taken care of. We have our body, and we have our home. I implore you to choose yourself and your home over and over again until we all are sleeping. H Headwaters Magazine

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DIGITAL COLLAGES BY MAK BAKER

Collages in Crisis 23

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Lifted How do we fix the problems we have created? The astronaut is shown lifting the waterfall in Yellowstone National Park, a metaphor for the control we think we have over the natural world. This piece elaborates on the relationship that we have with the land and the ways in which we are looking for solutions to save the parts of the environment we cherish.

Balancing Act This piece explores the relationship we have to animals in a world that is uncertain. The posts place both the birds and the figure high above the river flowing between two cliffs, but both at the same level and size as one another—equals. We need to understand the landscape that we exist in, both physically and metaphorically, else we risk losing our balance.

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Floating This piece portrays the bizarre relationship that society has with the natural world. The person filming the turtle floating towards Mt. Fuji represents the ways that we record ‘the strange.’ This collage is an abstraction of the ways in which we exploit the beauties of the earth, while we miss out on the experience of taking it in.

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Melting Ozone This piece shows how we mask the mistakes that we have made. The damage that we have done to the ozone is not something that we can physically see, but what if we could? What would it look like? Would it be beautiful? Or would we try to hide it?

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Spilt Wine The responsibility of climate change lies with all of us, and yet there are so many who pretend not to see the gravity of its effects. The hurricane map represents the natural disasters yet to come, and the man shows the gluttony and convenience of capitalism. This piece shows the carelessness that we as humans need to take responsibility for in order to affect change.

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Shelter This piece shows the disconnect that we have with our environment and the ways in which we continue to take advantage of the resources that it provides. The scale of the collage shows how small humans really are in comparison to the space we take up. Background photo by Rebecca O’Dowd

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TAKEN

A Closer Look into the Global Wildlife Trade

BY JULIA CRISCUOLO

It is ninety-three degrees Fahrenheit. There is no room for any movement; there are walls all around you. Your eyes are sewn shut. You hear other muffled cries, but they are out of your reach. You are a rare Yellow-crested Cockatoo, shoved in a plastic bottle and smuggled out of Indonesia, taken from the wild to be sold as someone’s pet, probably in Europe or North America.

In 2015, an Indonesian man was arrested for attempting to smuggle 22 rare birds, namely the Yellow-crested Cockatoo, out of Indonesia by hiding them in plastic water bottles. Approximately 800,000 birds, not including those that die in the process, are illegally captured and sold as pets in the US annually. The pet trade extends beyond birds, and an estimated 80 percent of smuggled animals die during transport. The pet trade is part of the global wildlife trade, a major illegal industry which frequently results in population declines, ecosystem deterioration, and harm to humans. The scope of this practice is broader than many realize and requires innovative solutions targeted towards every actor involved.

Although some wildlife and wildlife products are smuggled through airports and vehicles, maritime is the most popular smuggling method. Roughly 90 percent of all wildlife trade occurs in maritime shipments, less than two percent of which are inspected by authorities. This alone allows most smuggled goods through, but there are also a variety of sophisticated methods for concealment on the off-chance that a shipment is inspected. For example, ivory has been found inside wooden statues and in secret compartments behind false walls in maritime shipments.

Smugglers have to be creative in order to be successful.

Many species are affected by illegal wildlife trade, and are smuggled or poached for numerous purposes. All species of rhinoceros are poached for their horns, primarily for use in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) because of the belief that they can cure cancer. TCM is an approach to medicine based on theories of body energy. Although much of TCM is environmentally sustainable, a subset of it includes ingredients that are illegally and unsustainably derived from wildlife products, such as rhino horns. Tigers, bears, musk deer, sea turtles, and monkeys are all sought for TCM.

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Art by Eileen Brickell

There are other drivers for wildlife trade beyond medicine. Current demand for ivory commodities lead to the poaching of approximately 36,500 elephants every year.

Exotic pets are also popular, especially when used as a status symbol. There are more than double the number of tigers in captivity in the United States than there are in the wild. In 2009, a woman was arrested for trying to smuggle a baby tiger in her suitcase – the baby was drugged and placed among stuffed tigers for concealment. As disturbing as it is, this strategy is one of many employed to rip exotic animals from their habitats and sell them overseas.

The pangolin is a scaly anteater targeted for the use of its scales and blood in TCM, and the perceived delicacy of its meat by Chinese consumers. 300 pangolins are poached every day, making them the most trafficked animal in the world. But as their numbers decline, the importance of the pangolin to ecosystems is increasingly clear. It is estimated that a single pangolin can consume more than 70 million insects every year, and without them, their habitats in Africa and Asia would be swamped with insects. This is also the case with many other poached species. Tigers, lions, elephants, and bears are all vital to the health of their respective ecosystems. Population declines lead to imbalances within the entire ecosystem.

How are people working to curb this issue? The Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) lists and protects species based on their conservation status and threats by country.

The goal of CITES is to maintain sustainable international trade and mitigate risk to wild populations. However, CITES also has several problems. First, it is an agreement

between 193 nations, and does not provide resolutions for non-compliance. It is up to each country to determine if and how to prosecute violations, and countries may lack the resources for or interest in prosecution, which is further clouded by often rampant corruption among officials.

When prosecution does occur, it may not be fit for the crime - wildlife smuggling violations have led to repercussions ranging anywhere from no consequence to the death penalty. When crimes, such as shark finning, occur in international waters, there are discrepancies surrounding jurisdiction.

Beyond CITES, there are several other methods used to combat wildlife trade. According to University of Vermont (UVM) lecturer Daneil Pieterse, one successful tactic is educating those who purchase illegally traded products.

In Vietnam, when a statewide anti-ivory campaign began in 2014, 73 percent of Vietnamese believed that rhino horn could cure cancer. Today, only nine percent of respondents believe this falsehood. Some have proposed legalizing the trade, although there are concerns that legal trade could provide cover for the trade of illegal products. Captive breeding projects are another method; however, they are generally expensive and unsuccessful.

Conservation consistently focuses efforts on more charismatic species and often fails to protect less compelling species. Several methods are employed for protecting one popular group of species, the rhinoceros. One tactic for protecting rhinos is to poison their horns, but this means poisoning people, as the end purpose for rhino horn is typically consumption.

Dyeing the horn an unnatural color to decrease its value, a tactic also proposed for elephants, has the potential to deter poachers. However, according to Pieterse, this method may also hurt ecotourism which provides funding for managing wildlife and parks. Dehorning the rhinos is another tactic, but this is only a temporary measure as horns grow back, and can also be harmful because hornless mothers are less able to protect their young. While these are all creative solutions, they are restricted to large and charismatic species. Discounting less charismatic species precipitates more rapid population decline. The lack of charisma that pangolins have, for example, has allowed populations to decline quickly and significantly, which is proving detrimental to their ecosystems.

Poaching most often occurs in low-income countries because it provides a much-needed source of economic opportunity. Educating poachers on the impacts of their activities on both people and wildlife is often ineffective because they need the financial support and poaching often provides the highest income. However, poaching can be quite dangerous. In July 2018, a group of rhino poachers were eaten by lions in South Africa.

As their populations decline, abalone, a highly poached mollusk, is driving poachers deeper into great white shark-infested waters, putting poachers at greater risk of attack. There has been a movement to provide alternative livelihoods for poachers to reduce the incentive to poach.

To be a good poacher, one has to know a lot about the land and the species they target. This makes them great candidates for working on a reserve and managing the land and its wildlife. By offering alternative livelihoods and economic incentives, poachers can become anti-poachers.

Wildlife trade is a more extensive problem than many people realize. It is not just a few people occasionally smuggling elephant tusks in their luggage. It is a global industry worth billions of dollars threatening an incredibly diverse array of species, reaching every corner of the globe. Illegal wildlife trade is lucrative, but conservation organizations and activists have made progress in combating the practice.

Wildlife trade regulation has momentum right now, and it is crucial that it keeps that momentum. As demand persists and populations continue to decline, it is more essential than ever to slow this illicit trade. After all, birds do not belong in plastic bottles. H

Art by Eileen Brickell Headwaters Magazine

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RENEWED COLONIALISM Examining the Global Implications of Renewable Energy Development

BY LINDSEY STINSON

I am a child of the Earth and of hope, and I know that I am not alone in that statement. I have always been comforted by a world endless in the scenic splendor it offers me, and I am reminded of this joy especially with the chilly advance of winter and the new sights of white-topped Mt. Mansfield and Camel’s Hump during walks around a drizzly University of Vermont (UVM) campus. Of course, I am alarmed, as are many others, by the growing levels of atmospheric chemicals like CO2 and the potential for havoc on our global ecosystems, oceans, communities, and about every other aspect of life I have come to take for granted.

The transition to renewable energies across the United States, especially in Vermont, gives me much hope. It is no surprise that Vermont has taken advantage of greener technologies. It is a state known for its pastoral heritage, still visible amongst its wide open country of farms, and for its majestic swaths of mountains and forests—it is really no surprise to see solar panel fields and turbines popping up across the state to maintain its green status quo.

In our world advanced by the consumption of massive reserves of fossil fuels, many who see the value in our natural resources and the truth to recent global climate phenomena have come together to say ‘no,’ we cannot continue on this path of environmental degradation and uncharted emissions. Thus, the state of Vermont has slow-

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ly transitioned to renewable energies like wind, solar, and hydropower.

The state set a goal in May 2015 to increase support for energy needs through renewable sources, with the aim of 90 percent energy consumption through renewables by 2050. Though Vermont still produces some wood-powered energy, 38 percent and 35 percent of the energy generation can be traced back to hydropower and wind power, respectively.

Yet the burden of our transition to renewable energy is greater than it seems. At the expense of our shift towards a sustainable future, developing countries upon which this transition rests remain in positions of poverty and pollution in order to sustain our need for natural resources.

As enthusiastic renewable energy supporters laud themselves for forwarding renewable development and gape at our fields of turbines and solar panels, poorer countries experience a disproportionate amount of waste and havoc as they subsidize the cost of our ‘clean’ technologies. To understand the scale of this global phenomenon, we must first examine the root of the renewable energy system, which is its global supply chain, a complex network by which humans extract, manufacture and transport products.

The colonial era is typified through an unequal relationship between the peoples of Europe and those of

percent for Tanzania. non-Western nations, specifically beginning in the 16th Most everyday technologies, like cellphones and lightcentury due to advancements in navigation. The following bulbs, as well as renewable energy technologies, use concenturies showcased European powers exerting political flict minerals including tin, tungsten, and coltan. As the control and trade over Africa, the Americas, Australia and name suggests, the deposits for these minerals are heavily parts of Asia. The general trend was that of exploitation, in concentrated in areas of violent conflict like the Congo, which the European powers used foreign natural resources where militias and a corrupt government have controlled and people to advance economic and political success. the mines with force, and subjected women to rape, chilThe current global supply chain reflects the distribudren to mining, and communities to brutal physical and tion of goods, services, and wealth built upon a legacy of psychological warfare since the 1990s. The extraction of global trade dating back to the 1700s. As the traditionalthese materials fuels oppression and violence in these conly-defined colonial era diminished in the mid-1900s, states flict zones. Solar cells are one example of an innovation saw the emergence of free market economies, in which which relies on minerals that are normally sourced from global trade is led by large businesses instead of countries. conflict zones for production.

This system can arguably be seen as neocolonialism, a new “As beneficiaries and consumers of colonial era in which businesses exploit develelectronic devices, including, but oping countries for use of their natural not limited to solar panels, we resources. must demand the supply of I believed that I had left the conflict-free minerals in subject of colonialism back solidarity with disadvanin my high school histotaged groups,” says Lily ry classes. Could it really Mason, of Fair Trade be that our global trade Campaigns.

Lily acts as a continuation talked to me with of colonialism? What passion about the would that mean for presence of conflict our economic system, minerals in the and especially for the world trade and its green energy transiimpact on many tion? I reached out to people in the ConUVM Professor Tatiago. “Breaking the na Abatemarco, an exsilence about the syspert in environmental temic racism and sexhumanities, ethics, and ual violence ingrained justice, for more inforwithin the mining indusmation about the history of try is up to each of us. This the global sustainability and Art By Adela Miller complex issue is literally and economic dynamics. metaphorically in our hands.”

“There’s a story that we tell Though many like Mason are deterourselves,” Abatemarco explains, “that mined to stay educated and to fight the there was some kind of ethical shift. And trade of conflict minerals, the United States governthere wasn’t so much an ethical shift as there was a ment and various companies have not heeded the cry for power shift.” Power once held by influential European cocleaner sources. lonial societies now lies in part in the hands of exploitative Despite landmark legislation like the Dodd-Frank Act companies, and in the hands of us, the consumers. of 2010, meant to improve transparency over use of conflict The resources we use today to build technology origiminerals, and large companies such as Apple and Google nate from countries that rely on trade with world powers purposely sourcing conflict-free minerals, miners are still like the United States to stay financially stable. Crude peworking under inhumane conditions in militia-controlled troleum serves as 89 percent of exports for both Nigeria mines. Most evidence suggests that despite legislative and and Angola, and 82 percent for Chad. Fifty-two percent commercial efforts, conflict minerals still wind up in the of exports for the Democratic Republic of the Congo are global trade. refined copper. Gold is 57 percent of exports for Ghana, Militias in these conflict zones advertise themselves as 57 percent for Sudan, 20 percent for South Africa, and 35

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‘conflict-free’ by stealing and replicating tags that designate products as such, making the process of sourcing these minerals nearly impossible. Exploitative companies continue to import resources from countries like the Congo to fuel their technological demands while inflicting violence, environmental degradation, and instability on the coun-

That developing nations must suffer to support this profit is an example of how we will support our visions for a ‘brighter’ future by whatever means necessary.

tries that support them.

This trend is old. Developing countries continue to fuel our societies in a relationship of neocolonialism, where capitalism is used as justification for a power dynamic in which imperial states influence developing countries through trade and globalization.

Was the economic goal of colonialism not to maximize the economic success of colonizing powers by whatever means necessary? Similarly, is the economic goal of capitalism not to maximize the economic success of developed countries by whatever means necessary? That developing nations must suffer to support this profit is an example of how we will support our visions for a ‘brighter’ future by whatever means necessary.

We still need oil, copper, aluminum, and other resources to build turbines, photovoltaic cells, and other sustainable technologies. Many of these resources are derived from developing nations. Renewable energy depends on developing countries to keep mining and keep drilling and thus, stay impoverished.

“Countries are putting themselves through pollution and environmental filth and allowing their workers to work in the most dangerous conditions because they do not have alternatives. We have taken advantage of what they have to

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offer,” says Ian Lund, an employee of Vermont’s SunCommon energy company. What was supposed to be an hour of simply talking about the solar and general green transition in Vermont flourished into an hour-long conversation about whether or not the green energy transition is actually green. Lund claims, “at this point, even if we were to do nothing in developing nations, they are in a position where they cannot stop mining. Renewable energy depends on them to keep mining.”

None of the major solar energy companies highlighted by Silicon Valley’s Toxics Coalition, a research and advocacy organization looking to further safe environmental policies in the high tech industry, in their 2015 Solar Scorecard Report could prove that their supply chain did not contain conflict minerals. U.S. President Donald Trump threatened in January of 2017 to reconsider Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which would have allowed American companies to continue buying conflict minerals without forced transparency. Many companies fueling the renewable energy transition remain ignorant of their actions in unstable, mineral-rich countries. Consumers of the resulting technologies remain uneducated as to how they are involved in this global sustainability dynamic. The disconnect remains between the hope of our renewable energy transition and its underlying issues, like the economic and environmental oppression of already underdeveloped countries.

What sacrifices are we making for renewable energy?

Art by Braden DeForge

America thinks of itself as a model for other nations to follow, but in our transition to renewable energy, do we sacrifice our ability to empower developing countries?

For as long as we import crude resources to support our green transition, underdeveloped countries will suffer as the American landscape becomes embedded with gleaming fields of turbines and solar panels. H

Becoming

By Brooke Van Buiten

photography

To truly be in a place, you must become the place—but only if invited. This is a place that invites you to sleep within its soil and hold hands with its breeze. It invites you to dance with its light and bellow into its deep and ethereal forest. It invited me to float in its ocean until my hair became seaweed. I twisted and turned in the gentle waves until my skin was coated in salt, my fingers and toes were pruned and my teeth were chattering. My hair and the hair of the ocean weaved and swayed within the waves. I wanted to become a part of this place. I was becoming. I have become.

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Our magazine is made possible by the generous support of many people, including but not limited to, UVM’s Environmental Program, the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, our advisor, Josh Brown, UVM’s Student Government Association, and the students who write, design, and edit these pages, as well as those who work on the parts of the magazine you may not hold in your hands.

Journalists, illustrators, painters, designers, satirists, cartoonists, poets, businesspeople, thinkers, dreamers, newspaper clippers, investigators, any individual who thinks about our environment, musicians, bricklayers, someone who asks good questions, someone who listens to podcasts, first years, business majors, computer science minors, one more painter, social media influencers, creative writers, someone who sketches, photoshoppers, collagers, critics of environmental politics, a budding environmental politician, an avid reader:

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