William Cronon’s article, entitled “The Trouble With Wilderness; Or, Getting Back To The Wrong Nature,” speaks of how we discursively construct the concept wilderness without considering that this might really be a conceptual category that we have created that enables us to define the boundary to an urban civilised existence as opposed to being something that might really exist out there (…and certainly not too far out there). I do love this article though and I write nothing but exclamation marks beside what he says. On the other hand, I must concede also that Cronon’s essay to “rethink wilderness” made me cliche a bit too but with a small difference. I do go far out there but only as a tourist and never to the wilderness.

Cronon writes that if we are to get out of ‘othering’ the wilderness vis a vis constructing it as the negation of us and civilisation–that other way out there where we do not live–we must learn to “honor the Other within and the Other next door as much as we do the exotic Other that lives far [far] away […]. In particular, we need to discover a common middle ground in which all these things, from the city to wilderness, can somehow be encompassed in the word ‘home'” (19). I could not agree more–yes!, let us realise that we are never outside the space or spaces we call wilderness. The wilderness, really nature, is in the city and outside of it. On the other hand, when do we really get outside spaces we home categorically and thus discursively? We can’t. How else will we know?

Cronon asks us not to be the happy campers that go out into the wilderness and feel as though we have escaped civilisation and thus have entered that antithetical place, that virgin wilderness, from which all life has sprung.  O.K.  I will not do that again. But I will still go camping and I will still feel free of the city even though I have graduated to RV’s and find tenting to be the worst bet especially when I am in bear country. Yes, I do jog and can out run a bear. I have been made that scared by these gorgeous animals and I still donate to save the bear funds too. My point, here, is that I am not sure that I am as guilty as Cronon would have me. I have spent more summers than I will admit too (I hate telling people how old I am) going camping in the summer time. My favourite areas are mountains with lakes or wild rivers in the mountains. I do not need a campground, just a place to park and set up camp. I am quite at home for awhile. I am so used to knowing where I am in part from knowing how fauna and mosses grow in relation to trees and and the sun that really I have to be intoxicated to get lost. Perhaps Cronon would not mind if I up grade to tourist in his conception of the wilderness. I mean I am not as bad as some people who equate camping with bugs and the uncivilised.

True, I have brought civilisation with me in the form of an RV? I am ambivalent on this point where Cronon’s conception is concerned. But after reading Kyle Powers Whyte’s essay, “Food Sovereignty, Justice, and Indigenous Peoples: An Essay on Settler Colonialism and Collective Continuance,” I think…maybe…I am not that (un)civilised. Much of Whyte’s essay concerns itself with the concept of “collective continuance” so as to “describe the overall degree of adaptive capacity a society has when we take all its collective capacities into account, from food systems to gender systems. Collective capacities contribute to collective continuance because they consist of relationships that have certain qualities, two such qualities being trustworthiness and ecological redundancy” (3). While Whyte largely addresses what colonialism did by infringing upon Indigenous food systems as well as outlawing customs like the “Potlatch,” Whyte, nevertheless, makes clear that how we collect food, hunt food, and even distribute food has everything to do with who we are and not just how we sustain ourselves. Indigenous people(s) live in the wilderness, right? No. Some Indigenous persons tend to inhabit land and home the land just as much as urban dwellers do but often with a greater degree of reverence even if some of these populations are migratory. In short, home is home and how we procure, share, and maintain ourselves vis a vis food is a big part of what homes us.

Whyte takes matters to a spiritual, institutional and occupational level. He writes, “the ways the land and waters are cultivated also involve the creation and repetition of stories and ceremonies that endow the entwined human institutions and food systems with sacredness” (11). Whyte is speaking of ‘ecological redundancy’ here, where relationships are established with food sources that define one and one’s culture repeatedly. An example of such a food source would be salmon and taking up residence near water sources that provide an abundance of salmon. His point is that Indigenous populations often take up residence near food sources such as these and in turn they are homed by the salmon and all customs around procuring and sharing this food source. Given that this is the case, should I say that Indigenous people(s) live in the wilderness? No, clearly that would be a gross faux pas, but Whyte makes a point about custom that should not be overlooked. I may be Caucasian with a mixed heritage and clearly I indulge in camping, but maybe this is a custom, a way for me to come to know more about the world around me. Maybe, I am still a tourist in this but there is no chance I would not go and learn from Native inhabitants of the lands I visit about how to be there and take part in what is around me. In sum, I have never been to any wilderness that I know of. I am a tourist though and I am committed to continuing my education. Indigenous inhabitants with whom I might befriend or animal inhabitants that I always try to befriend before the run away or maybe it is just the trees and the mountains in the distance…I am quite at home here (there) and I know that I am away from the city. These journeys are my summer custom and it takes me away every time but never to the wilderness and always to a home away from home for a short time.

Tammy