As part of a requirement for my Sociology of Food Sovereignty class this semester, I recently read “The Serviceberry” by Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer. The book covered many important topics but mainly advocated for viewing the world’s resources as gifts rather than commodities and further implementing an economic system that serves to cherish and maintain valuable resources rather than exploit and diminish them.
In just over 100 pages, “The Serviceberry” poetically and effectively portrayed the need for a return to community-minded systems of agriculture, trade and land management. At the core, the novel pleads with readers to educate themselves on the importance of gratitude, togetherness and reciprocity to use this knowledge to resist the capitalistic exploitation that we know as normal.
What I would give to lend this book to the sitting president.
Last week, Donald Trump’s administration, including Elon Musk, laid off more than a thousand U.S. Forest and National Park Service workers to “optimize the workforce.” On top of this, Trump nominated Kathleen Sgamma, a petroleum industry lobbyist and advocate for drilling on public lands like national parks, to head the Bureau of Land Management. These actions are a part of a much larger push by the administration to shrink federal outreach — a decision that, in this case, favors the prosperity of the rich far more than that of the middleman. It is no coincidence that many other plans in Trump’s agenda, like his tax plan, will almost certainly put money in the pockets of corporate executives and the wealthy, this time at the expense of our collective orientation toward public land and resources.
Optimization, though stated to be the goal of the mass firings and lobbyist hirings, is hardly likely. It is predicted that parks will experience a pileup of trash, cancellation of guided tours, minimization of scientific research and educational resources, reduced hours and holds on community-focused projects as a result of the mass firings. There will simultaneously be a push to drill for oil on federal lands, destroying National Parks and native lands as we know them.
To have read “The Serviceberry,” which so strongly advocates for cherishing natural areas and the people who work to maintain them, is to feel an immense amount of sorrow as a result of the President’s actions. It is to know that parks bring much more than a picturesque landscape — that they are places that simultaneously foster community and solidarity, wildness and peace. They are places that charge minimal entrance fees, with landscapes that open their arms to nearly all who can make the trip. They are the closest we know to heaven and to take them away is to rob the planet and its people of arguably the most powerful forms of beauty and generosity we know.
This sadness was intensely conveyed by a group of fired Yosemite National Park employees last week. The former workers, in an act of protest, hung an upside-down American flag from one of the park’s most visited sights. An upside-down flag is a symbol of distress, a metaphoric plea for help. In this case, it was intended to draw attention to the Trump administration’s first steps in the privatization and exploitation of millions of acres of cherished public lands. This act of defiance was led by humans who know these lands intimately, people who devoted their lives to a job that emphasizes the well-being of the planet and its people far more than their gain. These are the individuals who teach us the most about humanity — their lives serve to remind us of its fleeting nature, and the immense responsibility we have to restore and protect the most beautiful and oldest parts of our planet for the generations that succeed ours. When they speak up, we owe it to them to listen.
Kimmerer, a member of an Indigenous community herself, said it best. “In the settler mind, land was property, real estate, capital, or natural resources. But to our people, it was everything: identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our nonhuman kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us. Our lands were where our responsibility to the world was enacted, sacred ground. It belonged to itself; it was a gift, not a commodity, so it could never be bought or sold.”
We must listen to Indigenous activists like Kimmerer — people who know what it is to systemically lose their land and their traditions as a result of a money-hungry system — when they warn us that the world’s most beautiful lands are under threat. We must hear the protestors like those at Yosemite and the everyday federal workers who have a story to share — to learn from what is happening around us. The opportunity to fight for our planet — as well as for its lands and its peoples — is here, right in front of us. We must rise to accept the challenge.
Akira Kopec is a junior majoring in integrative neuroscience.
Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.