Roots of Past and Present

Abstract

Places are not simply the sites where our lives happen. Rather, they are made, produced and contested processes that happen, take place. They are both highly personal and collectively shared. Places are also inherently political as cultural values and power relations are built into, and reconstituted, through place. The very possibilities of place are constrained by structures of power and the dominant cultural imagination. This personal natural history essay is a starting point to explore the link between people, landscape, and the complexities of place-making. Specifically through interrogating my personal connection to place in the South Interior of British Columbia, this essay is an engaged personal reflection and examination of my relationship with what I have seen as a particular kind of placeââthe natural world.â By way of this reflection, the essay questions our relationships with place, specifically in those places seen as ânatural,â and opens up space for thinking about the complexities of place-making, personally and collectively.