From Appalachia to the Bayou to the desert Southwest, here's how culture can teach us about adapting to a warmer world.
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Doing that goes beyond the practical question of how people will carry their heritage into a world reshaped by climate change. It requires looking to— the people within a community who are preserving its customs, songs, and stories and passing them on — for clues to how best to navigate this tumultuous time without losing generations of knowledge.
Climate change, like the coal industry that fostered it, threatens to rewrite some of the region’s cultural memory. Hilliard recalls members of the Scotts Run Museum in Osage, West Virginia, a place where town elders regularly play music, tell stories, and share meals, talking of rising floodwaters threatening their community gathering spaces. She sees collaboration with communities to preserve these important community resources as part of her life’s work.
Hopi farmer Michael Kotutwa Johnson relies on the annual monsoon to water his cornfields, and on what he knows of the land to prepare for the season ahead. He believes traditional farming methods will become increasingly vital as the climate changes.. “It’s part of our faith.” Even if this period of climate crisis is unprecedented and unpredictable, Johnson says, he feels prepared to bear it out.
Dr. Michael White and Company lead a jazz funeral procession during a wreath-laying event to remember the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina at the New Orleans Katrina Memorial.Along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Maida Owens, takes such work a step farther, trying to use folklore to shape public policy and make the world more welcoming toward those displaced by the climate crisis.of coastland each year for the better part of a century.
That’s where Owens hopes folklorists can affect policy change, too. Owens is keeping a close eye on the state’sthe state to conduct its planning with respect to the desires and needs of the people who live on the coast, prioritizing engagement before any major mitigation project, and saving habitat not merely for its inherent value but also for its importance to the coastal tribes it sustains.
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