How Can We Decolonize The Outdoors?
When you hear the world "decolonize," what comes to mind?
Sword fights where Europeans are on the verge of crying uncle to indigenous warriors who have the upper hand?
The word "DECOLONIZE" emblazoned on a bumper sticker of a car parked outside a Berkeley food co-op?
In practice, decolonization rests somewhere in the middle -- more action than the bumper sticker, less violence than the sword fights. Decolonization both reimagines and reshapes the exclusively-for-whites traditions of a long-standing institution to create diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging to all people.
How do we know what needs to be decolonized?
I recently watched the PBS documentary "Decolonizing Mental Health," which highlights how behavioral health care professionals and community members work with those not typically served by the traditional (aka white/European) models of mental health care.
Dr. Vivian H. Jackson, seen wearing glasses in the bottom-right block of the above image, created a "6A" matrix to examine mental health care options in predominately non-white areas. Mental health care providers interested in decolonization need to uncover the following:
Availability: Do mental health services exist in this area?
Accessibility: Are these services easy to get to if one doesn't have a car?
Awareness: Are these services well known to this community?
Affordability: Are these services at a price point that community members can afford?
Appropriate: Are these services of good quality through a culturally-appropriate lens?
Acceptability: Is mental health care accepted by the cultural norms of this area?
These As are in sequential order. If a mental health provider receives a "No" to the first "A," there's no need to go farther -- accessibility (the second A) can't happen if the service doesn't exist (the first A).
Taking the 6As to decolonize outdoor spaces
Jackson's 6A model works incredibly well to determine decolonization next steps in mental health services. But I'm thinking: Why stop there?
The 6As can be applied easily to the the decolonization of outdoor recreational spaces. Let's take hiking trails as an example.
Availability: Do hiking trails exist in this area?
Accessibility: Are these trails easy to get to if one doesn't have a car?
Awareness: Are these trails well known to this community?
Affordability: Do these trails have a price point that community members can afford?
Appropriate: Are these trails well maintained and free of names of people who have espoused views antagonistic to the community?
Acceptability: Are hiking trails accepted by the cultural norms of this area?
Taking this further, I applied the model to where I live, the Greater Boston Area. Boston barely gets to the second "A" -- accessibility -- in decolonizing hiking trails.
Last year, the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization released a report on equity and access in Blue Hills Reservation. This 7,000 acre state park, full of scenic hiking trails, is, at most, 8 miles from the minority-majority Boston neighborhoods of Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury.
Yet for hikers in those neighborhoods largely dependent on public transportation, Blue Hills is all but out of reach. The report reveals that only one of Blue Hills' 10 major destinations is accessible by public transport.
And that ride isn't a straight shot. Taking the bus from Dorchester to that destination (Trailside Museum) takes 57 minutes, provided the rider makes the one transfer involved. For folks in Roxbury, the bus ride takes 73 minutes with two transfers. (Mattapan, the closest of the three neighborhoods, has the quickest ride time -- 15 minutes and no transfer to Trailside.)
Oh, and the bus doesn't operate on Sundays.
Compare this to the tony, white suburb of Concord, 26 miles from Trailside, where most rely on cars. A car ride to Trailside takes only 38 minutes.
The green check marks indicate, from north to south: Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. Compare their distance (and time) to that of Concord.
Stuck at the second "A" in Dr. Jackson's matrix, Greater Boston has a long trail ahead to decolonize hiking spaces -- pun intended.
Shining lights along the trail
Thankfully, there are organizations that are trying to make a difference in decolonizing the outdoors.
The Boston Nature Center, a MassAudubon sanctuary based in Mattapan, has two miles of hiking trails that wind through area meadows and wetlands. Several bus routes from Mattapan, Roxbury, and Dorchester get close to the Center, although there is at least ten minutes of walking once off the bus. While not nearly as expansive as Blue Hills, the Boston Nature Center presents community members with the benefits of walking in nature.
Other organizations are working to shrink the access gap between Blue Hills and Boston's underserved neighborhoods.
The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) has proposed a bike and pedestrian path that will link Dorchester and Mattapan to Blue Hills.
In the 2022 Blue Hills equity report mentioned earlier, the MPO suggested several options to increase greater access to the reservation, including modifications to the existing bus route and a new bus service that will give bus riders different entry points to the state park. This part-time skeptic is weary of how quickly this will happen, as the report was just picked up by Boston radio station WBUR last week -- months after the report was released.
I plan to write to the MPO to see how far along plans are in decolonizing Blue Hills. Could I interest you to do the same?
