City Trees is a premier publication focused on urban + community forestry. In each issue, you’ll learn how to best manage the trees in your community and more!
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/1344655
ʻAʻohe pau ka ʻike i ka hālau hoʻokahi. All knowledge is not taught in the same school. (Pukui 1983) We work in places of incredible diversity—of people and landscapes. Embracing this diversity in all its forms helps us to enhance the reach and relevance of our public programs and improve our management practices. How can municipal arborists and urban for- esters meaningfully connect with and be informed by different ways of seeing, knowing, thinking, valuing, and approaching the work of caring for our urban and community forests? This article spotlights principles and pathways for successful community engage- ment, organizing, and two-way learning discovered through our research, and begins a conversation we hope to catalyze for future editions of City Trees. We offer the key framing concept of biocultural stew- ardship to ground this essay. Biocultural stewardship is an approach to caring for the larger network of social and ecological relationships in a place, wherein natural and cultural resources are considered equal in importance and the stewardship of place is insepa- rable from the stewardship of people. The practice of biocultural stewardship is aligned with Indigenous and local ecological knowledge systems wherein human-na- ture relations are considered to be interconnected and reciprocal, often spoken in terms of kinship (Turner et al. 2000, Berkes 2012). Rather than seeing humans and nature as separate entities or seeing natural resources as commodities, both are seen and treated equally as family members (Kealiikanakaoleohaililani and Giardina 2016, Pascua et al. 2017). With this in mind, we offer a few reflections gleaned from our research and engagement with urban foresters, civic stewards, Indigenous scholars and leaders, educa- tors, and artists from across the country, and particularly from the authors' home places of New York City and Honolulu. This list is far from exhaustive but is a place to start. We have found that although we may be experts in arboriculture and forestry, we can learn from other ways of knowing our world of trees and landscapes. Shifting to a biocultural approach and fostering cross-cul- tural exchanges can help us grow stronger partnerships From the USDA Forest Service and Partners Best Practices for Hearing All Voices in Our Urban Forests By Lindsay K. Campbell, Heather McMillen, Erika Svendsen, and Phillip Rodbell 24 CityTREES