(Re)constructing environmental history: Excavating ecomemory with ecowomanist and intersectional AsianCrit framings for eco-justice pedagogical praxis

Abstract

This article investigates the role of autoethnographic research as the methodological tool of choice for an Asian American educator-activist-scholar (Suzuki & Mayorga, Multicultural Perspectives, 16(1), 16–20, 2014) who positions herself with a collaborative, critical, and intersectional ecofeminist perspective. I propose that ecomemory, a counter memory of environmental history and the environmental histories of people of color, should be used as valid ethnographic research and can contribute toward the AsianCrit tenets of (re)constructive history and story, theory, and praxis. Autoethnography, ecomemory, critical race theory, and AsianCrit, define how I think about the world and have influenced how I engage in educational research. Producing autoethnographic research validates and acknowledges my positionality and interrogates my marginal position inside dominant structures of education and environmental education. Rooted in my own environmental autobiography, ecomemory frames my professional practice as an educator and provides the foundations for cultivating a culturally responsive and culturally sustaining teaching model for K-12 eco-justice education and teacher education.