Originally appears in the Fall 2009 issue

I remember lying on the carpet at home as a child, listening to some of the story recordings my mother would put on the phonograph. In Little Red Riding Hood, images of shadowy forests full of hungry wolves danced through my head as I awaited the “chime,” which signaled me to turn the page. In grade two, those same trees would creep through my thoughts as the teacher read Hansel and Gretel aloud to the class after recess. In grade eight, we read Gary Paulson’s The Hatchet, which details one boy’s struggle to survive against the fierce Canadian wild. In high school we learned the magic of the night forest in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and saw its destructive power over young minds in Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Thinking about these stories from my childhood, I began to wonder if the stories being told outside of home and school are any different.

I was at a movie theatre recently. During an extended wait in the ticket line, my eyes began to wander around the lobby taking in the massive Hollywood movie posters. One billboard in particular caught my eye. It was an advertisement for the latest horror movie, and depicted the silhouette of a woman peering into a window, overshadowed by a stormy sky, and, behind her, a forest. How interesting, I thought, that a wooded setting was chosen for this poster. The artist knew that in order to elicit a certain emotional response from the audience — fear — the perfect context would be a wooded lot in late autumn.

This sort of poster is not atypical, but as an environmental educator I find it disturbing. Consider, for instance, if it was your face the artist used peering through the window. Would you be offended that your image was used to frighten people? Similarly, would people react differently to you — even those who had never met you — simply because they saw your face on a movie advertisement? I wonder, then, how our view of the forest changes with each story. Could I walk though the forest on a cloudy day without getting the feeling that someone was watching me? Or could I sleep in the woods after watching The Blair Witch Project? Are my kids going to play outside with the same innocence after reading Little Red Riding Hood? The stories we tell, and the imagery within them, have a profound effect on how we experience the natural world.

The prominent environmental thinker Neil Everndon states in his book The Natural Alien, “How we act towards the non-human is a consequence of our beliefs about how we should act, and what we are acting on.”2 If our belief about the natural world is based on fear, and if our belief is shaped by the stories we tell, then we must change those stories if we want to change how we act towards the natural world. We need narratives that express reverence for nature and celebrate rather than demonize our connection to other living things.

Recently I’ve been learning about stories of First Nations Peoples, specifically those of the Anishnaabe, or Ojibwa, peoples in Canada. At an education workshop, Anishnaabe elder Kaaren Dannenmann emphasized the importance of story as a primary tool of education in the First Nations tradition. To highlight this, she recounted the Anishnaabe creation story, which details how the muskrat and the turtle sacrificed their lives so that the Earth could be created. I was struck by how the Anishnaabe stories differed from the traditional narratives of my childhood. They seemed to express a more profound respect for nature; and they contained a sense of mystery, sacredness and connection to the natural world that is lacking in our Western storytelling tradition. In Anishnaabe narratives, the natural world does not exist simply for human purposes. Rather, humans are a part of, and indeed are dependent upon, a larger drama unfolding within natural world.

Dannenmann explained that Anishnaabe narratives, such as the creation story, have the power to influence how her people treat the natural world. Like most First Nations cultures, the Anishnaabe people have hunting ceremonies, recognizing that in taking the life of an animal they are affecting, in some way, the larger story of the natural world. The hunter gives thanks to the Creator for providing, and then acknowledges the animal for offering its body as a sacrifice. After the hunt, the community utilizes as much of the animal as possible and gives parts of the animal back to the Earth as a sign of gratitude and respect. After a muskrat is killed, for instance, one of its paws is cut off and put back into the water in a ceremony of remembrance for the sacrifice the animal made during the creation of the Earth.

The connection between our stories and our treatment of the natural world is one that Western storytellers and educators have perhaps failed to realize. Stories that focus only on the frightening aspects or destructive power of nature have a profound effect on the way we learn about, experience and inevitably treat the natural world. The respectful and insightful stories and traditions of First Nations peoples suggest that a different, more positive relationship with nature is possible. It is time to start creating new narratives for our children and future generations, ones that instill respect and relationship rather than dread. The following are some ideas for beginning to create such narratives in the classroom.

Invite First Nations community members

One way to provide a more balanced view of nature is to invite First Nations community members into the classroom to tell their stories. There are plenty of curricular links for this at all grade levels, and it provides students a welcome break from the classroom routine while promoting a greater awareness of history and culture.

Bring the wild inside

Educator Anthony Weston suggests that the confines of school buildings keep students from engaging in the natural world.3 In light of this, Weston proposes inviting the “outside” world to be part of the classroom inside. Bringing in natural objects, from rocks and flowers to spiders and goldfish, is one way to include the natural world within the walls of the building. By observing the working processes of the natural world indoors, students have the opportunity to observe real stories — how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, how a spider builds a web to catch food. In essence, the natural world is allowed into the classroom to tell its own story.

Imagining another

Humorist Jack Handey once asked, “If trees could scream, do you think we’d be so cavalier about cutting them down?”4 Although meant to be comical, there is a lot of truth in this statement about how we objectify nature. One way to counter this perception is to imagine the world through the eyes of the other. At the primary level, teachers might ask students to envision themselves as a field mouse and then compose a paragraph or story of the day’s activities. At the intermediate or senior level, teachers may stage a debate about climate change among industry representatives, government officials, a group of polar bears and a pod of whales. Such activities ask students to place themselves in rather than apart from the story of the natural world. In this way, they develop a greater awareness of and appreciation for the daily routines and struggles of our fellow animals.

Show and tell

People love to talk about themselves and the things that mean the most to them. With this in mind, consider a class “show-and-tell” in which students bring in an object and tell a story that reflects their connection with nature. For instance, children might show leaves or hiking sticks found on a walk, a magnifying glass used to look at ants on the sidewalk, or a picture they drew of the black-capped chickadee they saw on the birdfeeder in the backyard. This activity is best done without assigning marks, as the intention is not to cause stress but to allow students to tell their own stories about how they connect with the natural world through their object.

Choose movies carefully

In recent years, Hollywood blockbuster movies about natural disasters, such as Twister, The Core, Armageddon and The Day After Tomorrow, have been infiltrating geography classes as a hook for students. Not only is the information in these films horribly inaccurate, but the films demonize nature and encourage fear. Teachers need to be aware of the implicit messages such movies send and perhaps think twice about showing them. At the very least, teachers should allow time to debrief such movies, asking students how nature is portrayed in them and what attitudes toward nature are presented and encouraged.

Stories are powerful teaching tools with the potential to change the way we think about our relationship to the natural world. By actively engaging students in the creation of new, more holistic and respectful stories, we are not only making our classrooms more interesting but taking steps back into those haunted forests of popular culture and reconnecting with nature.

 

Notes

  1. Paul Shepard, “Whatever happened to Human Ecology?” Bioscience 17, 1967, referenced in Neil Evernden, The Natural Alien: Humankind and the Environment, University of Toronto Press, 1993, p. 893.
  2. Evernden, 1993.
  3. Anthony Weston, “What if Teaching Went Wild?” Green Teacher 76, Spring 2005.
  4. Jack Handey, “Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey,” online September 9, 2009, <www.deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com/>.

 

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Michael Gowing works as an outdoor educator in Hamilton, Ontario, and always enjoys a good story.