Experiencing Nature at Weedon Island Nature Preserve: Discourses of Duality, Willful Blindness and Ecological Nobility

Autor/inn/en	Johns, Rebecca A.; Beach, Julie
Titel	Experiencing Nature at Weedon Island Nature Preserve: Discourses of Duality, Willful Blindness and Ecological Nobility
Quelle	In: Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 26 (2023) 1, S.71-99 (29 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Johns, Rebecca A.)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	2206-3110
DOI	10.1007/s42322-022-00114-0
Schlagwörter	Ecology; Indigenous Knowledge; Exhibits; Indigenous Populations; Natural Resources; Parks; Conservation (Environment); Climate; Florida + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Ökologie; Sinti und Roma; Natural Ressource; Natürliche Ressource; Freizeitpark; Conservation; Environment; Konservierung; Bewahung; Umwelt; Klima
Abstract	Weedon Island Nature Preserve in Florida houses an educational center, which displays a visual and rhetorical narrative of local ecology and the lifeways of the region's Indigenous inhabitants. We conduct rhetorical and narrative analysis to examine how the exhibits construct the relationship between Indigenous people and the land. We conclude that while park exhibits do not replicate stereotypes of ecological nobility (Hames, "Annual Review of Anthropology", 36(1), 177-190, 2007), they represent Indigenous people as existing only in the past and fail to adequately connect to contemporary Native nations living in the area. Secondly, we analyze how park exhibits approach the fact that the park shares its "island" with a Duke Energy gas-fired power plant. This juxtaposition of human use of fossil fuels for energy consumption and the desire to preserve local ecosystems presents challenges for the curators of the park's environmental discourses, which ultimately ignores the power plant and fails to engage with issues of fossil fuel use or climate change. Visitor experiences in the park render the power plant nearly invisible. Indeed, we argue visitors and curators' "willful blindness" (a deliberate act of ignoring the presence of a dissonant element in the environmental narrative of environmental purity, i.e., Carr & Milstein, "Geoforum," 122, 183-192 2021) erases the presence of the plant. Educational opportunities to address the source of climate change are lost, as are possibilities for bringing local Native people out of the dustbin of the past and into the living present. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01