Two Black women, Dr. Suzanne Pierre and Deseree Fontenot, stand on stage beneath a banner that reads “Eco Afro Futures: Presented by Critical Ecology Lab” and in front of a slide show titled “Queer Ecology,” with a seated crowd watching them.
By Deseree Fontenot
Guest speaking and attending Critical Ecology Lab’s (CEL) 2nd annual Eco-Afro Futures event in Oakland on February 15th has been the highlight of my Black History/Futures Month. Me and my colleagues Dana Viloria and Abbas Khalid had the pleasure to share wisdom and be in community with a group of amazing organizers, scholars, and more than 100 brilliant attendees at this event.
According to CEL, “Eco-Afro Futures is an initiative designed to gather, inform, inspire, and mobilize Black, Indigenous, and other communities of the global majority around local and global environmental realities and liberatory world-building.” This year’s event explored “the intersections of ancestral environmental wisdom (our seeds) and Afrofuturism (the stars) to reimagine and strive toward an ecologically and socially just, sustainable, and thriving world.”
Graphic with a pink background and many types of colorful fungi. Text reads: If they are a good networker, have a mesmerizing glow, make the world look magical, absorb toxins, have 36,000 sexes…they’re not you’re valentine, they’re a fungus #QueerEcology
Oakland is still the place to get hyphy and hyphae
Spaces like this are what many Black and brown folks working in environmental intersections crave. Finding intergenerational leadership, mentorship, and a sense of belonging and shared purpose as BIPOC ecologists, environmentalists, and earth lovers of all trades is a rare gem.
As Vick Montaño from Sogorea Te Land Trust shared with the audience at the event, the political borders of Oakland sit in the territory of Huchiun, the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people. Vick told story on the waves of displacement this land has seen, from the first waves of Spanish colonization to the gentrification of historically Black and brown neighborhoods of recent decades.
Sharing deep historical memory in spaces like Eco-Afro Futures is critical—from the times when there was no homelessness on this land and Indigenous communities cared for these ecosystems with regenerative lifeways; to the times when the Black Panther Party catalyzed the Black radical imagination to create new worlds rooted in collective governance, self-defense, and community care; to now when our comrades at Sogorea Te Land Trust are leading the work of rematriation and revitalizing the rich cultural and spiritual traditions of these lands. I look forward to the mycelial networks formed at this gathering growing deeper and stronger in Huchiun as we face intensifying political and ecological challenges.
Shaping and changing scientific communication
Y’all, this room was full of nerds passionate about a variety of topics: CEL’s research on the impacts of centuries of plantation monocultures on soil and plant ecologies, Dr. Tiana Bruno’s research on the biophysical afterlife of slavery and toxic refineries, and Dr. Laura Lewis’ research on the social worlds of our closest cousins, bonobos and chimpanzees and what we can learn from them. Preach on it. On top of these amazing presentations, there were interactive demos on ocean acidification and storm water resilient systems led by BIPOC scientists, as well as hella free books and materials to take home!
Currently we are seeing archaic agendas rapidly advancing, making it illegal for educators in any discipline to teach curriculum that involves telling the truth about the role of extractive economic systems and racialized violence, or even to teach visions of the future that call for both social and ecological justice. It was so refreshing to be in a space of scientific communicators committed to holding complexity in the way we do at Movement Generation in our education and strategy work.
As Dr. Suzanne Pierre put it: building and amplifying interdisciplinary education and training opportunities on earth systems, biodiversity, and real solutions to the climate crisis must be rooted in intersectional analyses from elementary school classrooms, to community learning spaces, to graduate level courses. It was an inspiring reminder that we must keep fighting to shape and create the futures we want to see.
Queering and Decolonizing Go Hand in Hand
In the spirit of the event’s theme of ancestral environmental wisdom, my presentation focused on the topic of Queer Ecologies. Since co-founding the Queer EcoJustice Project in 2016, I’ve been proud to be part of a network of naturalists, farmers, organizers, and scholars creating action-groups, workshops, curriculum, and cultural productions that explore the intersections of Queerness and Ecology. Many Western conceptions of gender, sexuality, and what constitutes queer behavior are colonial legacies. Many of the pathways we come to learn about the natural world are also colonial legacies.
Queer ecology quiz featuring images of: an avocado tree, fungi, a bat, a clownfish, a sloth, an acorn woodpecker, a bear, a tardigrade, and other plant and animal species.
My favorite way to get people to fall in love with ecology at MG retreats and workshops is with a Queer Ecology Quiz. The quiz highlights the expansive diversity of not just gender and sexuality in the more-than-human world, but also diverse forms of kinship, embodiment, and care systems that don’t fit into neat categories and that hold lessons for us about adapting, surviving, and cooperation. It’s a fun journey through examples like gender-shifting fish, flowers, and amphibians; all the gay animals; male dayak fruit bats who produce milk; the thousands of genders of fungi; the complex breeding and communal systems of acorn woodpeckers; and one of our closest relatives, the bonobos, being one of the most peace-seeking sexually fluid species out there. (When Dr. Laura Lewis presented at Eco-Afro Futures on her bonobo and chimpanzee research, I was fan girling the whole time.)
As a black queer nerd with Louisiana roots, I see queering and decolonizing as deeply entwined processes. Queering and decolonizing are not just metaphors, but deep, rooted visions for a radical restructuring of the world—how we create community and relationships to place. How many of us come to learn about nature, gender, sexuality, as well as our cultural identities, lands, and practices is scrambled in imperial/colonial legacies. Unraveling the complexities and assumption in these histories simultaneously is part of the work to remember our way forward into something new.
It was an honor to exchange wisdom, stories, laughter, tears, and seeds of hope with everyone at the Eco-Afro Futures event. I was so fed and am exciting to keep tending the visions and relationships forged in the space.