Greetings

and welcome! I am writing to you from the ancestral lands of the Southern Maidu, Miwok, Nisenan, and Patwin peoples of Northern California. I recognize these Indigenous peoples as the original and ongoing stewards of this land. As a White settler, I acknowledge my complicity in the colonialism and racism that have led to the historical erasure, land appropriation, and oppression of many Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC).

While I hope you find this site a source for interesting information and knowledge sharing, I will continue to work on providing up-to-date and current resources that acknowledge the many BIPOC contributions to the field of outdoor/experiential education.

A few places to get started immediately include: https://group.sagepub.com/structural-racism-police-violence (for academics). For OEE instructors, check out: https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/environmental-justice and /assets/files/White%20Privilege-Unpacking%20the%20Invisible%20Knapsack.pdf

Take the 21 day-challenge to build racial equity habits: https://www.debbyirving.com/21-day-challenge/

Immediate Must Reads: How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi; and White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin DiAngelo

I invite you to explore , offer your own insights and resources, and thereby engage and expand this community of practice through research and knowledge sharing.

I invite you to join me on July 15th @ 5:30 pm Eastern Time for an upcoming webinar that I am hosting entitled, "Grab your compass and rotate the bezel in the direction of social justice: An orienteering adventure with Mary Breunig"

For more details and to register, go to: https://www.aee.org/WEBINARS

By way of personal introduction,

let me share a part of my academic journey. Throughout the 1990s, while guiding wilderness trips around the World and as an outdoor educator taking school children out into nature, I became curious about how time spent in natural places with others connected people in unique and intimate ways. I first thought about this when working at summer camp in Wisconsin in the 80s as a cabin counselor. The girls in the cabin were not bonding well with one another at the beginning of the season. A couple of weeks into the summer, we went on a three-day canoe trip on the Flambeau River together and the girls began to communicate in increasingly more positive and productive ways. I wondered what impact that wilderness travel experience may have had in this shift in their behavior.

This experience alongside many other outdoor, wilderness trips led me into research about how people experience the outdoors and experience each other when spending time in the natural environment as a group member. Throughout my career, I have furthered this area of study by examining the ways in which outdoor, environmental education can promote pro-social and pro-environmental change. My teaching and writing are currently focused on developing social justice literacy, humility, and accomplice-ship.

Merging scholarship, teaching, research and experience

My scholarship is aimed at bridging the theory/practice gap and is grounded in critical pedagogy and Freiran praxis; my teaching/research applies to trip guiding, environmental education policy, social justice pedagogy, experiential education, and friluftsliv; and my experiences are enriched through colleagues, students, travel, professional development, and engagement with others.