Not all forest workers
wield axes and chainsaws. In the oral history compilation
Voices from the Woods: Lives and Experiences of Non-timber
Forest Workers, 32 mushroom harvesters, tree planters,
medicinal herb gatherers, and wild huckleberry harvesters
articulate their lives and work in the forests of the Pacific
Northwest (HCN, 2/15/99: An entrepreneurial
spirit).
Antonio Perez describes the formation of
a grassroots Hispanic tree-planting cooperative in the Cascades,
Sherlette Colegrove talks of passing down knowledge of medicinal
plants on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation to her son, and
‘Nouay S. tells of his escape from Laos and his work collecting
mushrooms and beargrass near Crescent Lake,
Ore.
The project was conducted by southern
Oregon’s Jefferson Center for Education and Research, which works
“kitchen table to kitchen table” with low-income, often migrant,
forest workers and their rural communities to address labor rights,
forest management, and immigration issues.
“Most
people are unaware of these sets of issues and how pivotal they
are,” says project editor Beverly Brown. “This is an invisible
workforce.” The Center wants forestry professionals and policy
makers to acknowledge and understand this multicultural,
multilingual constituency.
The project is already
proving its worth. Brown says forest workers whose first languages
may be Spanish, Hmong, or Lao are using the booklet to bridge
language divides and initiate dialogues within their
communities.
Order copies for $5 (free to
low-income groups) through the Jefferson Center at 541/955-9705 or
jeffctr@internetcds.com. The publication is available in both
English and Spanish.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Not your average Paul Bunyan.
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