Black in Nature
Hi everyone!
I’m Peter Soroye, and I love being outdoors exploring and looking for cool plants and animals (both big and small). Nature has always been my favourite place to be. When I was a kid growing up in Northern Ontario, I spent many happy days outside in the small woods near my parents’ house, building forts, digging up bugs, and listening to the birds. In the summer when school was out, my parents used to take my siblings and I to Algonquin Park, sometimes for weeks at a time, and we would constantly be hiking, biking, canoeing, and exploring the beautiful park. Being immersed in the outdoors gave me a huge love and appreciation for the animals and plants that lived there, and started me on the path to becoming a conservation biologist (https://www.petersoroye.com/).
I’ve loved exploring nature and the outdoors since I was a little kid, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that because of the color of my skin, this was really surprising for some people. Apparently, Black naturalists and outdoors-people are a rare species. There is a reason for this: historically, Black people (and other minorities) have been deliberately excluded from nature and the outdoors. The effects of this exclusion are still visible today: look at any ad for an outdoor store, promotional images from a Park, or nature documentary, and you will struggle to find any Black faces. Nature should be for everyone regardless of your skin color, but to this day, it can be an unwelcoming place if you’re not white. I’ve had the pleasure to explore nature across the world, from BC and California, to Scotland and South Africa, and while my experience has overwhelmingly been awesome, I’ve also had to experience the surprise, dismissiveness, avoidance, and rare hostility that is sometimes directed towards black people enjoying the outdoors.
For me, the joy of exploring nature and appreciating the beautiful creatures in it far outweighs any feelings others might have of me being there. And this month’s Backyard Bio has been an incredibly fun time for exploring nature! While out discovering the wildlife in my (figurative) backyard, I’ve made some new friends and had a fun time exploring with some old ones as well. Some of these new and old friends were also Black, showing that we Black naturalists are not such a rare species after all!
More and more often, and especially though events like Backyard Bio or the #BlackInNature week that happened across social media this summer, I’m encountering naturalists and outdoors-people who don’t fit the traditional mold of a naturalist or outdoors-person. Organizations like Black Girl Outdoor World (https://www.facebook.com/Browngirloutdoorworld/) and KINxFOLK (https://www.kinxfolk.com/) are making spaces for these historically excluded people to enjoy nature, and more parks and companies are taking steps to make sure outdoor spaces and communities are truly welcoming for everyone.
Nature has always been my favorite place, and I’ll always love sharing that space with other people. If you’ve ever been curious about the world around you, take some time in this last week of Backyard Bio to record and share some of the beautiful and weird creatures around you. And if you’ve been going out for Backyard Bio already this month, use the last couple days to invite someone new out exploring with you. Let’s make sure that we’re doing our best to share the beauty and wonder that we experience exploring the outdoors with everyone.
See you in the wild!
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