From Birth to Death Among the Trees: A Study of Forest Culture in the Rituals of the Yi People

Abstract

This thesis examines how forest-related life-cycle rituals among the Yi people in southwest China shape relationships between people and trees across birth, marriage, and death. Rather than treating these practices primarily as symbolic expressions, the study shows that they function as socially enforced practices through which rules of forest use, moral responsibility, and restraint are learned, shared, and maintained over time. To clarify how different elements of the forest are engaged in ritual life, the thesis distinguishes among individual trees, sacred groves or woodlands, and broader forested landscapes. In Yi communities, these categories are not interchangeable. Specific trees, such as spirit trees associated with birth, and designated sacred groves linked to ancestors and ritual activity, carry distinct expectations regarding use, avoidance, and care. Drawing on ritual texts, ethnographic accounts, local gazetteers, and secondary scholarship, the analysis traces how forest-related norms are embedded within life-cycle rituals. Birth rituals link a child’s well-being to specific trees; marriage rituals extend these norms across households and lineages through regulated use of wood; and death rituals situate forests as sites of return, transformation, and ancestral presence. Across these stages, ecological care is framed not as environmental protection, but as an ordinary part of fulfilling kinship duties and moral obligations. The thesis argues that these ritualized practices function as forms of informal environmental governance. By embedding rules of forest use within socially significant life transitions, Yi communities produce stable patterns of avoidance, restraint, and stewardship without relying on formal law or explicit conservation goals. Recognizing these existing practices provides insight into how environmental policy—particularly protected-area planning and community-based conservation—might engage with local governance systems rather than displacing them.