Melody Mobley poses against and brown background. She's smiling and wearing brown Western-style hat and a gray and white shawl.

About our guest author: Melody Starya Mobley’s experiences as the first black woman serving as a forester for the USDA are remarkable: both for the firsts she embodies and for the years of abuse and oppression she experienced within that system.

Now, Melody shares her personal stories to create positive change for groups historically excluded from accessing American natural spaces.

With the few federal protections that exist currently being stripped away, it’s more important than ever for stories like these to be told. To read more of Melody’s writing, visit her website

Image credit: Kirth Bobb


Historical recognition increases present-day equity

I am African American, Indigenous, and White, thanks to my enslaved ancestors. While most people think of me as Black based on my phenotypic characteristics, my heart values all my ancestors—and how they express themselves within me and their histories.

Wait! What does this have to do with forestry and forest management? A lot! There are so few people of color and women in this field, and we need to know their histories to understand how our country does not treat races, ethnicities, and genders equitably—especially in our history books.

This is why we need various history recognition months: To remind us that great prejudice against non-Whites is increasing in America. Knowing the great accomplishments made by all races and genders of people can help reduce this still-present hate, especially if we learn it young enough.We need equitable telling of the history of all of us, the contributions of all of us, the importance of all of us.

Recognizing—and celebrating—my own ethnic history

American Indian ancestry

In my family, we were always taught that my maternal grandfather was Cherokee Indian, and that’s all we knew.

The few times I saw him supported his Indian heritage: he had American Indian phenotypic characteristics: coal black straight, thick hair, dark brown eyes and medium brown skin. I don’t know if he spoke Cherokee languages; we kids never asked him and Mother didn’t mention it. There were no DNA test kits back then, and most genealogy records list all brown skinned people as “Colored.”

I care deeply about my grandfather George Sawyers and his heritage because that makes me at most ¼ Cherokee. I love American Indian cultures and find them to be beautiful peoples. I want to be at least part Native American. I claim my Native American heritage that shows up in modern DNA tests I have taken. But think of all the stories and history that are lost to me because George Sawyers is long dead and his history was not at all valued during his lifetime.

Each November, we officially celebrate Native American Heritage Month. But I choose to celebrate Native American history every day. At a minimum, I read from Joyce Sequichie Hifler’s A Cherokee Feast of Days, a book of daily meditations. She has a minimum of three volumes, and I love them all. I have dream catchers throughout my house as well as the gemstone Snowflake Obsidian, which is believed to stem the depression which has bedeviled me.

American Indian history was, and is, typically left out of the history books used in American schools. What “history” was there was blatantly false, like the myths surrounding Thanksgiving. It is shameful: there are Native American tribes that only exist in their descendants, without political entity status. In other words, America has extirpated tribes—and many times, their history has been lost with them.

African American experience

There is more African American history available, but American schools do not consistently or accurately teach even that history. Part of the history of George Washington Carver is sometimes taught to science students, and we learned a little about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. after he was assassinated, but that was all.

I have very large, high cheekbones which seem to identify me as having some American Indian heritage, but that is about it. From there, my Black blood seems to dominate. Since I appear to be African American, I fit in mostly in those circles. I have medium brown skin, which could be Native or African American, but there is no denying my Black nappy hair, my broad, flat nose, and other Black features.

Asian appreciation

I have loved Asian Bruce Lee since 1973 and posters of him are in every room and hallway of my house even 51 years later. I chose my school, the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, because that is the school Lee attended for a portion of his academic life.

For that and many other reasons, I celebrate May as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. But every day is a reason for us to learn more Asian American and Pacific Islander history (also left out of our American history books).

We must remember our histories, for the sake of our forests …

Forests are my sanctuaries, my churches. I believe that’s partially why I became a professional forester, the first African-American female forester in the USDA Forest Service. Companies struggle to find highly qualified candidates because outreach at earlier stages is insufficient and students are not encouraged to pursue forestry. From kindergarten straight through college, we lose many of our brightest potential foresters because they are pushed into other fields.

Since retention is likewise low due to work culture, there are few working professionals who look like me. (And the ones who do are often treated terribly and even physically assaulted, as I was several times.) I have since written an entire article about recruiting and retaining people of color in natural resource organizations and worked with large and small organizations to improve their practices. We need to feel included, valued, and respected to thrive and do our best work. This starts with recognizing our histories and ends with realizing our brightest imagination of the future.

… and our collective futures.

Few of us are solely this or that. Our American textbooks leave out so much human history, including women’s history, LGBTQIA+ history, and so much more.

We must do better.

I’m sharing with you my personal history and my passion for other histories because all histories are important. American students should learn all of them in school. This is just what we need to face modern challenges like global climate change: the best work from the brightest minds on the planet, which necessarily includes women and people of color. There’s an adage that if we do not know and acknowledge the mistakes from history, we are bound to repeat them. I believe that. I also believe that bringing these histories to our forestry practice, in all services large and small, will help us make it to our brightest future.

 

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Read more of Melody’s writings
on her website.