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Still shot from the Jordan Peele movie “Us” 

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Evelyn White “Black Women and the Wilderness” Analysis

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Evelyn White “Black Women and the Wilderness” Analysis

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“For me, the fear is like a heartbeat, always present, while at the same time, intangible, elusive, and difficult to define. So pervasive, so much a part of me, that I hardly knew it was there” (White, Black Women and the Wilderness, 377). In this quote, White captures the deep rooted and unspoken fear that many Black individuals feel in relation to wilderness. This fear was shaped not by the natural world itself, but by the systemic racism that has historically excluded and endangered Black people in outdoor spaces. This fear has become central to how wilderness is conceptualized within the Black community, where nature is often viewed not as a place of peace or freedom, but of risk and exclusion. This reality is reinforced through media representations, especially in horror films, where Black characters are often depicted as out of place or doomed in natural settings (i.e. Us). Like White’s avoidance of “outdoorsy” activities, these portrayals reflect how lived experience and cultural context shape the relationship between Black identity and wilderness.

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The historical segregation of National Parks and public lands set a lasting precedent for how Black Americans were expected to interact with nature. During the Jim Crow era, wilderness was physically and culturally coded as white and Christian, effectively excluding non white communities from full participation. Though legal segregation has ended, systemic racism continues to influence how Black individuals perceive and experience the natural world. This legacy is evident in popular media, such as Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017), which begins with a Black character joking that visiting a secluded rural area will lead to the protagonist’s death, an “offhand” comment that becomes prophetic. The film plays on the fear and historical reality that wilderness has not been a safe space for Black Americans. This reflects broader epistemological standpoints shaped by racialized histories, where the concept of “wild” is not universal, but deeply informed by exclusion, trauma, and cultural memory.

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Wilderness is often romanticized in Western society as vast, untouched land, pure and separate from human influence. However, this ideal is neither neutral nor universal. It is a socially constructed concept shaped by colonialism, white supremacy, and cultural erasure. The dominant Western narrative ignores Indigenous presence and knowledge, redefining nature through a lens of conquest and control. Depending on one’s identity and lived experience, wilderness may represent peace, danger, or exclusion. There is a need to challenge the traditional Western definition of wilderness by exploring how race, class, gender, and history shape individual relationships with the natural world. This deconstruction would accurately redefine the construction of wilderness and nature.

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There is no fixed concept of wilderness in society, the conceptualization of nature is dependent on an individual's relationship with it. This relationship is shaped by intersecting aspects of one's identity such as race, class, gender, and geographic location. While broader cultural and historical contexts play a role in shaping one's perception of the environment and nature, the person's lived experience ultimately defines how one engages with ideas of the environment and the wilderness. Across the works studied in this course, there was a constant demonstration of how wilderness can be constructed and tailored to make sense of an individual's lived experience.

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In The Tunnel, director Sean Louis Kelly explores the complex and ever changing meanings of wilderness by drawing on his personal experiences growing up in rural Connecticut. The film opens with serene, awe filled shots of nature, reflecting Indigenous influenced values that view the land as sacred. However, as the film progresses, this tranquility gives way to haunting, vast landscapes that evoke fear and disorientation, an example of the sublime. The sublime is a concept long embedded in Western representations of wilderness. This shift mirrors how modern American culture often frames nature as both beautiful and threatening depending on the narrative that best suits the situation. Kelly’s visual storytelling shows how one’s identity and cultural background influence how wilderness is perceived and portrayed.In The Tunnel, director Sean Louis Kelly explores the complex and ever changing meanings of wilderness by drawing on his personal experiences growing up in rural Connecticut. The film opens with serene, awe filled shots of nature, reflecting Indigenous influenced values that view the land as sacred. However, as the film progresses, this tranquility gives way to haunting, vast landscapes that evoke fear and disorientation, an example of the sublime. The sublime is a concept long embedded in Western representations of wilderness. This shift mirrors how modern American culture often frames nature as both beautiful and threatening depending on the narrative that best suits the situation. Kelly’s visual storytelling shows how one’s identity and cultural background influence how wilderness is perceived and portrayed.

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“How near to good is what is wild” (Thoreau, Walking, p. 8). This quote reflects a romanticized view of wilderness that shaped early American environmental thought. However, the construction of wilderness in the United States has often been less about preserving nature and more about asserting control. Under the guise of protection, wilderness areas were sectioned off through policies rooted in colonialism and Manifest Destiny. These ideologies framed nature as something to be conquered, an extension of the American project of domination and expansion. As a result, American representations of nature often reflect power dynamics rather than harmony. The portrayal of nature as “Mother” reflects an Indigenous worldview, yet European Americans appropriated and redefined it, stripping away its original meaning. In doing so, they remade wilderness in a way that aligned with settler colonial values, turning nature into both a national symbol and an object to control. This legacy still shapes how wilderness is imagined today.

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Art has long played a powerful role in revolutionary and social movements, particularly because of the ability to transcend language and communicate complex ideas across cultural and geographic barriers. In the context of ecofeminism, art becomes a vital medium for expressing the interconnected struggles against environmental degradation and the oppression of women. As discussed in the Rock and Art article, ecofeminist art challenges dominant narratives by highlighting how patriarchy and capitalism exploit both nature and the female body. This form of activism uses symbolism, emotion, and accessibility to reach broad audiences, making its message both deeply personal and universally resonant. Unlike traditional political discourse, ecofeminist art allows for a wide range of interpretations, inviting viewers to engage with environmental and gender justice from their own lived experiences. In this way, it reinforces the idea that relationships with nature are shaped by identity, history, and systemic structures, core to understanding wilderness as a socially constructed concept.

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Ecofeminism Today: A Rising Voice In Art And Activism | Rock & Art

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Explore the rising voice of ecofeminism in the arts. Discover how ecofeminist artists challenge gender and environmental norms. Join us to read.

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The disposition of the land through ‘proper channels’—including city council and university officials—was characterized variously as ‘the rape of People’s Park’” (Kolodny, Unearthing Herstory, p. 171). Kolodny powerfully illustrates how the language used to describe environmental exploitation mirrors the language and logic of sexual violence, particularly against women. This parallel draws attention to a long-standing metaphor in Western culture: the feminization of nature. While some Indigenous cultures personify nature as a nurturing, life giving maternal force, the Western world redefined "Mother Nature" in a way that aligns with patriarchal values, recasting her as something to be dominated, subdued, or “conquered.” This worldview directly ties the subjugation of women to the exploitation of the land. Even in Thoreau’s Walking, there are undertones of superiority and control embedded in his engagement with the wilderness, revealing the cultural mindset of mastery over nature. Ecofeminist critique exposes how both women and the environment are often objectified and violated under similar systems of power.

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“The language scientists speak, however precise, is based on a profound error in grammar, an omission, a grave loss in translation from the native languages of these shores” (Kimmerer, Learning the Grammar of Animacy, p. 49). Kimmerer points to a deeper form of cultural erasure, the loss of Indigenous languages, which represents a silent but powerful act of cultural genocide. Language shapes how people understand and relate to the world. It is the foundation of oral tradition, identity, and intergenerational knowledge. When Indigenous languages are destroyed or displaced, so too are the unique worldviews they carry, especially those centered on reciprocity, respect, and kinship with the nonhuman world. Western efforts to erase or ignore these languages have allowed dominant culture to impose its own interpretations of nature, rooted in control and separation, while silencing Indigenous perspectives that view wilderness as animate, relational, and sacred. This linguistic loss distorts environmental thought and reshapes wilderness through a colonial lens.

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Between 1830 and 1850, more than 60,000 Indigenous people were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands through coercive treaties and military violence. This displacement was rationalized by the ideology of Manifest Destiny, the belief that European Americans were divinely entitled to expand across the North American continent. Indigenous peoples were cast as obstacles to this "destiny," justifying their removal and cultural erasure. Manifest Destiny not only fueled settler colonialism but also laid the foundation for the deconstruction and redefinition of wilderness in America. While Indigenous cultural practices and relationships with land deeply informed the original understanding of wilderness, settler colonial narratives distorted and appropriated these ideas to support land conquest and ownership. As a result, the Western conception of wilderness is often a manufactured and harmful construct, one that strips nature of its original relational meaning and replaces it with ideas rooted in control, exploitation, and distance from human identity.

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“Land, like Odysseus’ slave-girls, is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations” (Leopold, The Land Ethic, p. 2). Leopold critiques the dominant Western view of land as a resource to be owned and exploited, rather than as a living entity deserving ethical treatment. This transactional relationship with nature, while sometimes masked by symbolic gestures of reverence, is ultimately rooted in colonization and capitalist extraction. Although Indigenous worldviews, such as the story of Skywoman, emphasize reciprocity and caretaking between humans and the earth. Leopold points out that European Americans have failed to adopt such values in practice. Instead, they continue to treat land as something to dominate, reflecting a mindset disturbingly similar to the objectification of enslaved people. Thus, the concept of wilderness in America becomes a contradiction: celebrated as pure and sacred, yet consistently exploited and commodified. This tension lies at the heart of how wilderness is constructed through identity and power.

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Deconstruction of Wilderness - Contextualization

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Deconstruction of Wilderness - Contextualization

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Wilderness, as commonly defined in the West, does not truly exist. The Western notion of wilderness refers to land that is untouched and undomesticated by humans, but this definition erases the presence and land stewardship of Indigenous peoples. As such, "wilderness" is a social construct rooted in settler colonial ideology. While the concept once carried cultural significance, its meaning has shifted so dramatically across historical and social contexts that it has become contradictory. No land is truly "untouched" ; centuries of colonization, expansion, and ecological manipulation have altered every landscape. Within the U.S., land is often only considered “wild” if it remains unaltered by European Americans, reinforcing a colonial hierarchy of whose presence on the land is recognized. Today, wilderness continues to be framed through ideas of ownership, control, and even fear. While individual experiences may shape one’s understanding of wilderness, any broader definition must be viewed through the enduring legacy of colonization.Wilderness, as commonly defined in the West, does not truly exist. The Western notion of wilderness refers to land that is untouched and undomesticated by humans, but this definition erases the presence and land stewardship of Indigenous peoples. As such, "wilderness" is a social construct rooted in settler colonial ideology. While the concept once carried cultural significance, its meaning has shifted so dramatically across historical and social contexts that it has become contradictory. No land is truly "untouched" ; centuries of colonization, expansion, and ecological manipulation have altered every landscape. Within the U.S., land is often only considered “wild” if it remains unaltered by European Americans, reinforcing a colonial hierarchy of whose presence on the land is recognized. Today, wilderness continues to be framed through ideas of ownership, control, and even fear. While individual experiences may shape one’s understanding of wilderness, any broader definition must be viewed through the enduring legacy of colonization.

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The Western conceptualization of wilderness is inherently contradictory, defined as untouched and undomesticated, yet shaped by human perceptions and histories of conquest. As a result, "wilderness" is not an objective reality but a social construct, understood through the lens of individual experience. This framework is known as an epistemological standpoint: the idea that one’s relationship with nature is shaped by intersecting identities such as race, gender, and class. While wilderness may feel personal, a shared cultural definition still persists in Western discourse, one that often portrays nature as wild, dangerous, and feminine. Historically, this metaphor has taken the form of the feminized and racialized “wilderness”, women of color, whose body, like the land, is subject to control, conquest, and exploitation. This imagery reveals how deeply colonization and systemic oppression shape our understanding of the natural world. In this way, wilderness becomes not just a place, but a reflection of power, identity, and historical violence.

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Reconstruction of “The Wild” - Conceptualization

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Reconstruction of “The Wild” - Conceptualization

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The construct of wilderness stems from colonial ideologies in which both land and marginalized bodies were seen as objects of conquest. During colonization, Indigenous women were often the first targets of violence, seen as extensions of the "new" land to be claimed. Similarly, the systemic sexual violence inflicted on enslaved Black women reflected the belief that domination over their bodies signified ownership and control. In war, the seizure of women has historically been treated as a spoil of victory. These patterns parallel the Western relationship with nature: land is viewed not as something to respect or coexist with, but as something to own, tame, and extract from. When wilderness is framed as a woman of color, it exposes how power and identity shape environmental interaction, revealing that conquest of land often mirrors conquest of the body.

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In conclusion, the concept of wilderness in colonized Western society is not a fixed or universal truth. Wilderness is a construct shaped by history, power, and personal identity through the lens of intersecting factors such as race, gender, class, and geography. This makes it clear that one’s relationship with nature is personal and politically informed. From the forced displacement of Indigenous peoples to the racial segregation of national parks, and from ecofeminist art to the portrayal of Black fear in horror films, each example reveals how the idea of the “wild” has been molded by systems of control and conquest. The recurring metaphor of wilderness as a woman of color underscores how the land, like marginalized bodies, has been colonized, objectified, and misrepresented. This redefinition of wilderness requires unlearning colonial narratives and recognizing that the “wild” exists not as untouched land, but as lived experience shaped by identity and resistance.

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Ecofeminism Today: A Rising Voice in Art and Activism."_Rock & Art_, 2024, [www.rockandart.org/ecofeminism-rising-voice-in-art-and-activism](https://www.rockandart.org/ecofeminism-rising-voice-in-art-and-activism). Accessed 01 May. 2025.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walking. 1862.

Kolodny, Annette. Unearthing Herstory: An Introduction to Women's Literary History. Pandora Press, 1984.

Muir, J. (2015). Chapter I. In The Yosemite (pp. 1–11).

University of California Press.

Kelly, S. L. (2023). Tunnel. YouTube.

https://youtu.be/XYLgwxbwEb8?feature=shared

White, Evelyn. “Black Women and the Wilderness.” Literature and the Environment: A Reader on Nature and Culture, Pearson, 1999.

Kimmerer, W. Robin, “Learning the Grammar of Animacy” (12)

Leopold, Aldo “The Land Ethic: Thinking Like a Mountain” (16)