The Land Speaks

"The Land Speaks explores the intersections of two vibrant fields, oral history and environmental studies. The pieces range North America, examining wilderness and cities, farms and forests, rivers and arid lands. The authors argue that oral history can capture communication from the land and serve as a tool for environmental problem solving. Essays include transcript excerpts and photographs, and address issues as diverse as climate change, pollution, animal encounters, and firefighting"--

The Land Speaks explores the intersection of two vibrant fields, oral history and environmental studies. Ranging across farm and forest, city and wilderness, river and desert, this collection of fourteen oral histories gives voice to nature and the stories it has to tell. These essays consider topics as diverse as environmental activism, wilderness management, public health, urban exploring, and smoke jumping. They raise questions about the roles of water, neglected urban spaces, land ownership concepts, protectionist activism, and climate change. Covering almost every region of the United States and part of the Caribbean, Lee and Newfont and their diverse collection of contributors address the particular contributions oral history can make toward understanding issues of public land and the environment. In the face of global warming and events like the Flint water crisis, environmental challenges are undoubtedly among the most pressing issues of our time. These essays suggest that oral history can serve both documentary and problem-solving functions as we grapple with these challenges.

Our ancestors lived in a unique and complex society that was inspired by nature and centred upon esteemed poets, seers, monks, healers and wise women, all of whom were deeply connected to the land around them. This relationship to the cycles of the natural world – from which we are increasingly dissociated – was the animating force in their lives. With infectious joy and wonder, Manchán Magan roams through Ireland's ancient bogs, rivers, mountains and shorelines, tracing our ancestors' footsteps. He uncovers the myths and lore that have shaped a national identity that is quietly embedded in the land, which has endured ice ages, famine and floods. A magical and reinvigorating exploration into the wisdom that lies beneath us, Listen to the Land Speak casts the world in a new light.

The Color of the Land brings the histories of Creek Indians, African Americans, and whites in Oklahoma together into one story that explores the way races and nations were made and remade in conflicts over who would own land, who would farm it, and who would rule it. This story disrupts expected narratives of the American past, revealing how identities--race, nation, and class--took new forms in struggles over the creation of different systems of property. Conflicts were unleashed by a series of sweeping changes: the forced "removal" of the Creeks from their homeland to Oklahoma in the 1830s, the transformation of the Creeks' enslaved black population into landed black Creek citizens after the Civil War, the imposition of statehood and private landownership at the turn of the twentieth century, and the entrenchment of a sharecropping economy and white supremacy in the following decades. In struggles over land, wealth, and power, Oklahomans actively defined and redefined what it meant to be Native American, African American, or white. By telling this story, David Chang contributes to the history of racial construction and nationalism as well as to southern, western, and Native American history.

Traces the story of the MacIvey family of Florida from 1858 to 1968.

A young girl’s exploration of the city she loves. A young girl and her father spend a day in the city, her city, traveling to the places they go together. As they do, the girl, who is visually impaired, describes what she senses in delightfully precise, poetic detail. Her city, she says, “pitters and patters, and drips and drains.” It’s both “smelly” and “sweet.” Her city also speaks, as it “dings and dongs and rattles and roars.” And sometimes, maybe even some of the best times, it just listens. A celebration of all there is to appreciate in our surroundings — just by paying attention!