Pioneer Species 2022

Joshua trees are threatened by the changing climate and may be gone from places like Joshua Tree National Park within 100 years. I am interested in how Joshua trees intersect with the mythos of the American West. Throughout the mojave are degrading shacks, remnants of the Small Tract Act of 1938, an attempt by the US Gov to encourage the settlement and taming of the west. For $10 an acre people could head west and claim a parcel of land, another passage in the larger refrain of manifest destiny. These structure are now being slowly reclaimed by the desert. Many ghosts that remain deeply entangled in our present ecologies.