Hannah Farrell 

ESRM 460: Power, Privilege, and Preservation 

December 6, 2018 
Final Reflective Statement 
 
This course was my first formal ESRM class at UW, and I was expecting to be 
challenged by its science-y-ness when I went into it. Instead, I was pleasantly 
surprised that at its core, ESRM 460 intersected nicely with my “usual” social 
sciences coursework. As a Law, Socieites, and Justice major, I regularly explore 
themes around justice, particularly how laws affect individuals and communities in 
sometimes disparate ways. In previous classes, themes of justice have been 
explored through the criminal legal system, immigration, education, the 
military-industrial complex, and more. ESRM 460 approached similar topics in 
regard to equity, access, and justice, but through land use and land relations. I found 
it fascinating that ESRM 460 addressed these issues from a bottom-up approach, 
rather than the top-down approach that I am used to (the latter approach primarily 
emphasizes sociolegal mechanisms as legitimate solutions). 
I was also pleased, but not necessarily surprised, to find that so many of the 
course topics interested me: environmental discourse normalizing and reproducing 
whiteness (Finney); reparations for environmental injustice perhaps conflicting with 
nationalism; discussions about if fire was “natural” or “unnatural”; monogamy as 
settler sexuality; unlikely alliances between rural whites and Native nations; and 
especially risking bodies in the wild and queer ecology. I also really appreciated that 
both our midterm and final projects forced us engage with land that we had a 
personal connection to. I think for a lot of people it was the first time they’d been 
required to do so, and it was a useful exercise for me to contextualize my individual 
history with the island where members of my family had been missionaries. 
At the beginning of class, I was a little frustrated because I don’t think all of 
the class was on the same page when it came to identity terms or disability. For 
example, one student repeatedly used the phrase “colored people” instead of 
“people of color”. However, the class found a way to educate perhaps uninformed 
students without alienating them, which I think speaks to the welcoming classroom 
environment. I also wish we had spent more time emphasizing that Native 
Americans (or Black Americans, for that matter) are not a monolith. Saying things like 
“the salmon is an important symbol for Native American culture” ignores and erases 
the reality that there are ​many​ Native American cultures who likely do not all ascribe 
to the same beliefs. 
Overall, I’m really glad that I decided to take this course. This class has 
allowed me to engage with bottom-down solutions to environmental injustice. I’m 
graduating in June 2019 and don’t know what I want to do afterwards. But this class 
has likely influenced what I am going to do - maybe work at a nonprofit or do 
environmental advocacy work? Perhaps I’ll do something more bottom-up than 
top-down. And in my personal life, when I’m rock climbing, mountaineering, or 
backcountry skiing, I will engage more thoughtfully with whiteness, masculinity, and 
ableism.