In Bushcraft as a radical education, the authors propose that the practice of bushcraft offers an opportunity for a more inter-subjective relationship with the natural world. This particular focus suggests a process of ‘conscientisation,’ which is aimed at developing a heightened critical awareness helping to shape the relationships we have with ecosystems. Its radical characteristic emerges from this happening both outside of mainstream education and potentially offering different perspectives from the dominant cultural assumptions about the more-than-human.

Traditional ecological knowledge is more than the skills and crafts that we can learn. It includes our responsibilities to the land, seeing ourselves as part of a reciprocal ecology. While learning to gather, shape, and use natural materials, the seasonality and nuances of the local ecology, as well as the intimate embodied experience of those materials and places, provide us with access to numerous experiences beyond the aesthetic.

Ethnoecology is a field within environmental anthropology. It focuses on the lived experiences of people and places, centring the everyday meanings that define how we perceive and relate to our local ecosystems.

Within eco-cultural identity, we have many facets that may or may not factor into our relationship with more than humans. Examples of these are our sense of place, embodiment of natural materials, multispecies relationships and the materiality of our lives.