Every History Has a Nature

Presidential addresses have always been in some measure personal reflections that aspire to engage broader issues facing our communities. Following that tradition, I will ground my talk today in my personal experience, in some of the work that I have done, but I also hope that in some small way it speaks to critical issues facing the public history community and indeed, all of our communities. At times over the past two years, it has seemed that the world was coming apart—a global pandemic, an ongoing reckoning with systemic racism and inequality, one of the most divisive elections in our country’s history, all set against the backdrop of a worsening climate crisis that poses an existential threat to the planet as we know it. I will not claim to have the answers today, but I do want to reflect upon some of the ways that the practice of public environmental history might help address some of the problems we face. In deciding on this topic, the COVID-19 pandemic loomed large. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. The pandemic has touched everything we have done individually and collectively over the past two years, which, as chance would have it, corresponded with my term as NCPH president. The real and potential impacts of the pandemic, your health and well-being being chief among them, were constant considerations as the staff and leadership of our organization worked to provide the programming and support you expect and deserve while carefully stewarding the organization’s resources. That meant making some tough decisions, most notably moving three successive annual meetings online. Although the next couple of years will continue to pose challenges, I am proud to say that NCPH is on a solid footing. The pandemic also transformed my day job—teaching Native American, environmental, and public history at the University of Utah. While reacting to the initial lockdown in the middle of the Spring 2020 semester was not seamless, things got