huggers

The term "tree hugger" is a phrase greatly associated with 1970's era Western liberal activists vigilantly trying to protect the environment from humanity's industrial destructive thirst for profit. But this romantic view of tree huggers, as activist journalist and photographer Michael A. Estrada discusses, pales with the term’s untold origins. Tree hugging is an act that has been practiced over hundreds of years by people around the world. The first recorded case was in 1730 with the Bishnoi people in the Khejarli massacre. The second, more recent and much more influential, was the Chipko movement from the Himalayas in 1970. These two acts of conflict were the most historically significant events that quietly inspired feminist activism and environmental justice movements