[Article Update – I am actively engaged in bicultural forest restoration work on Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island. This article will receive an update in the future, but for now, I will leave you with an earlier understanding of a related term].
Biocultural Forest Restoration can be defined in many ways, but before I encountered the term, I knew it more generally as Rewilding.
For many people, the concept of rewilding has been popularized and associated with the re-introducing wild species (such as the Yellowstone wolf re-introduction) to restore ecosystem balance.
My personal and professional interest lies more in the notion of human “rewilding” with a focus on supporting regenerative relationships with ourselves, each other, and the interconnected web of beings on this planet.
Thus, human rewilding means exploring the visible and invisible human and non-human social systems that underly our ability to thrive as a society, and ultimately as a one-world people from what some of my Elders call the one-world tree. Human rewilding also tends to bring people back into connection with nature, to our original teachers.
Several Elders, and teachers I work with prefer the term relocalizing, re-Indigenizing, or Indigenizing. Whatever name we call it, I offer that in this process we strive to…
Rewild hearts and minds,
Remember and honor the Old Way(s) or Indigenous Ways of knowing while adapting to our current context,
Reconnect with place, with
Reciprocity, humility and respect for all beings.
There are many approaches to rewilding, and indeed many examples that span the intersection of psychology, mindfulness and Indigenous, place-based wisdom. The three main pathways I am actively engaging in my own work include:
Forest Bathing (Shirinyoku 森林浴) and Nature-based Therapy
Biocultural Forest Restoration
Wild-tending with Auntie Hazel via “American” Social Forestry
*and also, of course, Traditional Knowledge
The work I am doing with Wild-tending right now specifically revolves around my apprenticeship with Auntie Hazel in Southern Oregon where we are working to restore fire to the landscape practicing micro-land-scape scale cool-burning techniques, fuels reduction, and charcoal creation, to bring back beaver, restore the water and bring back salmon. I visit her each field season to work the land (I have co-taught with her on a number of occasions) and I also am helping her edit her upcoming book, Social Forestry, focused on American Social Forestry and Wild-tending technique, philosophy, and practice.
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