Białowieza, Poland, and Joseph, Oregon, are more than 5,000 miles apart. Białowieza is surrounded by primeval forest, a mix of deciduous swamps and evergreen groves. Joseph is tucked among the vast stands of pine, spruce and fir in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.
In Poland, communities remain marked by the traumas of World War II and ethnic violence between Poles and Belarusians. At the same time, marginalized Oregonians face legacies of settler colonialism, racial exclusion and broken treaties.
These two distinct forested settings unite in the research and teaching of Eunice Blavascunas, associate professor of anthropology and environmental studies at Whitman College.
Both are complex ecosystems, biologically and culturally. Residents wrestle with questions about logging, jobs, endangered species and how to pursue justice given these complex pasts.
“The borderlands of eastern Poland and what’s happening in eastern Washington or eastern Oregon are very far apart, but there are ways in which we see similar processes of who belongs in a landscape,” Blavascunas says. “What is that history of belonging?”
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