Philip, Leila. Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America. Grand Central Publishing, 2022.
In Beaverland, Philip’s engaging prose leads the reader through an in-depth history of the North American beaver. Writing as a settler, Philip makes an effort to research and reify the stories and knowledge of Indigenous peoples; however, certain sections are more successful at this than others, and some descriptions of the fur trade lapse into Eurocentrism. Nevertheless, the book as a whole is a compelling overview of beavers as an ecological keystone species within geologic time, transcending the catastrophic yet comparatively recent environmental effects of settler colonialism.
Philip invites the reader to reimagine watersheds from the perspective of a beaver — not as rushing rivers carved into the land, but as millions of feather-like arteries dispersing throughout the land, the slow moving water hiding just beneath the soil in meadows and invisible creeks. As the “beaver believer” scientists are making clear through their research, beavers will be critical for mitigating the effects of droughts and floods in our rapidly changing climate. The sooner a majority of humans can remember how to live in good relation to beavers, the better off we all will be.
Meticulously researched through years of immersive journalism, Beaverland is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of North America and the people, both human and non-human, who have shaped that history.
Bees Birthed by Bugonia 