Decolonizing Environmentalism (Rewind) | Wanjiku "Wawa" Gatheru

182: We are rewinding to one of my favorite guests ever! We’re joined by Wanjiku “Wawa” Gatheru, a brilliant environmental justice scholar passionate about empowering BIPOC communities! Wawa is a recent alumnus of the University of Connecticut, and a Rhodes scholar attending Oxford continuing her intersectional environmental studies.

She has had two recently published pieces shake the Internet: her piece in Vice titled “It’s Time for Environmental Studies to Own Up to Erasing Black People,” and in Glamour, “Want to be an Environmentalist? Start with Antiracism.” Our conversation today covers a lot of ground, primarily stemming from this ideal of white environmentalism: we discuss racism + social justice in the conservation movement, and also in how BIPOC communities experience outdoor recreation; the whitewashing of environmental studies and histories; unpaid internships + tokenism, especially when it comes to making big nature-focused organizations into more diversity. Wawa speaks honestly about generational trauma and violence against Black folx, and criminalization still present today; this leads us to the topic of accessibility to the outdoors for non-white students.

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