Though Ghandhiji was the first, who had shown path of truth and non-violence (peace) to the world is not found suitable for noble prize of peace 🤔 as the tool was used in South Africa against black and white discrimination 🙏same may be the reason for over looking 🤣😆🤣

There are som very good african american writers from Dunbar, fisher and chestnut to alice walker and toni morrison, and you can probably find much truth in what they write. But the US population of africans has not been farmers, though they have been slave laborers or sharecroppers. They have been coerced into aggriculture, and that overshadows everything. However, I do think there might be neglected african american fronteir people, mountain men or even prospectors, who might have written something somewhere?

But, I think africans in africa have been much more neglected than the african americans. In africa, they have a largely ignored intellectual tradition. Going back hundreds of years, to zera yacoub, to the songhai libraries of timbuktu, and God knows how many centuries, or millenia before that?

This is an important question to ask to promote critical inquiry concerning the environmental field!

Both environmental conservation and environmental research (much like academia more broadly) in the U.S. has largely prioritized the perspectives of White people/scholars over those of people of color. Contemporary scholars like Dorceta Taylor provide insight into how some Black historical figures like Harriet Tubman and Dr. Martin Luther King actually had strong environmental expertise and values that had been ignored by much of the "mainstream" environmentalist community. Historically, notable Black social science scholars like W.E.B. Du Bois have also written on nature and environments, but their work is often overlooked because dominant environmental movements have commonly sought to focus "only" on the natural environment and attempted to avoid bringing in other issues deemed controversial, like structural racism that Black writers often discuss.

Kieren Rudge. ITahnk you. I wasn't aware of this. When you say they had expertise, you do not actually say what their views are. Then you mention structural racism, which is a great problem. But what relevance does it have for ecology? Is a a sort of paralell to the native american criticism of white exploitation of nature. Do they project white exploitation of themselves into nature? But do they have an alternative, like the native americans? These are just questions; i must admit that I actually do not know every detail of what dubois and tubman thought,

I think I made an error of judgment in some of my replies. But I wonder whether one explanation for the lack of attention is to be found in the fact that african americans themselves have focused on other issues, and that these issues have been so pressing that the envirnmentalism has been overshadowed? I think is what i wanted to say, but then i did not phrase it correctly. The easy is explanation is that it has been suppressed through some sort of deliberate or unconconsscious conspiracy. But is that always the case? If your mind is always focused on very pressing day-to-day issues....?

Michael Henrik Wynn There is a great diversity of issues that African American/Black scholars, writers, and activists have focused on and many relate to aspects of the environment/nature/ecology but often problems associated with race and racism complicate dominant environmental narratives, and therefore these ideas are sometimes pushed the fringe of mainstream environmentalism.

For example, preservation of natural spaces or the establishment of more green spaces in developing cities has clear environmental benefits but also historical processes associated with establishing some of these places has been tied to displacement of Black communities and Indigenous communities and the maintenance of primarily White spaces. Black Faces, White Spaces by Carolyn Finney and The Rise of the American Conservation Movement by Dorceta Taylor examine cases of these sorts of exclusions happening where wealthy White environmentalists were able to succeed in their conservation goals despite harming communities of color. This was seen with the establishment of Central Park in NYC displacing diverse communities of Seneca Village and many other city and national parks/preserves. Finney also writes about how the civil rights movement and environmental movement of the 1960s at time were supporting similar agendas and at time were at odds. Her book explicitly talks about some of the reasons that Black authors and activists are often left out of the environmentalism picture. Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry edited by Camille T. Dungy presents many of these stories as well.

For Du Bois specifically, he talks about the importance of understanding and supporting the health of land and ecosystems and also discusses aspects related to more contemporary ideas of environmental justice of how society and the environment racialize people and how environmental disparities occur. Article The Soils of Black Folk: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Theories of Enviro...

For Tubman, more scholars are now recognizing and highlighting her depth of environmental knowledge. It is important to show that Black leaders like her were expert naturalists who shared environmental knowledge, often necessarily to help slaves escape. https://carnegiemnh.org/harriet-tubman-was-a-naturalist/