Field Guide 05 and exercises for political ecology imaginaries.

Part of the Over the Levee, Under the Plow: An Experimental Curriculum series.

The once-dominant biome of tall grass prairie found in Central Illinois was maintained through the overlapping work of Indigenous peoples, grazing bison, weather-induced fires, and the underlying, deep effects of geological and climatic forces. Their near-complete destruction, including the lifeways through which they were constituted, only took about one hundred years. The Westward expansion of the settler-colonial nation state brought legal and mechanical technologies that turned the complex landscape before it into a simplified medium for extracting row crops and coal. This field guide combines creative non-fiction and images to depict a partial history of extractive land use in Central Illinois, and is accompanied by a set of exercises, questions, and prompts that act as a tool for learning about the lands where you are. Both texts are complemented by artist Ryan Griffis’ video work on the destruction of wetlands during colonial expansion.

Watch and read on our partner project website, Anthropocene Curriculum.