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Tag: indigenous
November readings
A protest in Hong Kong, November 2019.Dale De La Rey / AFP, via Haaretz
Once a month, we put together a list of stories we've been reading: things you might've missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory.
We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don't always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what's happening at Uneven Earth.
Welcome to the last newsletter of the decade! That's right, we're taking a break in December, to recalibrate and recharge. We've been running our monthly reading list for almost two years now, and nearly 1,000 of you seem to find it useful, so we're excited to continue providing you with news and analysis in 2020. See you next year!
Uneven Earth updates
The technical assistant | Link | It had been a long time since human hands had touched grain bins
Trade governance will make or break the Green New Deal | Link | How the GND could, should, must redefine "protectionism" and transform international trade
Rethinking education for the Green New Deal | Link | Governance for an eco-centered curriculum—or not?
Down Maria | Link | There was only one prisoner left, and he would not live forever
Top 5 articles to read
Extraction Rebellion. A Green Zone of hope.
Land reform and the Green New Deal
Climate change's great lithium problem
A Green New Deal between whom and for what?
Indonesia deforestation: The world's demand for palm oil is igniting a climate bomb
News you might've missed
Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of 'untold suffering'
New land height metric raises sea level rise risk
Heat waves and floods shattered records. Fires ravaged the Arctic and the Amazon. This was the climate crisis in 2019.
Earth nears irreversible tipping points
Coal knew, too. A newly unearthed journal from 1966 shows the coal industry, like the oil industry, was long aware of the threat of climate change. And new paper reveals rail industry was leader in climate denial efforts.
Indigenous people blocked Ecuador oil auction in growing fight to save Amazon
WA Indigenous group's $290 billion compensation claim could become one of world's biggest payouts
Fearing eviction, thousands of forest dwellers protest in India
More than 1,700 activists have been killed this century defending the environment
Indigenous people pay a high price for protecting the planet
A gathering of guardians: Indigenous monitors convene for historic knowledge exchange
Farmer depression deepens as climate warms
Climate change poses threat to children's health worldwide
Psychologists from 40 countries pledged to use their jobs to address climate change
Worldwide uprisings
Welcome to the global rebellion against neoliberalism. As distinct as the protests seem, the uprisings rocking Bolivia, Lebanon, and scores of other countries all share a common theme.
From Iran to Hong Kong, the world is becoming ungovernable
This wave of global protest is being led by the children of the financial crash
Hong Kong Protests: Inside the chaos
Hong Kong's fight for life
'I went from chilled out Hong Kong student to battle-hardened protester contemplating suicide'
The Left's role in the Hong Kong uprising
"Rifles, machine guns, El Alto will not fall!" Dual Power in Bolivia
The world upside down in Bolivia
Western media whitewash Bolivia's far-right coup
What the coup against Evo Morales means to Indigenous people like me
Thea Riofrancos on Twitter: "Was the coup in Bolivia a "lithium coup"?
Kristallnacht in Bolivia
Debt and neoliberalism: The global roots of Chile's crisis
A few tips on how to understand Latin American coups
More than just a "Spring": the Arab region's long-term revolution
Lebanon's revolution spawns 'direct democracy' with citizen assemblies and people's parliaments
A new politics is rising in Lebanon
In Lebanon, a woman's place is leading the revolution
Iraq is healing: The October revolution, systemic change and intergenerational trauma
Women take to the streets in Iraq
Now is the time to rise up for Rojava
Eyewitnesses to the Rojava revolution: hevaltî and dignity
Indonesia protests: Land bill at center of unrest
Thousands of Romanians protest against illegal logging, attacks on forest workers
Czechs say billionaire leader must resign in mass protests
Why aren't people in the US rising up like those elsewhere in the world?
Just think about it…
Why are rich people so mean? Call it Rich Asshole Syndrome—the tendency to distance yourself from people with whom you have a large wealth differential.
Why we are all losing sleep. With longer work hours, the rise of the gig economy and smartphone apps competing for our every waking moment, sleep has become the final frontier of consumer capitalism.
To have or not to have children in the age of climate change
Robin Wall Kimmerer on the intelligence in all kinds of life
'Every plant and animal is useful to us': Indigenous professor re-thinking how we deal with invasive species
After climate change apocalypse, kindness will be most important survival skill
Imagination is such an ancient ability it might precede language
Plastic has a big carbon footprint — but that isn't the whole story
Smartphones are killing the planet faster than anyone expected
Pointless emails: they're not just irritating – they have a massive carbon footprint
Myths of the circular economy
Where we're at: analysis
It's time to retire metrics like GDP. They don't measure everything that matters
Against economics. "Any new, viable science will either have to draw on the accumulated knowledge of feminism, behavioral economics, psychology, and even anthropology to come up with theories based on how people actually behave, or once again embrace the notion of emergent levels of complexity—or, most likely, both."
It's not thanks to capitalism that we're living longer, but progressive politics
The hidden cost of gold: Birth defects and brain damage
The Native American women who fought mass sterilization
What the West doesn't get about the climate crisis
It bears repeating: Renewables alone won't end the climate crisis
The climate case for working less
How mindfulness privatised a social problem
The time has come to take the self out of self-care
Emergenciocracy: why demanding the "climate emergency" is risky
Geoengineering: let's not get it back-to-front
Humanity and nature are not separate – we must see them as one to fix the climate crisis
Sowing the seeds of post-extractivism. Communities around the world are demonstrating how we can move beyond extractivism to revive cultures of care and solidarity.
Direct democracy and the passion for political participation. For a radically democratic and ecological society we need to build democratic and resilient communities capable of deepening citizen participation at all levels of public life.
Worker-owned apps are trying to fix the gig economy's exploitation
'Fire the bosses': Platform co-ops set out their radical stall
In depth with Clark Arrington, a pioneer for cooperatives and black economic power (Part 1)
Learning to see the commons
Gig workers rising: Foodora couriers and Uber drivers organizing for justice
The climate movement needs more creative tactics
Why climate action needs to target the border industrial complex
Eco-fascists and the ugly fight for 'our way of life' as the environment disintegrates
Italy's green fascists
Accelerationism: the idea inspiring white supremacist killers around the world
Primitivism and ecofascism
The Red Deal is an Indigenous climate plan that builds on the Green New Deal
All organizing is magic: Reflections on Caliban and the Witch
For a sustainable future, we need to reconnect with what we're eating – and each other
Meet the activists bringing urban farms to one of America's most deprived cities
Cities and radical municipalism
What if… cities became car-free?
Are community land trusts a way out of the system?
Against We. What the We Company offers is commune as commodity.
Berlin renters organize to expropriate the mega-landlords
How green gentrification is compromising Seattle's last affordable neighborhood
Who is the "public" in public transportation?
Endgame Marxism (and urbanism)
Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez unveil $172 billion 'Green New Deal for public housing'
Under the paving stones, a vegetable garden. Joëlle Zask explores how greening citizenship – through cultivation practices – offers an opportunity for self-government which may just restore this relationship to one of perpetual regeneration rather than mutually destructive exploitation.
If progressives don't try to win over rural areas, guess who will
Degrowth!
Defending limits is not Malthusian
Degrowth information
The myth of green growth. "Economic growth, democracy and CO2 have always been intertwined."
Unraveling the claims for (and against) green growth
Heaven hath limits: a review of Limits by Giorgos Kallis
10 ideas for degrowth architecture from the Oslo Architecture Triennale
Reflections on Seattle, 1999
Remembering for the future: Learning from the 1999 Seattle shutdown
Globalize liberation
Seattle 1999 and its "This Changes Everything" energy
Remembering the battle for Seattle: Organizers launch project to reflect on 20 years of lessons
Sci-fi and the near future
Cyberpunk is dead
The real-world locations of 14 sci-fi dystopias
Cherie Dimaline and Rebecca Roanhorse are embodying Indigenous futurisms
Jeff Bezos's vision of the future is basically Blade Runner
Space ageing: why sci-fi novels shun the badass older woman
Library Socialism: a utopian vision of a sustainable, luxuriant future of circulating abundance
Hopepunk and Solarpunk: On climate narratives that go beyond the Apocalypse
Highway to hell: the rise and fall of the car
Free BBC documentary: The worlds of Ursula K Le Guin
Nuclear energy will come back to haunt us
Climate change is breaking open America's nuclear tomb
In Marshall Islands, radiation threatens tradition of handing down stories by song
Germany is closing all its nuclear power plants. Now it must find a place to bury the deadly waste for 1 million years
Our children await a radioactive legacy
What is 'ecological economics' and why do we need to talk about it?
How to fight antisemitism
Mapping social movements and conflicts around the world
Global petrochemical map
Mary Annaïse Heglar's list of voices of color on the climate crisis
This newsletter is put together by Anna Biren (@annacbrn), Rut Elliot Blomqvist (@RutElliotB), and Aaron Vansintjan (@a_vansi).
Want to receive this as a newsletter in your inbox? Subscribe here.
Posted in Monthly links, Monthly linksTagged climate change, degrowth, economics, green new deal, indigenous, nuclearLeave a Comment on November readings
Dispatch from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec
Photo: Francisco Dominguez
by Addison Winslow
Juchitán is a very windy place. I don't think I've ever been anywhere so windy. Up in the city of Oaxaca, people said it would be hot—"un chingo de calor"—but the pummeling winds at times make it almost frigid. Sounds like it does this pretty much all year round, in the whole Isthmus region.
The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is the thinnest point between oceans in Mexico, stretching roughly from Coatzacoalcos in the state of Veracruz, to Salina Cruz, just south of here. It's probably the least imaginary line between North and Central America, on account of the abrupt break in the mountains (the chain that runs up the whole country, blending further on into the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas), which reemerge again if we proceed south into Chiapas.
There are other remarkable features: the urban centers on the Isthmus are some of the only ones in North America which are majority Indigenous, zapotecos. Some local guys also speak of how the Isthmus is known to have the most beautiful women in Mexico. But if you've heard of the area, it's more likely for the earthquakes last year. I talk to people everywhere who lost their home, or maybe only half of it. The municipal palace of Juchitán collapsed; so did the old colonial market. In the long past year people have been focused more on rebuilding their own places of refuge, and the market plaza persists as an improvised labyrinth of tarps and narrow, crowded pathways between butchers, fruit stands, and taquerías.
My companions and I are staying in what used to be a restaurant; it is now a meeting place and the home of two organizers, some cats, and a near-hairless Xoloscuintle dog. There's a pile of cots for visitors like us. While we were lounging around one morning, a small group came in to have a meeting. It went on for about five hours, in which time we read some, napped, and didn't eavesdrop as much as we should have. Finally, one of the live-in organizers came to invite us to introduce ourselves and explain Symbiosis, the group I was representing and asking them to join, now that they'd wrapped up the agenda.
Before we began, one of the organizers filled us in on their struggle. They're coordinators from a group called the Assembly of the Pueblos of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory(APIIDTT). It's part of a network of local assemblies in the area, whose existence predates the earthquake. Their collective activities include a refusal to pay electric bills, and resistance to megaprojects planned for the region. But the assemblies have greater ambitions, and at least one has become a veritable government outside the government. "We try and organize collectively to take care of our issues, but in a horizontal manner," the organizer tells us.
Mexico has a fierce revolutionary tradition, co-opted without pretense by the 'Institutional Revolutionary Party' (PRI) which controlled government from the end of the revolutionary period in 1929 until the year 2000, when the viceroy of the Coca-Cola empire in Mexico, Vicente Fox, and his rightwing National Action Party (PAN), came to power. The appellate 'PRIAN' was given to the fluid collaboration of the two dominant parties—however it was under Fox's administration that documents were released detailing the 'Dirty War,' a coordinated terror campaign in the 1960s and '70s that had suppressed leftist activism and paved the way for the full force of neoliberalism to come.
As it tends to, the left survived those trying times, in a couple recognizable forms. The first is what we can call the 'partyist left,' la izquierda partidista. After blatant electoral fraud in 1988, the losing insurgent candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas created the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), along with Andrés Manuel López Obrador (then still a ladder-climbing apparatchik) among others. The PRD ultimately operated much like other parties, so that even AMLO, after two presidential runs of his own and more high-profile battles over election fraud, left to create a new party in 2012, the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA). In the July 2018 elections, MORENA won the presidency (in AMLO) as well as majorities in both houses of the legislature, and ran competitively for nearly every state governorship, winning four in the south of the country. Many analyses have been written of what this victory represents.
"There's always been a 'left' in Mexico," I was told: "In the way of life of the people, from below, where it hasn't been undone."
But here we are concerned with the other left. "There's always been a 'left' in Mexico," I was told: "In the way of life of the people, from below, where it hasn't been undone." Two manifestations of this should be mentioned, both with roots threading back to the Mexican Revolution and the influence of the peasant uprisings associated with the name Zapata.
One goes by the slogan usos y costumbres, which means that the traditions of indigenous peoples entitle them to a peculiar style of local governance, which tends to be a council of elders, assembly decision-making, or a mixture of both. The other came out of revolutionary land reforms, which divided many vast private landholdings into communal farms called ejidos. Constitutionally, the highest authority of the ejidos is the general assembly, which ordinarily convenes every six months, but can also be called on other occasions by an initiative supported by twenty percent of the members.
The ejidos were inalienable, off the market, until that proved incompatible with NAFTA and had to be done away with. Perfectly compatible with NAFTA, of course, were the billions of dollars of agricultural subsidies the US and Canadian governments use to undervalue the primary commodities produced by the majority of the world's population. The result of the legal vulnerability of the ejidos combined with the economic clout of North American industrial agriculture was the upending of rural society in Mexico, rapid urban proletarianization, and one of the largest migrations in human history over Mexico's northern border to the United States.
In the decade or two before NAFTA, though, some staunch Maoist guerrilla sorts had formed clandestine organizations, and some of them took their activity into the Lacandon jungle. Here on the forgotten periphery of the continent, they met the local people, and together watched as the swirl of the capitalist world prepared to suck them in. In the meantime, many of them busied themselves preparing, with some rifles, to make themselves heard.
The Zapatista uprising reignited hope against capitalism worldwide, not least in Mexico. In 1996, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) made the call for a gathering of indigenous peoples which resulted in the creation of the National Indigenous Congress, around and through which emerged what we might call the 'movements for radical democracy.' Speaking broadly, this is what makes up the 'other' left in Mexico.
One of the people in the meeting in Juchitán, the mother of our friend who lives here, is a delegate to the National Indigenous Congress. Each of the local assemblies has one. The original impetus for the formation of many of these assemblies on the Isthmus was to coordinate the collective refusal to pay power bills, insisting that electricity is a human right. The assemblies consisted of the people involved in the strike. One of them has gone ten years now without paying, and the government apparently hasn't cut them off. In January 2019, the assemblies, all together, will enter negotiations with the federal government for the first time. This was the subject of their meeting.
By contrast: I myself come from Chico, California—the valley city that absorbed most of the refugees from the fiery apocalypse of Paradise, CA this past November, which was caused by the negligence of our local (private) electric monopoly. While the fire was still burning, the governor declared power companies immune to lawsuits for the damages of infernos they provoke. I was listening closely.
Meanwhile, at least in some cases the purview of the assemblies on the Isthmus has expanded far beyond being a utilities union. In one town, Álvaro Obregón, the community assembly has a majority of the town's support, and something approaching administrative independence, except that public money still passes through the hands of the 'official' municipal government, which also has the power to approve infrastructure megaprojects. The people of Álvaro Obregón recently formed a community police force in response to threats from paramilitary groups; the county police will hang out at the entrance to the town, but don't really enter.
The focus on electricity returns us to how windy it is. With foreign investment related to the carbon credit scheme created by the Kyoto Protocol, the Isthmus has been the site of the construction of massive wind turbines. One of a series of megaprojects planned for southern Mexico is a new string of turbines along an extensive sandbank closing in the lagoon just south of here. It would be the largest wind energy project in Latin America. By one account, it was only the moment when the company arrived, bringing barely any machinery (yet), and closed off the entrance to the sandbank with armed guards, that people noticed there was something menacing about their intentions.
Initially, it was difficult for my companions and me to understand this resistance to clean energy.
Initially, it was difficult for my companions and me to understand this resistance to clean energy. But it scares away the fish which the people along the coast live off of. In a documentary we were shown, people speak of the sea as their mother. The Isthmus is also a narrow and important passage point for migratory birds, which are, with appalling frequency, being knocked dead by the sweeping turbine blades. The locals see it as a matter of dispossession and territorial integrity—and, as a matter of fact, with the construction of these turbines, electrical bills have increased.
After listening awhile, we explained Symbiosis. It was almost awkward—after their descriptions of their situation, principles, and intentions, it felt like we were parroting them. But such are the convergences, and this is grounds for unity. Most of those present expressed enthusiastic interest in our work, and we agreed to talk further. Several of them will be in Chiapas soon, and we'll reconnect there.
We came to Juchitán on the recommendation of an elder of the movements in Mexico, Gustavo Esteva. Esteva was at one time a CEO, then a Trotskyist, later an adviser to the Zapatista army in their negotiations with the federal government, and now is a 'deprofessionalized intellectual' settled in the city of Oaxaca and serving a critical advisory role to the assembly of La Universidad de la Tierra, or Unitierra.
Before everyone split for the holidays, Esteva had had us around for one final conversation at Unitierra, at a small table tucked beneath shelves of political economy texts. He took us through a lengthy story—really, a comprehensive theoretical construction which would properly make its own essay. As with the assemblies he then sent us to investigate, it seemed from his telling that Unitierra and Symbiosis have converged upon the same practical conclusions, and it seems we'll be counting each other as partners in our respective endeavors. They call their project Crianza Mutua, which doesn't exactly have an English translation.
In light of the rest of what Esteva shared with us, I'll turn back to the story of the Zapatistas. The EZLN has, for decades now, called for cross-border collaboration in the resistance to global capitalism, convening gatherings on the national, continental, global, and even intergalactic levels. In the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle (2005), they declared themselves dedicated to working with all dispossessed peoples; that Cuba and Ecuador would just have to let them know where to send the solidarity corn and crafts. Simultaneously, they were keen never to mark themselves as a separatist movement. The rallying cry was ¡Nunca más un México sin nosotros! The national liberation was for Mexico, but only a more inclusive Mexico.
At a gathering about a year ago, Esteva told us, someone speaking on behalf of the Mixe people said that they don't consider themselves part of the 'original peoples,' or part of Mexico at all. On the tail end of their word came one from the Zapatistas; they had been considering the same thing: ¡Nosotros sin México! Since 1994, they had always flown the Mexican flag in their events and tours; apparently no one had noticed that for several years now they've ceased to do so. The world is undergoing changes, and so are the movements. In 2017, out of the National Indigenous Congress was formed the Indigenous Governing Council (CIG), with the initial goal of selecting a spokeswoman to run as an independent presidential candidate and bring attention to their issues and beliefs. The elections this year, of course, went the way of the partyist left, and the CIG were outside as critics.
But in August of this year, the CIG met to assess the just-ended campaign and discuss what happens next. It was there that the EZLN, following a presentation of an analysis of the world, put forward several proposals, which will be further discussed at the international gathering in Chiapas at the end of this month and year. For a taste, here are three of them:
…we propose to double down on the work of the CIG Support Networks in order to open our collective heart to all of the rebellions and resistances that emerge and persevere wherever we might be, in the countryside or the city, without regard for borders…
…to begin or continue the struggle to grow both the demands and dimensions of the Indigenous Governing Council, with the goal of extending it beyond original peoples to include workers of the countryside and city and all of those who have been discarded or marginalized…
…to begin or continue the analysis and discussion toward the creation of a Coordination or Federation of Networks which avoids any kind of centralized or vertical command and which spares no effort in building solidarity, support, and sisterhood/brotherhood among those who form it…
There's not really much of a coincidence. In common between Symbiosis in North America and the resistance in Mexico sit the Kurds, resounding out of Rojava. In every location I've mentioned, people made reference to them as an inspiration for the scale-up of organizing in the works, generally agreed to be the next step forward. What we are part of is a global movement emerging, and, with due humility, we should be stoked.
Though we can all feel equal under the long curve of ecological collapse, in North America we have a difficult assessment to make regarding our responsibility with our neighbors not far to the south.
At the same time, though we can all feel equal under the long curve of ecological collapse, in North America we have a difficult assessment to make regarding our responsibility with our neighbors not far to the south. I contend that the most predictable form a reactionary municipalism could take is a passive reproduction of the economic inequalities embedded over centuries in the land and labor-power of nations. It's also perhaps the most innocuous form of hierarchy, because we can content ourselves as having addressed the concerns of everyone in the room, and still discount the majority of the world's population.
We have a contradiction to reconcile in the twofold objectives of Symbiosis. While on the one hand, dual power is concerned with building autonomous, local capacity in the struggle, we're engaged in Symbiosis with the rapid upscaling of the resistance for a world system change. Without venturing to envision exactly what conditions will be required for confederal unity, I'll continue the tradition of recommending we all read "The Tyranny of Structureless" another five times, but also provide for our collective memory an anecdote from what I believe to be the most ambitious international confederation up until now.
The World Trade Organization operates [operated] on consensus, with each member country having equal say. As preferred in the neoliberal order, the coercion and hierarchy are in the details. It was the poor countries who made the call for clear and determined structure, having been shut out of expensive and impromptu proceedings among the tight clubs of wealthy countries. In 2003, a meeting in Cancún was cut short by a walkout protest after a shystie manipulation of the preliminary draft of an agreement. As the rules had it, it would require consensus to remove points put in by the wealthy countries, though not to insert them in the first place.
We can tear down borders in our declarations yet have them reemerge in proceedings, out of the persistent asymmetry of material resources.
In the spirit of solidarity, we can outdo the mutual suspicion that plagues the international relations of nation-states. But we shouldn't assume it will be so easy. We can tear down borders in our declarations yet have them reemerge in proceedings, out of the persistent asymmetry of material resources. We will have to find ways to structure equality over what the market provides for us.
Speaking of structures and proceedings, I will close with an official pronouncement of the hereby improvised Intercontinental United Antinationalist Resistance Working Group, which currently consists of my companion and me (you're all welcome to join), declaring our firm resolve:
to investigate the tastes and ambitions of the CIG and their Support Networks in regard to an intercontinental organization of resistance and rebellion;
to suggest to whoever shows up next week in Chiapas that we all do it together;
to develop, in conversation with those who are down, a compatible, if not equivalent proposal for the structure of the Symbiosis confederation as that which emerges from the expansion of the CIG.
We'll also be thinking of some more pointed projects which can bring together and mutually benefit the movements on all sides of the continent, and would very much like to hear suggestions. Actually, if anyone wanted to discuss, on any level, all of this that is going on, my companion and I would be very pleased to have support and input.
It is our task to see that borders are not only torn down at the start, in documents, but that we continue tearing them down all through the process until all the fences, and walls, and lines in the sand are wiped away with them.
Addison Winslow is a member of Symbiosis and currently lives in Chico, California.
Posted in Field notes, Report-backTagged indigenous, libertarian municipalism, mexico, symbiosisLeave a Comment on Dispatch from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec
August readings
The summer has been slow, and we haven't been publishing much. But the fall promises some exciting new initiatives, so stay in the loop. We received some feedback that our list just has too much good stuff. How to read it all? To address this, we'll now start highlighting our top 5 must-reads for the month. Skip all the rest if you must, these are worth reading surreptitiously at the office.
This month, we invited Anthony Galluzzo to offer some of his favorite readings. He is an adjunct professor at New York University, specializing in 19th century literature and the history of utopia.
Anthony Galluzzo's links
The editors at Uneven Earth asked me to collect those readings that stood out from August 2018. Both my recent work and political convictions focus on potential intersections between Marxism and the degrowth movement in the service of a decelerationist program. This puts me in what feels like a very lonely position these days, when much of the Anglo-American left, from social democratic near to sectarian Marxist far, is once again enamored of Prometheanism of various sorts—accelerationism, fully automated luxury communism, and "left" eco-modernism"—all of which can be subsumed under the rubric of Jetsonism.
Eco-modernism is largely the provenance of techno-utopian libertarians, associated with outfits like the Breakthrough Institute, whose adherents propose large-scale and scientifically dubious technological solutions to the climate crisis, such as geoengineering, the better to safeguard specifically capitalist patterns of ecologically ruinous and exploitative "growth." Why would self-described socialists and communists push such a thing? We should not underestimate the dangerous marriage of ossified dogma—regarding the development of the forces of production—and puerile sci-fi fantasy—about weather control and terraforming Mars and building Star Trek—that we often find among many of today's extremely online toy Bolsheviks.
Arctic fire. Richard Seymour offers a moving and powerful rejoinder to the ecomodernists, including various flavors of Jetsonian leftists, who minimize the ecological crisis in promoting unlikely technological "solutions" to anthropogenic global warming in lieu of a radical socio-ecological transformation (such as ecosocialist degrowth). These Jetsonians preach "anti-catastrophism" against the "hairshirts" in the midst of an actual catastrophe—all the while dreaming of how they'll beam themselves up to some fully automated luxury Martian retreat—a socialist one of course! Against this dangerous whiggery, I say: if you aren't a catastrophist, you aren't a comrade.
Major plan to deal with climate change by geoengineering the Earth would not work, scientists reveal and Rain dancing 2.0′: should humans be using tech to control the weather? Speaking of "unlikely technological solutions" or schemes designed to protect capital's growth imperative rather than our dying biosphere, precautionary principle be damned, geo-engineering and the interests that are driving it have come under scrutiny of late.
Also see the enduring nuclear boondoggle, even as various ecomodernist voices on the left are pushing it as THE solution to the energy crisis, once again: Scientists assessed the options for growing nuclear power. They are grim; and an older, but still relevant, piece on this matter: Socialists debate nuclear, 4: A green syndicalist view.
To freeze the Thames and If you want to save the world, veganism isn't the answer. Troy Vatese offers an alternative model of decarbonization through what he calls "natural geoengineering": rewilding farm land through a program of "compulsory veganism" in order to effect hemispheric cooling along the lines of the little ice age. But what if veganism, with its reliance on industrial farmed monocrops, such as soy, is part of the problem, as organic farmer Isabella Tree argues?
Artificial saviors. And speaking of Jetsonism, this essay on Silicon Valley solutionism, transhumanism, and techno-utopianism—by radical computer scientist tante—as theology is right on the mark, as is the entire special issue of boundary 2, "On The Digital Turn," from which it comes.
The belly of the revolution: Agriculture, energy, and the future of communism and Logistics, counterlogistics and the communist prospect. Jasper Bernes's critical appraisal of (capitalist) logistics and supply chains in Endnotes 3 is one of the more rigorous left communist explorations of the way our megatechnics embed exploitation and the capitalist value form in their very architectures, against those who argue for socialist or eco-socialist "repurposing." Bernes grapples directly with the ecological crisis—and the central questions of energy and agriculture—in this latest essay, as he marries critical Luddism to ecocommunist critique.
Losing Earth, Capitalism killed our climate momentum, and How not to talk about climate change. Nathan Rich's informative 70+ page NYT investigative piece "Losing Earth" on the failed attempt to stop climate change on the part of various US government scientists and policy-makers in the late 70s and 80s is just as notable for what it leaves out: the role of capitalism and its growth imperative.
Plastic straws and the coming collapse. In the same way that magical techno-solutions to the ecological crisis are a morbid symptom—weaponized wishful thinking—so too is the ethical consumerism most recently exemplified by the campaign against plastic straws, as Rhyd Wildermuth demonstrates in her piece.
Richard Powers: 'We're completely alienated from everything else alive' and The king of climate fiction makes the Left's case for geoengineering. At this point, I will take Richard Powers over Kim Stanley Robinson—despite Aurora's definitive imaginative crystallization of the anti-Promethean position—who, drunk on his more ridiculous techno-fantasies, equates geoengineering and the ecomodernist fantasia with "science." Powers, on the other hand, implicitly understands that a radically different set of eco-social relations is the only adequate way to begin devising a collective solution to our predicament.
Pulling the magical lever | Link | A critical analysis of techno-utopian imaginaries
The social ideology of the motorcar | Link | This 1973 essay on how cars have taken over our cities remains as relevant as ever
Engineering the climate could cost us the earth, by Gareth Dale. "Do leftist geoengineering fans pray that, in a cunning of chemistry, the molecular forces that bind CO2 will weaken under a socialist order, easing its capture?"
Eugene Odum: The father of modern ecology
The 2018 flood in Kerala is only a gentle warning. It will not be enough for us to rue the past, writes Arundhati Roy
What happened in the dark: Puerto Rico's year of fighting for power.
Building the future. Innovative municipal projects are tackling local housing problems worldwide.
Samir Amin has died. Don't know who he was? Read Death of a Marxist, by Vijay Prashad and Revolution and the Third World, an interview with Ali Kadri.
Scientists warn the UN of capitalism's imminent demise
New report warns dire climate warnings not dire enough.
Land grabbing companies becoming more powerful than countries
Platform Cooperativism Consortium awarded $1 million grant. "We talked to these 2,000 Uber drivers in Cape Town who wanted to drop out and start a platform co-op, we talked with trash pickers in the informal economy in Cairo, Egypt. There is no trash collection there and so through the Coptic Church these people get organized and want to start a platform where people can order trash pick-ups from them, and they would get paid for them."
Community vs. company: A tiny town in Ecuador battles a palm oil giant
Rojava: frontline of capital's war on the environment
What has caused the number of US worker co-ops to nearly double?
Should rivers have rights? A growing movement says it's about time
What is democratic confederalism?
The 1.5 Generation. My generation is radically remaking climate activism. Will it be enough?
Radical municipalism
"The price on everything is love": How a Detroit community overcomes a lack of city services. A range of neighbor-to-neighbor efforts address basic needs, from healthcare to food access, that are going unmet by local government agencies.
How do you build a new society, from local places, in the shadow of the old? Symbiosis Collective shows one way
These democratic socialists aren't just targeting incumbent politicians. They're going after slumlords and real-estate speculators.
How marginalized communities are getting control over development
Tenant organizing is picking up steam in Rochester
Public land is a feminist issue. Community housing groups across London are putting women and non-binary people at the forefront of their plans for building affordable housing.
Four reasons to consider co-housing and housing cooperatives for alternative living
Small and shared vs McMansions and slums? Degrowth housing experiments demonstrate a different future.
A call for socialists to connect the dots between housing, racial, migrant justice, and climate change.
The lure of elections: From political power to popular power. "You don't need the excuse of canvassing for a politician to knock on your neighbor's door; you don't need to cast a vote to influence an election; and we don't need a campaign rally to advance our vision for a better world."
Medicalizing society. The rise of psychiatry was funded by America's Gilded Age industrialists. Their aim: to cast society's ills as problems of individual "mental health."
Ecomodernism and nuclear power: No solution for climate change. In 'Energy: A Human History,' Richard Rhodes trivializes the dangers of nuclear power and plunges into the abyss of ecomodernist technobabble.
How green groups became so white and what to do about it
Exiting the anthropocene and entering the symbiocene
Who really pulls the strings? The director of Global Witness asks who really is responsible for corruption and extractive industry crimes.
World poverty: capitalism's crime against humanity
Only radicalism can prevent an irreversible "Hothouse Earth"
"Hothouse Earth" co-author: The problem is neoliberal economics
What is enough? On waste and sufficiency
A sufficiency vision for an ecologically constrained world.
Human waste is a terrible thing to waste. If major global cities repurposed human waste as crop fertilizer, it could slash fertilizer imports in some countries by more than half.
Almost everything you know about e-waste is wrong
The ugly truth of ugly produce by Phat Beets collective.
In India's largest city, a ban on plastics faces big obstacles
"Deindustrialization": a word you virtually never hear in the debate around global warming. A call for public discussion of the role of deindustrialization in building an alternative to the catastrophic course of 21st century capitalism.
'Eco-grief' over climate change felt by generations of British Columbians
There is nothing green or sustainable about mega-dams like the Belo Monte
On the labor of animals. The place of animals in relation to left movements.
Bitcoin shows the scale of change needed to stop the climate crisis. The cryptocurrency produces as much CO2 a year as a million transatlantic flights – and that number is set to grow.
Why all fiction should be climate fiction: A conversation with Lauren Groff
How 'natural geoengineering' can help slow global warming. By preserving top predators to control populations of herbivores, we can limit grazing, which reduces CO2 absorbed by ecosystems.
Even the smallest urban green spaces can have a big impact on mental health
The 1680 Pueblo Revolt is about Native Resistance. As Pueblo People, how do we develop a common political consciousness around our unique history and present situation? The first step is looking at the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and understanding its significance.
Meet the companies that are trying to profit from global warming
Science alone won't save the world. People have to do that.
Imagining a world with no bullshit jobs
22 noteworthy food and farming books for summer reading
Seaside reads to change the world. 300 reads on topics ranging from social change, individual action, and new economy to women and feminism, collected and compiled by Lucy Feibusch and Kate Raworth.
The book Indigenous and decolonizing studies in education, edited by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, and K. Wayne Yang is now available to read for free online.
This newsletter is put together by Anna Biren (@acathbrn), Rut Elliot Blomqvist (@RutElliotB), and Aaron Vansintjan (@a_vansi).
Posted in Monthly links, Monthly linksTagged anthropocene, climate change, climate justice, decolonisation, decolonization, degrowth, ecology, ecomodernism, environmental justice, gentrification, indigenous, migrant justiceLeave a Comment on August readings
June readings
We'll try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don't always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what's happening at Uneven Earth.
In June, we read stories about new political strategies, decolonial re-imaginings, community resilience, and revolutionary ideas around the world. We also included articles about the escalating climate crisis and the root causes of climate and environmental injustice.
The team expands: Anna Biren, who has been working on these newsletters for the past 6 months, is now on board as a new editor at Uneven Earth!
Science Fiction Belgrade | Link | Imagining different realities in the works of Enki Bilal and Aleksa Gajić
The promise of radical municipalism today | Link | Politics is about bringing people together and taking control of the spaces where we live
Science fiction between utopia and critique | Link | On different perspectives used in science fiction narratives, situated knowledge, and how discontent is useful
What's it like for a social movement to take control of a city? | Link | For Barcelona En Comú, winning the election was just the first step
The swell | Link | "We were waiting to be accepted as refugees in Iceland, the only country left in the region with stable electricity from their geothermal resources, and the only place that would take UK citizens."
'Carbon bubble' could spark global financial crisis, study warns. Advances in clean energy expected to cause a sudden drop in demand for fossil fuels, leaving companies with trillions in stranded assets.
Meat and fish multinationals 'jeopardising Paris climate goals'. New index finds many of the world's largest protein producers failing to measure or report emissions, despite accounting for 14.5% of greenhouse gases.
World's great cities hold key to fossil fuel cuts
San Francisco residents were sure nearby industry was harming their health. They were right.
State land grabs fuel Sudan's crisis
Rural poor squeezed by land concessions in Mekong region: report
Andhra Pradesh to become India's first Zero Budget Natural Farming state
India faces worst long term water crisis in its history. Droughts are becoming more frequent, creating problems for India's rain-dependent farmers.
Trees that have lived for millennia are suddenly dying
The discovery of a map made by a Native American is reshaping what we think about the Lewis & Clark expedition. "We tend to think that [Lewis and Clark] were traveling blind into terra incognita. That is simply not true. Too Né's map lifts the expedition's encounter with the Arikara to new prominence."
Why grandmothers may hold the key to human evolution. "While the men were out hunting, grandmothers and babies were building the foundation of our species' success – sharing food, cooperating on more and more complex levels and developing new social relationships."
How our colonial past altered the ecobalance of an entire planet. Researchers suggest effects of the colonial era can be detected in rocks or even air.
Tracking the battles for environmental justice: here are the world's top 10
How the environmental justice movement transforms our world
5 ways indigenous groups are fighting back against land seizures
Occupy, resist, produce: The strategy and political vision of Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement
The town that refused to let austerity kill its buses
A sense of place. "There are many historical and modern day examples of how human beings, all over the world, have managed to meet the needs of locally adapted, place-based communities within the limits of their local environment."
Roadmap for radicals. Mel Evans and Kevin Smith interview US-based organiser and author Jonathan Smucker, whose new book Hegemony How-To offers a practical guide to political struggle for a generation that is still ambivalent about questions of power, leadership and strategy.
How my father's ideas helped the Kurds create a new democracy
Building autonomy through ecology in Rojava
Cooperation Jackson's Kali Akuno: 'We're trying to build vehicles of social transformation'
A socialist Southern strategy in Jackson
Rebel Cities 6: How Jackson, Mississippi is making the economy work for people
This land is our land: The Native American occupation of Alcatraz. How a group of Red Power activists seized the abandoned prison island and their own destinies.
The environment as freedom: A decolonial reimagining
Interview: Decolonization towards a well-being vision with Pablo Solon
A world more beautiful and alive: A review of The Extractive Zone. From Ecuador, Perú, Chile, Colombia, and Bolivia, Marcena Gómez-Barris describes "submerged perspectives," the decolonial ways of knowing that unsettle colonial relationships to land and the forms of violence they reproduce.
Feeling powers growing: An Interview with Silvia Federici
Municipalism: an Icarian warning
What would we eat if food and health were commons? – Inspiration from indigenous populations
Introducing 'systems journalism': creating an ecosystem for independent media
Seeding new ideas in the neoliberal city
Worker-owned co-ops are coming for the digital gig economy
Letter to America, by Rebecca Altman. Everything is going to have to be put back.
Our plastic pollution crisis is too big for recycling to fix. Corporations are safe when they can tell us to simply recycle away their pollution.
How the UN's Sustainable Development Goals undermine democracy
The remaking of class. "Class is contaminated water and children with chronic pain and fatigue. It is living downhill of the pond where fracking fluids are stored."
Richard Powers: 'We're completely alienated from everything else alive'
The Enlightenment's dark side. How the Enlightenment created modern race thinking, and why we should confront it. And a brief history of race in Western thought.
The enlightenment of Steven Pinker: Eco-modernism as rationalizing the arrogance (and violence) of empire
Puerto Rico is a "playground for the privileged": Investors move in as homes foreclose & schools close. While healthcare, the public school system and infrastructure in Puerto Rico are flailing nine months after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, wealthy investors have descended on the island to turn a profit. An interview with Naomi Klein and Katia Avilés-Vázquez, a Puerto Rican environmental activist.
How climate change ignites wildfires from California to South Africa
Feudalism, not overpopulation or land shortage, is to blame for Hong Kong's housing problems
When New Delhi's informal settlements make way for something 'smarter'
The left in Syria: From democratic national change to devastation
A new era of uranium mining near the Grand Canyon? With scant data on risk, Republicans push to open a 'perfect' mining opportunity.
Rent strikes grow in popularity among tenants as gentrification drives up rents in cities like D.C.
Increased deaths and illnesses from inhaling airborne dust: An understudied impact of climate change.
'Processing settler toxicities' part 1 and part 2. An Indigenous feminist analysis of the connections between industrial capitalism and colonialism, imperialism, and the pollution and destruction of human and nonhuman worlds.
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things review – how capitalism works
Anthropocene? More like 'Capitalocene'. Jason W. Moore on the human impact on the world ecology. "My hope is that this theoretical research may provide useful insights for the social movements around the world that are fighting not only the effects, but especially the root causes of climate change."
Carbon Ironies: William T. Vollmann on the hot dark future. A review of William T. Vollmann's Carbon Ideologies—a book that is rightly sarcastic and pessimistic about the prospects of "solving" the problem of climate change but stuck in the false either/or choice between solving everything and doing nothing whatsoever, argues Wen Stephenson.
Patterns of commoning: Commons in the pluriverse. An essay by Arturo Escobar.
The mask it wears. Pankaj Mishra reviews and compares the propositions about how to work for equality in The People v. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It by Yascha Mounk Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World by Samuel Moyn.
Laziness does not exist, but unseen barriers do
The Transition Towns movement… going where? A critique.
The dark side of nature writing. The recent renaissance in nature writing also revives an overlooked connection with fascism.
Minimum wage? It's time to talk about a maximum wage
It takes a village, not a European, to raise a child. White people, through systematic oppression, actively create, profit from and maintain a market that institutionalizes children throughout Africa.
The unbearable awkwardness of automation
The power of giving homeless people a place to belong
Anthony Galluzzo — Utopia as method, social science fiction, and the flight from reality (Review of Frase, Four Futures)
The community resilience reader. Essential resources for an era of upheaval, available for free.
Visualizing the prolific plastic problem in our oceans
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Posted in Monthly linksTagged anthropocene, cities, climate change, climate justice, commons, decolonization, environmental justice, indigenous, social movementsLeave a Comment on June readings
The post-Columbian exchange
When Indigenous and pop cultures meet, as in Civilization VI, subconciously colonial mindsets can cause conflict. Source: Sid Meier's Civilization VI
by Travis McKay Roberts
Grandpa's voice was weak, forced. I'd never heard him like this, not in the first round of chemo, nor in the weeks after he'd decided that enough was enough and he would let the cancer take its course. Years later, after advanced radiation therapies and hormone treatments and inexorable time, he and I were talking together for what would become the last time.
'I'm working on a story,' I told him. I had never told him about any of my writing before. 'It's sort of a re-telling of Cherokee history but fictionalized. There's a seed of a story this anthropologist recorded, and I want to dive into it a little bit.'
'I always thought the story of Louis Riel would make a good movie,' he told me. That script would be one of the last that my grandpa would work on before he passed away.
Raoul McKay was a documentarian, historian, and a champion of Indigenous education in Canada. He was also Metis, and passionate about sharing our people's stories with the world. Time was, you could see an exhibit he helped put together at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. I would make the pilgrimage every other month or so, from my home in the northwest of the city. There's a new exhibit there now. I haven't been.
What I have been doing is continuing on my grandfather's work from a different perspective. Over the past few years, I have been blessed enough to pursue passions in both fantasy worldbuilding and Indigenous representation via prose, tabletop game design, and conversations in conferences and forums like this. Through it all has run a single thread: while the culture and history of native North America has been repressed, it cannot be forgotten.
We can imagine the stories of Indigenous peoples burning like bonfires across the Americas. Each one distinct, with its own fuel, smoke, and flame. Many have been dashed to embers when colonists rolled across the continents like a wave. But despite displacement, forced assimilation, and even genocide, there are embers yet alive. They have been handed down from elder to child, again and again – and now, they are being relit.
But from time to time, just as a fire is starting to go, someone powerful comes in, admiring the flame and wanting to make it their own. So, in it goes, into a great heap of other torches, and a unique glow is lost amidst a pyre of a hundred thousand stories.
When Indigenous stories are separated from the communities that made them, they often lose what made them special in the first place.
To the untrained eye, the act of appropriation might look like salvation. A tiny flame is coaxed into something much bigger, even more significant and impactful by western standards. But a closer look betrays the truth: when Indigenous stories are separated from the communities that made them, they often lose what made them special in the first place.
JK Rowling illustrated this for us in 2016, when she published a brief history of magic in the Americas on Pottermore. The most controversial part of the passage had to do with Skinwalkers, or as they are known to the Diné (Navajo), yee naaldlooshii. The Diné have traditionally taught their people about this shape-shifting witch as a stark contrast to what is held as good and proper in Navajo society. In JK Rowling's retelling, she writes:
The legend of the Native American 'skin walker' – an evil witch or wizard that can transform into an animal at will – has its basis in fact. A legend grew up around the Native American Animagi, that they had sacrificed close family members to gain their powers of transformation. In fact, the majority of Animagi assumed animal forms to escape persecution or to hunt for the tribe. Such derogatory rumours often originated with No-Maj medicine men, who were sometimes faking magical powers themselves, and fearful of exposure.
The outcry was instantaneous. Dr. Adrienne Keene, a Cherokee academic who writes on Indigenous appropriation summed up the general outcry well:
What you do need to know is that the belief of these things has a deep and powerful place in Navajo understandings of the world. It is connected to many other concepts and many other ceremonial understandings and lifeways. It is not just a scary story, or something to tell kids to get them to behave, it's much deeper than that… What happens when Rowling pulls this in, is we as Native people are now opened up to a barrage of questions about these beliefs and traditions (take a look at my twitter mentions if you don't believe me)–but these are not things that need or should be discussed by outsiders. At all. I'm sorry if that seems "unfair," but that's how our cultures survive.
Navajo writer Brian Young responded to the Pottermore piece with anguish, tied to the vital role traditional Navajo culture has played in his survival:
I'm broken hearted. Jk Rowling, my beliefs are not fantasy…. my ancestors didn't survive colonization so you could use our culture as a convenient prop.
Young responded with more than critique. He also took the moment as an opportunity to self-reflect and live out a best practice, writing:
I've decided to seek advice from the diné medicine men association for their opinion on how I depict my culture in my young adult book.
Young demonstrated the antithesis of what Rowling practiced. Rowling's writing lumped the hundreds of nations, tribes, and bands Indigenous to North America into a single people group, and took a vital piece of their culture out of context without consultation. Young went to the source of the stories. Doing so allowed him to ensure that when he took real cultural practices into a fictional setting, he was doing so with humility and respect.
Of course, JK Rowling hasn't been the only one to take a stray step in terms of appropriation. Last year, when Firaxis announced the inclusion of the Cree chief Poundmaker in Rise and Fall, the latest expansion to the 4x strategy game Civilization 6, a headman from Poundmaker's own band responded in force. In an interview with the CBC, Milton Tootoosis lambasted the game, saying that it 'perpetuates this myth that First Nations had similar values that the colonial culture has, and that is one of conquering other peoples and accessing their land. That is totally not in concert with our traditional ways and world view'. He also noted that Firaxis hadn't approached Cree peoples as they developed the character and associated nation, but didn't seem surprised, saying 'This is not new. Hollywood has done a job for many decades of portraying indigenous people in a certain way that has been very harmful'.
To understand Tootoosis's critique, you need to understand a little bit about the Civilization franchise, and the 4x genre. 4x games are strategy games, built on four core mechanics: exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination. Civilization plays this out by having players control a nation, exploring a blank map, conquering rogue barbarian tribes, extracting resources, and developing a network of cities that allow the nation to exert cultural, scientific, religious, or military dominance over the world. To many Indigenous observers, these mechanics are rooted in the same colonial mindset that brought European colonizers into 'the New World', and lead to the breaking of treaty bonds in pursuit of oil extraction in places like the Athabascan oil sands in Canada's Treaty 8 land today.
For Tootoosis, placing Poundmaker in this genre was inherently counter to the man's legacy of striving against colonialism. Although the game's mechanics encourages a player controlling Poundmaker to develop alliances with other players, those alliances are still created in the context of the 4x genre, and lead to eventual global domination.
However, there were in fact positive aspects to the portrayal, which were done via a process of consultation. Each civilization is given a unique, unfolding, soundtrack that develops over the course of the game and is rooted in a traditional song of the nation. In order to develop the Cree theme, Geoff Knorr worked with the Poundmaker Singers, including one Clyde Tootoosis. The CBC reports that Clyde saw his work with Knorr as 'an awesome experience', though he 'felt sorry that certain people were offended'. In contradiction to Milton, Clyde sees the game as an opportunity to share the name and culture of Poundmaker and his Cree – a clear sign that consultation can go a long way towards making a people feel heard and respected.
The balance between Clyde and Milton's views has led me to the unique challenge of attempting to tell my own stories inspired by the cultures of the Americas, while still respecting the communities who made them in the first place.
Atohi and Nanye
The story I told my grandfather about has grown into my own story of Atohi and Nanye. In this work, I seek to retell a traditional Cherokee story, but in the fantasy genre (a similar pattern was followed by George RR Martin when he plopped the War of the Roses into Westeros). In it, a woman named Nanye roots out a corrupting force at the heart of the priestly clan's power, and her beloved Atohi starts a revolution to bring her safely home. I first learned of this bit of history through American anthropologist James Mooney, who in turn learned it from the Cherokee:
The people long brooded in silence over the oppressions and outrages of this high caste, whom they deeply hated but greatly feared. At length a daring young man, a member of an influential family, organized a conspiracy among the people for the massacre of the priesthood. The immediate provocation was the abduction of the wife of the young leader of the conspiracy. His wife was remarkable for her beauty, and was forcibly abducted and violated by one of the Nicotani while he was absent on the chase. On his return he found no difficulty in exciting in others the resentment which he himself experienced. So many had suffered in the same way, so many feared that they might be made to suffer, that nothing was wanted but a leader. A leader appearing in the person of the young brave whom we have named, the people rose under his direction and killed every Nicotani (Ni-go-ta-ni), young and old. Thus perished a hereditary secret society, since which time no hereditary privileges have been tolerated among the Cherokee (Myths of the Cherokee, James Mooney, p. 393).
The events described here are ripe for fiction. There is romance, corruption, and revolution. A chosen one defeats his enemies utterly and brings lasting salvation for his people. A story grows out of such fertile ground quickly. But it has never been my goal to simply tell a good story. I want to tell a good story that illuminates the better story about the people behind it. I want to guide readers towards the living people who have inherited the legacies of my inspirations, and let those people speak for themselves. To do so, I must avoid stereotype and colonialist tropes. As much as possible, I must allow the Indigenous worldview to seep in, breaking apart the frameworks I learned from my favorite fantasy authors. To achieve my goals, it is not enough to tell American stories in the European tradition. I have to go beyond. And to go beyond, I go to the community.
In 2016, I was connected through the Smithsonian with the archivist of the Cherokee Nation, a bright and caring storyteller named Jerry Thompson. As I pitched the idea of my story and goals to Jerry, he was patient in explaining to me the various aspects of Cherokee culture he wished others would focus on, and places where Mooney and others had gotten the story wrong. He introduced me to the Cherokee concept of lying – or storytelling. In Cherokee culture, the word does not necessarily have the same negative connotations that it has for us. Instead, it offers up a unique paradigm on narrative and truth, and admits the two may diverge, and it is up to the listener to determine where they do, and how that affects him or her. It's also a tool of respect, and a way to safeguard precious knowledge. For example, a young boy may come to his grandpa many times before his persistence is rewarded with the "real story". Even many of the formulas for ceremonies that Mooney recorded simply aren't accurate. They are true in form, but the specific medicines are held as property of the families, so as not to be shared with outsiders. They told Mooney the truth about the general form and function of the ceremonies, and "lied" about the details.
Paradigms like this offer us a unique insight into the culture of the Cherokee, and they help me as a content creator. Given this knowledge, I can layer it in with my own ideas. This led to me fleshing out the concept of another race I've developed – the Aghazi nomads. The Aghazi travel my world to bear witness to disaster and atrocity and record the stories of those they meet. When they travel to Tsalagi lands (inspired by Mississippian cultures like the Cherokee), they find themselves called – what else? Liars. From that small seed grows a whole bevy of questions that must be answered as Tsalagi and Aghazi collide. Can the Aghazi be trusted? Are their auguries genuine, or just tall tales? How might the priestly class use this appellate to discredit them, and how might that backfire?
As I continued to investigate Cherokee culture, I stumbled across the practice of a young man learning his clan's skills and role from his mother's male relatives. Parallel research for a tabletop RPG setting (looking to the Lakota, Pawnee, and Kiowa for reference) brought me to Plains Sign Language. The byproduct of interviews with Thompson and this research brought me one of my favorite characters: Rayoteh Hanging-Jaw, Atohi's uncle, and a veteran of wars with a neighboring nation. In those wars, he both learned the art of his enemy's sign language, and found need to use it when his face was mangled by a brutal attack. A brief excerpt with him in focus follows:
Rayoteh Hanging Jaw wrapped a scarlet scarf around his old war wound, and set to preparing a fire as the first rays of light came darting in through the cracks in the daub walls. A few coals still glittered in the pit in the middle of his home, and there was still wood enough for the day's needs.
Rayoteh prayed that his portion would be fair today, and began to work.
In minutes, a fire was lit, and sage leaves tucked in the coals let off opaque white smoke that danced in the motes of the morning's first sunbeam. The smell of char filled the home, and the old warrior knelt in the earth by the fire. He breathed the scent in, and closed his eyes. The moment Rayoteh's eyes shut, smoke billowed out the door, and his nephew stormed in.
Dustu sputtered and wiped his eyes as smoke rolled over him. He feigned a salute, and quickly crouched under the smoke. "Uncle, Athoi is- "
Rayoteh swept Dustu's legs, and he went sprawling. Crouching next to Dustu, he signed: Do not move to sit before your elder bids you welcome.
"Of course, Uncle," Dustu said.
Now, how can I help you? Rayoteh patted the ground next to him, bidding his nephew to sit under the smoke.
Dustu paused, and took in a deep breath. He coughed, and started again. "Atohi's gone. He was out on hunt with Nanye this morning, and I think," he cradled his head in his hands. "I think they took her."
Rayoteh's eyes flared, and his hands moved furiously. They? He signed each letter individually now, slowly and methodically. K-A-T-U-N?
Dustu nodded, and Rayoteh groaned, his voice rasping with years of disuse. Standing, he motioned towards the door. We need to be clear-headed, he signed. Atohi will be rallying for warriors. If he strikes now, they will roll off the mounds like a wave breaking on stone.
"Atohi's a fine warrior, uncle." Dustu stood opposite Rayoteh, feet planted, arms crossed.
I didn't say he wasn't.
The two men stood in silence for a few moments. "We can't let him stand alone."
We can't let him stand at all. Not yet.
"But what about Nanye?"
Rayoteh stopped and slumped. His fingers began moving, once, and once again. His shoulders sagged, his eyes fell. I don't know, he finally signed.
"That's not good enough," said Dustu. "We can't- "
Rayoteh's hands snapped up, and his nephew stopped cold. He finished the sentence for Dustu. We can't do anything.
"I won't accept that." Dustu had wheeled around to Rayoteh, standing in the old warrior's face. Dustu was young, taller than Rayoteh had been at his age. He had the same fire in his eyes, and a reckless edge to his voice. Rayoteh dropped his eyes.
There is nothing for you to accept. There is only what is, and what cannot be.
Rayoteh's hands were still moving when his nephew turned his back and stomped out from the hut, war club unslung and ready in his hand.
Though this is still in rough form, I know Rayoteh will play a vital role in the story to come, in no small part because of research and consultation. Not only did consultation help me avoid a trite adaptation of Cherokee culture, it actually made my world more complete and led me to characters I wouldn't have otherwise considered. Thompson's help wasn't relegated just to culture, but also to historical knowledge that's almost impossible to find anywhere else. Thompson himself has done a great deal of research into the history of the Ani-Kutani and the similarity to legends found far away from the Cherokee's homeland in the Appalachian foothills.
Not only did consultation help me avoid a trite adaptation of Cherokee culture, it actually made my world more complete.
Ani-Kutani, according to Thompson, translates to something along the lines of 'People of the Dragon'. Dragon might be better translated to horned serpent, a crucial figure in Cherokee mythology. As it happens, similar creatures are found in stories throughout North America. Thompson indicated that the oral tradition regarding the migration of the Ani-Kutani maps well to the existence of the stories of horned or flying serpents elsewhere, particularly in regarding the feathered Quetzecoatl of Mayan and Aztec mythos. Similar mythological migration can be found with tropes like Spider Grandmother, shared by Navajo and Aztec cultures (though expressed in different ways), or the figure of the coyote trickster, found in Ojibwe and Yakama cultures. These bonds have inspired similar bonds in my constructed world and have led me down paths to create content inspired not just by the Cherokee, but by the Navajo, the Lakota, the Pawnee, the Olmec, the Aztec, and the Ojibwe.
These cultural exchanges help illustrate that stories from one culture can be told in a different setting. They push against the idea that any one people group truly owns a story. At the same time, they reflect a different paradigm than what's commonly practiced now. These cultural exchanges were just that – exchanges. People told each other their stories and received stories or shelter in turn. There's a deep network of respect and relationship that lies behind these common figures, and there's not a 1:1 representation of that in the modern day. It's impossible to compare googling about a culture on the internet and slapping traditional beliefs into colonial settings with the ancient patterns of trade and reciprocity that led to stories being shared far and wide. It is possible to mimic those patterns, enter into genuine relationship, and enrichen the narratives authors and designers create. Those same relationships can guide us to aspects of culture that can and should be shared and proclaimed and guide us away from teachings that are sacred and require protection and custodianship by the community. Though it can be difficult to hear that a piece of culture is off-limits, the cost to the content creator is much lower than the risk the community is concerned with.
Because of the relational nature of the process and the potential risk for creative constraints, cultural consultation is often depicted as a painful, expensive, and unnecessary step, foisted on creators by a PC culture run amok. I've found that it's almost entirely the opposite. Consulting with the communities you find yourself inspired by is not only a way to build relationships and mutual respect, it's a way to improve the product. And when content grows richer, communities feel respected, and stories guide readers to Indigenous peoples on their terms. Everybody wins. Consultation isn't a burden, it's a blessing – and one that basic human decency demands.
Travis McKay Roberts is a writer and public health social worker in Washington, D.C. Born in Canada, Travis is a citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation. You can find more of Travis's writing at callingallwayfarers.wordpress.com and at Relevant.com, and can reach him on twitter @TravisWMRoberts.
Posted in Not afraid of the ruinsTagged appropriation, cultural consultation, indigenous, indigenous knowledge, narrative, storytellingLeave a Comment on The post-Columbian exchange
March readings
It always feels like things are happening all at once: just as the global economy is transforming radically and we face an environmental crisis of global proportions, new social movements are rising up giving us new ways to think about the future. Weirdly, just at this moment, some are latching on to an idealized vision of modernity and the Enlightenment to defend the status quo. This month, we read articles that complicated the idea of modernity and offered ways to think about society and nature that incorporate, but go beyond, the Enlightenment tradition.
We also highlighted international environmental justice movements, showing that not everything is rosy—but people are fighting and thinking in creative ways, imagining different kinds of modernity and new kinds of internationalism. And lest we forget, March is women's history month, and what better way to celebrate it than to highlight the—often undervalued—role that women play in global environmental justice movements?
How to navigate the disorientation of a seismic world | Link | Taking inspiration from past revolutions to build a new framework for the future
Krishna never looks up | Link | "Several tentacle-antennae coiled around his extended arm like Medusa's hair."
The migration crisis and the imperial mode of living | Link | Notes toward a degrowth internationalism
Dreaming spaces | Link | "Everywhere is filled with the dream of what could grow, slowly coming true"
Climate change mitigation and adaptation of the poor | Link | A call for decolonial responses to climate change
URGENT REPORT Protomunculus spp | Link | "If an infected robionic is discovered at any stage, universal mandate requires its immediate incineration"
Avatar revisited | Link | Gesturing at decolonization of the great epistemological divides
You might've missed…
Climate science's official text is outdated. Here's what it's missing.
The Paris accord is built on speculative 'tech fantasies'. It can not save us from climate catastrophe.
UN moves towards recognising human right to a healthy environment
Latin American countries sign legally binding pact to protect land defenders
Their forefathers were enslaved. Now, 400 years later, their children will be landowners. A rare victory for the Brazilian poor, as record Amazon land tract is handed over to descendants of escaped enslaved people.
German newspaper publishes names of 33,000 refugees who died trying to reach Europe
Indonesia's forests caught between exploitation and failed aid programs
'We are the forgotten people': It's been almost six months since Hurricane Maria, and Puerto Ricans are still dying. A multi-media feature.
The battle for paradise: Puerto Ricans and ultrarich "Puertopians" are locked in a pitched struggle over how to remake the island. Naomi Klein reports on the uneven legacy of the hurricane.
A reign of terror: Extra-judicial killings in Duterte's Philippines. Dorothy Guerrero from Global Justice Now on the killings and opportunities for a Left response.
UK's Labour sets out to overhaul neo-colonial development policy
Double trouble? How big cities are gentrifying their neighbours
Afrin in Kurdish Syria has been occupied by an invading Turkish army. Here are some articles providing some further context.
Don't look away: The fight for Afrin is a struggle for radical democracy. Under fire from the forces of reaction, Afrin is the frontline in the fight for democracy. And by the same authors, a longer piece: Why #DefendAfrin? Confronting authoritarian populism with radical democracy. "At stake, not least, and deserving of our attention and solidarity is a radical alternative to both violent authoritarian nationalism and broader systemic violence associated with the contradictory nexus of blind elite cosmopolitanism, neo-imperialism and intensifying militarization that drives uneven globalization."
The young feminist who died for my people. "Despite scarcity, we do not want bullets, we do not want food, and we do not want money. All we are asking for is action that will stop Turkey from flying its warplanes over the heads of our children."
Love in a hopeless place. A first-hand account from a German internationalist YPG fighter from the now nearly forgotten battle of Raqqa.
The Kurds need Canada: What level of atrocity won't we ignore?
Dear Hêlîn, or Anna—because I know you liked your both names. A letter to a British national who died in Afrin.
Turkish troops pour concrete on world's oldest temple
Counter-mapping: cartography that lets the powerless speak. How a subversive form of mapmaking charts the stories and customs of those who would otherwise be ignored.
Some millennials aren't saving for retirement because they don't think capitalism will exist by then. They're forming intentional communities and solidarity networks to support and protect each other.
How Cooperation Richmond is empowering marginalized communities to build an equitable economy
The wind of change: Renewables and self-determination. Katie Laing explores the fight for the right to community renewables on the island of Lewis. On one hand is a system that brings direct community control and builds a local economy, on the other one that extracts profit, control and resource from the islands.
An interview with David Bollier on the meaning of the commons for social transformation.
The Barcelona city government is trying to remunicipalize its water system from a private company. The rising tide for the democratic control of water in Barcelona.
An interview with Laura Pérez on the recent massive women's strike in Spain, and what it means for the "feminization of politics" in Barcelona.
Realising an emancipatory rural politics in the face of authoritarian populism
Ostrom in the city: design principles for the urban commons
Carving out the commons. By now, you could be forgiven for assuming that "the commons" refers to another cocktail bar or coffee shop in yet another neighborhood people used to be able to afford. But Amanda Huron's new book grounds the romantic notion of urban commons in the everyday struggles of working people.
Soak the rich: An exchange on capital, debt, and the future with David Graeber and Thomas Piketty
Why are water wars back on the agenda? And why we think it's a bad idea!
Citizens unite in Cape Town's water crisis
Why Amartya Sen remains the century's great critic of capitalism. In Sen's work, the two critiques of capitalism – moral and material – cooperate. He disentangles moral and material issues without favouring one or the other, keeping both in focus.
Surveillance capitalism. Deleting our Facebook accounts following the recent privacy scandal is not enough: we need to challenge the structural problem of surveillance capitalism. On the digital and social networks supporting authoritarian populism, and what can be done to resist them. For those who are active on Facebook, an instruction on how to use it while giving it the minimum amount of personal data.
Loneliness and poor mental health still reign around the world. Since Japanese seniors increasingly find themselves living alone and with no one to talk to, a generation in Japan faces a lonely death, and committing petty theft has become a way for elderly women in particular to escape solitude and isolation; nearly 20% of women inmates in Japan's prisons are seniors.
How American masculinity, by sending the message that needing others is a sign of weakness and that being vulnerable is unmanly, creates lonely men.
It's easy to forget that activists fighting to eliminate injustice struggle with mental and physical health, too. A story on those who push, protest, and privately suffer as a result; and the personal account of an environmental professor whose battle with cancer helped her cope emotionally with the reality of climate change.
The necessary transience of happiness. "By selling a myth about the nature of happiness, capitalism creates atomistically-ambitious but socially-obedient individuals who can be distracted from collective values and aspirations."
Why Americans should give socialism a try. Against the commodification of life and relationships: "Capitalism is an ideology that is far more encompassing than it admits, and one that turns every relationship into a calculable exchange. Bodies, time, energy, creativity, love — all become commodities to be priced and sold. Alienation reigns. There is no room for sustained contemplation and little interest in public morality; everything collapses down to the level of the atomized individual."
United States as energy exporter: Is it "fake news"?
It wasn't just Greece: Archaeologists find early democratic societies in the Americas
Economics has an Africa problem. From 2015, but still relevant.
Why race matters when we talk about the environment
Is the way we think about overpopulation racist?
Corporations do damage to poor women with their global philanthropy. Companies like to focus their corporate social responsibility work on girls because supporting women is, in theory, noncontroversial. But such charitable efforts actually harm girls and women in the Global South by depoliticizing their problems, which are inherently political.
Climate change and the astrobiology of the Anthropocene. "We will either make it across to the other side with the maturity to 'think like a planet' or the planet will just move on without us. That, I believe, is the real meaning of what's happening to us now. It's a perspective we can't afford to miss."
"They are our salvation": the Sicilian town revived by refugees. With an ageing, fast-shrinking population, Sutera saw Italy's migrant influx as an opportunity.
Human rights are not enough. We must also embrace the fight against economic inequality.
How six Americans changed their minds about global warming
The tragedy of the commons. Common, a new housing startup, creates cities without qualities—but it will order your toilet paper.
Women and environmental justice
With the 8th of March being International Women's Day, and Women's History Month running through March in the US, UK and beyond, this month is a good time to turn the spotlight on women's struggles and (often overlooked and undervalued) contributions to environmental justice.
Stories of women's resistance. Women are on the frontlines of climate change around the world: they make up 80% of people displaced by it, are more vulnerable in the aftermath of disasters, and disproportionately face other risks described in this overview from the BBC. But they are also active agents in fighting back against the climate crisis and other forms of environmental injustice.
Finland's reindeer-herding Sámi women, faced with a combination of weather changes and increased tree cutting that threatens their centuries-old tradition, fight climate change. Meet the "Polish Mothers at the Felling": a grassroots group of mothers protesting intensified logging practices across Poland. In Nepal, women are running for office to protect traditional forests that belong to indigenous peoples and local communities, and they're winning. The DRC mining industry is a prime example of how corporate power threatens women's rights: this is why feminist activists are mobilising behind a proposed international treaty to regulate the impacts of transnational corporations. Indigenous activists of the Chaco movement – the most vital branch of which may be young, Native American women – try to quell a rising tide of oil and gas exploration in Chaco Canyon. In India, women resist plantations that uproot them from their customary forests. On International Women's Day, a petition initiated by women in West and Central African countries demanded that oil palm companies give back community land and end violence against women living in and around large-scale oil palm plantations; a struggle that women in Guatemala and Colombia and Indonesia face as well.
Here is a women's strike reader with socialist feminist highlights from the archives of Dissent Magazine, and a list of women activists from around the world taking up the fight for social justice.
Zafer Ülger discusses environmental issues in Turkey, and points to the need for movements that unite ecological struggles with other social struggles, including women's liberation: "The crises experienced by labor, women or oppressed peoples are not separate from the crisis of nature and ecosystems; it is just the other side of the same coin."
Female writers and naturalists. A list of nine women who are rewriting the environment from a female perspective; a beautifully intimate portrait of Rachel Carson and her life and work on the sea; and an exploration of Nan Shepherd's work on the mountains, and what we can learn from it. "Shepherd does for the mountain what Rachel Carson did for the ocean — both women explore entire worlds previously mapped only by men and mostly through the lens of conquest rather than contemplation; both bring to their subject a naturalist's rigor and a poet's reverence, gleaming from the splendor of facts a larger meditation on meaning."
Ecological thought
What does it mean to think ecologically?
Culture shift: redirecting humanity's path to a flourishing future. It's time to build a new worldview with connectedness at its center.
When nature and society are seen through the lens of dialectics and systems thinking: "Capitalism casts nature as a resource which is to be exploited, squeezed and discarded. This is in part because of a linear, reductive understanding of the world. But there is an alternative. Dialectical, systems thinking views nature and society through the lens of complexity, contradiction and phase transitions."
Thinking ecologically: a dialectical approach. In this essay Murray Bookchin warns against overly spiritual, reductive, and mechanistic approaches in ecological thought, injecting a political analysis into the discussion of what it means to think ecologically. In particular, he directs his ire against various strains of new age environmentalism as well as systems thinking.
Mentalities of greening, governing, and getting rich
Utilitarianism made for 'Hard Times' in Dickens' England
Kim Stanley Robinson, the author of sci-fi classics like Red Mars and the more recent New York 2140, wrote an op-ed in The Guardian arguing for a variation of E. O. Wilson's 'half earth' proposal. The idea is that humans should be kicked out of half the planet and inhabit the rest in super-dense and ecological cities. Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher, two political ecologists, wrote an essay at the time critiquing Wilson's book: "Addressing biodiversity loss and other environmental problems must proceed by confronting the world's obscene inequality, not by blaming the poor and trusting the 'free market' to save them."
10 years ago, the first international degrowth conference was held in Paris. To celebrate, Federico Demaria writes about the rise – and future – of the degrowth movement.
From 2017, a history of the Limits to Growth thesis and the World3 model, which was ridiculed in the 80s but turned out to be correct.
Eric Pineault's exploration of "how the spectre of Degrowth haunts left ecomodernism as something unimaginable; how it works to foreclose certain avenues of radical thought and practice."
Another worthy read on the ENTITLE Blog by Emmanuele Leonardi, where he puts the degrowth vs. accelerationism debate in context of the question of value.
Beyond growth or beyond capitalism? A critique of Herman Daly's steady-state economics, which cannot imagine a world beyond capitalism.
Introduction to an ecosocialist approach to production and consumption
Better technology isn't the solution to ecological collapse. We need to ditch our addiction to GDP growth.
Modernity and the web of life
With the publishing of Steven Pinker's new book, Enlightenment Now!, there's been a lot of talk about modernity and the Enlightenment, with accusations flying around of anyone who disagrees with the present state of things being accused of anti-modern and anti-Enlightenment. Here are a few rebuttals:
The limitations of Steven Pinker's optimism
Steven Pinker's optimism on climate change is misplaced
Waiting for Steven Pinker's enlightenment
You can deny environmental calamity – until you check the facts
There never was a West (or, democracy emerges from the spaces in between)
In 2015, Anthony Galluzzo wrote a series of articles analyzing the literature of Promethean modernism—worth giving them a read. A tale of two Prometheuses in many parts: Part 1, 2, and 3.
Meanwhile, there's been a slew of stories about the impacts of modernity on rural areas, our cities, and nature.
Agriculture wars. A tale of the industrialization of rural America and country music as resistance.
Our dying soils: the invisible crisis under our feet
Urban development in India: chasing the global at a cost to the local?
Empty promises: how 600 million young people in India have been missold the future
Mexico: the dangers of industrial corn and its processed edible products
The 100 million city: is 21st century urbanisation out of control?
The risks are rising for cities in Anthropocene era
Downtown is for people. It's always worth revisiting Jane Jacob's classic 1958 essay. "If the downtown of tomorrow looks like most of the redevelopment projects being planned for it today, it will end up a monumental bore. But downtown could be made lively and exciting — and it's not too hard to find out how."
How J.G. Ballard's science fiction tells the future of our privatized cities
Introduction: the rising tide of climate change fiction
A nuclear warning designed to last 10,000 years. "Consider a wanderer 10,000 years in the future discovering a strange construction of granite thorns in the New Mexico desert, their points weathered by centuries, their shadows stretching at sinister angles. The wailing figure from Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream," itself long ago turned to dust, appears on sporadic signs near these totems. It's unclear for what this site was intended, or who created its menacing forms."
Apocalypse soon. The science fiction of this century is one in which great existential threats are known: they are real, and terrible.
An atlas of real utopias. Introducing the Atlas of Utopias, which highlights 32 stories of radical transformation that prove that another world is not only possible in the future, but already exists.
Sufficiency: Moving beyond the gospel of eco-efficiency, a report by Friends of the Earth Europe.
Platform cooperativism: challenging the corporate sharing economy
Decolonising science: a reading list
Whose land is it anyway? A manual for decolonization
The Decolonize issue of YES! Magazine
Capitalism Nature Socialism issue on power, peace and protest: ecofeminist vision, action and alternatives
The Myths of Conquest series, debunking the myths of European colonization of the New World.
These newsletters are put together by Anna Biren (@acathbrn), Rut Elliot Blomqvist (@RutElliotB), and Aaron Vansintjan (@a_vansi).
Posted in Monthly linksTagged anthropocene, Barcelona, climate change, climate justice, decolonization, degrowth, ecology, environmental justice, indigenous, modernity, sci-fi, women1 Comment on March readings
Avatar revisited
Image: Ross LewAllen ©
by Fani Cettl
James Cameron's blockbuster Avatar (2009), to which four sequels have been announced, was generally praised for its cutting-edge special effects yet criticized for the simplistic narrative by both film reviewers and scholars. Sukhdev Sandhu, reviewer for The Telegraph, puts it effectively when he writes, "It's an achievement to make 3D look as good as it does here, but that counts for little if the characters are all in 1D. The film is a triumph of effects over affect" (Dec 2009). It is a rather formulaic take on the histories of western colonialism and environmental destruction. The alien Na'vi on planet Pandora are meant to mimic the pre-industrial Native Americans, who worship the Goddess Eywa and live in harmony with their environment until the mechanized human colonizers arrive to extract "unobtanium" and obliterate everything in their way. The main protagonist Jake Sully joins the Na'vi and forms a romantic bond with the native princess Neytiri, and ultimately discards his paraplegic, ex-Marine, white body to become a non-white, feminine-coded, abled, environmentally attuned Na'vi body. The scenario rehearses two of the most powerful American frontier myths: the Pocahontas and Mohican stories, adapting them to the 21st century where they no longer function only "as an exercise in romantic regret, but to expiate guilt over the genocidal nation building" (Howe 2016, 125). The seeming postcolonialism and ecofeminism of Avatar can be read as a symptom of white guilt: one that reinforces the ultimate stereotype of a heroic white warrior leading through the justified violence the oppressed to freedom, which remains very problematic in terms of race, gender, ability, and the idealized version of nature.
The film remains a worthwhile cultural phenomenon to examine for its particular staging of post/modernity that underlies environmentalist politics.
Considering these controversial assumptions of the narrative, the massive box office success and the widespread fascination with the film's CGI effects, as well as the announced four sequels in the upcoming years, is it worth revisiting Avatar and with what aim? I wish to suggest yes; the film remains a worthwhile cultural phenomenon to examine for its particular staging of post/modernity that underlies environmentalist politics. This has so far generated an interesting scholarly discussion to which I would like to contribute in this essay. Bruno Latour, well known for his view that the European modernity in the 17th century installed what he calls the Great Divide(s)–between nature and culture, self and other, human and nonhuman–surprisingly reads the film in a rather positive way (Latour 2010), although we could argue that Avatar continues to enact precisely these divides. More recently, ecocritical scholar Timothy Morton has argued that the film gestures towards non-binary postmodernity, but it is unable to actually take us there (Morton 2014). That is, the environmentalist message that celebrates the pure, organic, pre-technological Nature on Pandora is undermined at the level of the film medium, which glaringly speaks to us through the luminescent screen images its reliance on the highly advanced digital technology. In this paper I wish to build further on these scholarly readings of Avatar and, following Morton, argue that the film does not seem to take its own propositions seriously enough. It not only unconsciously undermines its ideology through the level of the medium, but also on the level on the narrative itself. Through a close reading of a dialogue from the film I will show that, if taken seriously from a postcolonial anthropological lens, the dialogue signals a decolonization of the hierarchical divide between western sciences and Indigenous knowledges, which the film overall remains unable to articulate.
For Latour, Avatar "is the first popular description of what happens when modernist humans meet Gaia. And it's not pretty" (Latour 2010, 471). As he argues, since the 17th century nature has been understood as no longer spirited and actively interfering with human affairs, but in terms of passive objects to be demystified through scientific knowledge. All those living on the wrong side of the epistemological divide were considered irrational because they believed in a world animated by all sorts of entities rather than reducing materiality to the cause and effect relations. A model of mechanism was posited as a paradigmatic model, within which the Christian God was reinterpreted as a clock maker who had created the world and then left it to unfold by itself according to mechanical laws. (Carolyn Merchant in The Death Of Nature (1980) explicated this scientific model in detail, and showed has it was entangled with the histories of patriarchal colonialism and capitalism.) For Latour, this model can no longer be upheld (if it ever was) as it becomes ever more visible in the current age of climate change that nonhuman materiality has agency and that effects exceed their causes. Both humans and nonhumans are actants, and their agencies are much more evenly distributed, which means that we need to consider "the tricky question of animism anew" without the usual scorn that has been poured onto the concept: "Consider Lovelock, for instance, with his 'absurd idea' of the Earth as a quasi organism – or the Na'vis with their 'prescientific' connections to Eywa" (Latour, 2010, 481). Latour aligns James Lovelock's Gaia theory of the Earth as a living super-organism, which in the past was criticized for being unscientific by the scientific community, and the animist beliefs of non-western Indigenous peoples as they are staged in Avatar. He suggests that both should be taken much more seriously by us "moderns". In fact, in recent decades Lovelock's theory has been revalued considerably in the environmentalist movement, while the indigenous models of sustainability have been increasingly explored in anthropological scholarship. Instead of constantly policing the epistemological border of what proper science and what pseudo or non-science is, it is necessary to look carefully into how well a certain model is assembled, how efficient of a "handle" to stage nature it is (Latour 2010, 483).
The film's gesturing towards postmodernity crucially entails a gesturing towards decolonizing epistemology.
It seems that Latour casts Avatar in a rather positive light despite its clichéd narrative and very controversial take on colonialism. Bruce Clarke notes that the film resonates for Latour with his agenda of deconstructing the nature-culture divides and redistributing the worldly agencies in a "nonmodernist fashion" (Clarke 2014, 160), yet for Clarke, "At every level, Avatar is self-contradictory and wrapped up in its own paradoxes" (Ibid, 177). This really captures well the film's modus operandi, which is, I suggest, that of failing to take seriously its own propositions. It is this ambiguity that enables us to interpret certain moments in the film as possibly questioning the Great Divides between western sciences and indigenous knowledges, while understanding the film on the whole as enforcing these divides by privileging the spiritual belief over the scientific-technological outlook. While the biology and neurology of the Pandoran/Gaian living system are shown to resonate well with the animist forest spirits, yet at the same time, the nature on Pandora is strangely purified from the contamination by capitalist technology. Morton approaches the ambiguity of Avatar by arguing that the narrative of the purification of Nature from modern technology fails at the level of film medium, which heavily relies on the advanced digital technology. For him, "What Avatar gestures toward, then, is a genuine 'postmodernity,' a historical moment after modernity," where no extrication of the organic from the technological is possible, "without ever being able to tell us to go there, or even wanting with all its heart to push us there" (Morton 2014, 222). I wish to push Morton's idea further and argue that the film's gesturing towards postmodernity crucially entails a gesturing towards decolonizing epistemology: questioning the hierarchical divide between western sciences and indigenous knowledges, which unfolds at the level of the narrative. An intriguing dialogue along these lines develops between the Na'vi-friendly scientist Grace, played by the sci-fi heroine Sigourney Weaver, and the merciless corporate manager named Parker, played by Giovanni Ribisi:
Grace: Those trees were sacred to the Omaticaya in a way you can't imagine.
Parker: You know what? You throw a stick in the air around here it falls on some sacred fern, for Christ's sake!
Grace: I'm not talking about pagan voodoo here – I'm talking about something real and measurable in the biology of the forest.
Parker: Which is what exactly?
Grace: What we think we know is that there's some kind of electrochemical communication between the roots of the trees. Like the synapses between neurons. Each tree has ten to the fourth connections to the trees around it, and there are ten to the twelfth trees on Pandora.
Parker: That's a lot, I'm guessing.
Grace: That's more connections than the human brain. You get it? It's a network – a global network. And the Na'vi can access it – they can upload and download data – memories – at sites like the one you just destroyed.
What is at stake is not to rebrand non-western knowledges as scientific, but rather to make us think how and what discourses and practices, and not others, get to be authorized and legitimized as scientific in the first place.
The animist Na'vi view that trees are imbued with the spirit of Eywa is presented crucially as compatible with, and not opposed to, the biological and neurological constructions of synapses and neurons in living organisms. One way to understand Eywa is in terms of Gaia, or as Clarke suggests, in the neocybernetic terms of "a self-referential cognitive system producing self-maintaining regulatory dynamics without having to assume the agency or anima of a conscious system" (Clarke 2014, 162). This does not mean, however, that Grace's aim is to simply translate the spiritual belief into the scientific idiom in order to legitimize it. Importantly, she respects both the animist and neurological worldviews, unlike Parker for whom the translation between the two is needed. Grace's perspective encourages us to think how both models, each on its own terms, successfully stage materiality, and though for Clarke this "conveys the perennial Western muddle between science and spirituality, physics and metaphysics, energy and anima" (Ibid, 170), I suggest that it also gestures towards a decolonisation of knowledge. In the above quote the borders that police the temporality–primitive vs. modern–as well as seriousness–superstition vs. truth–of the two ways of knowing are put in question. Why would we not think of shamanic practices as scientific, or of the concept of the neuron as animist? What is at stake is not to rebrand non-western knowledges as scientific, but rather to make us think how and what discourses and practices, and not others, get to be authorized and legitimized as scientific in the first place. "Muddling" this border would mean to inhabit epistemologically the space which Gloria Anzaldúa terms "borderlands", an undetermined and vague state created through the deconstruction of a historically enforced border (Anzaldua 1987, 3).
Recent postcolonial anthropological research in the Amazon region can take us further into decolonial directions. Jeremy Narby publishes in popular rather than academic media, but some of his insights can precisely shed more light on the quote above. (In comparison, Eduardo Kohn's research of the Amazon in How Forests Think (2013) is more rigoruosly academic, but his conclusion to understand the Amazon forest spirits as semiotic actors resonates strongly with Narby's view.) Based on his research with both Ashaninca shamans and biologists, he argues for a striking compatibility between the shamans' and the biologists' understanding of life. Intriguingly, he suggests that what the Amazonian shamans see in their hallucinogenic visions induced by plant brews, which is the images of giant fluorescent serpents, corresponds to what biologists see as the double helix structure of DNA through their instruments. A he puts it: "My hypothesis suggests that what scientists call DNA corresponds to the animate essences that shamans say communicate with them and animate all life forms" (Narby 1999, 132). As in Avatar, the spirits in the Amazon forest correspond to the scientific model of reality; the hallucinogenic plants are an equally good method to approach nature as the scientific instruments; and the shamans use their vision-induced knowledge to heal people same as the medical doctors use the knowledge of molecular biology. In the film, both the scientific and spiritual forms of knowledge are imagined to not only theorize life, but also construct it successfully on a practical level. While the human scientists use advanced biotechnology to construct avatar bodies, which are then operated through a psionic link with the genetically matching human minds, the Na'vi at the end of the film transport the mind of a human completely into his avatar body by using shamanic techniques. Such staging makes it hard to delineate science from non-science, or indeed faith from science, in the way that Narby argues: "…it is of utmost importance to respect the faith of others, no matter how strange, whether it is shamans who believe plants communicate or biologists who believe nature is inanimate" (Narby 1999, 145). Whether or not we subscribe to Narby's conclusion that the visions of serpents and the DNA double helix correspond on the ontological level, what his approach foregrounds is that both shamans' and biologists' models of life are equally efficient handles to stage nature, and therefore should be equally respected.
Traditional ecological knowledge is based on collaboration rather than appropriation, spiritual interconnectedness rather than a taxonomic set of categories and facts.
Equal respect towards western and non-western epistemologies would mean to speak of what Grace Dillon terms "indigenous scientific literacies" (Dillon 2007), as the ways in which indigenous sustainable practices constitute indeed a Native science despite the lack of resemblance to taxonomic western knowledges. As she writes, traditional ecological knowledge is based on collaboration rather than appropriation, spiritual interconnectedness rather than a taxonomic set of categories and facts. In the contemporary context of climate change, indigenous scientific literacies seem to be finally "discovered" widely by the mainstream science, and Dillon sees precisely the mode of science fiction as a space in which this already has been, and can be productively engaged and developed further (Dillon 2016). Within this framework, Avatar both speaks and fails to speak of the indigenous scientific literacies. It gestures towards such understanding, yet overall it fails to engage this potential explicitly: it gestures towards postmodernity while not being able to extricate itself from the modernist divides. In Morton's reading, the celebration of pre-technological Nature is unconsciously undermined at the level of the vibrant, computer-generated screen imagery: "The very attempt to force viewers to accept an ecological view of interconnectedness results in pushing humans to accept the proximity of a more-than-human-world of uncanny strangers" (Morton 2014, 221). Morton's uncanny strangers are the glowing, weird creatures and the immersive environment on the screen, which cannot but not reveal the technology that made them possible. But if this is so, these luminescent uncanny strangers also unconsciously reveal to us and embody the hallucinatory method that shamans use to communicate with and gain knowledge from their plant teachers. As we, the film's audience, immerse ourselves in the astonishing living world of the screen, are we not "hallucinating" about ecological knowledge? I suggest that the gesture towards postmodernity that Morton detects in the film crucially entails a gesture towards decolonising epistemologies, yet this move fails to be articulated explicitly. What the announced sequels make of decolonising the epistemological borders is to be seen, but so far the historical understanding of post/modernity in Avatar has generated an important scholarly discussion to which this essay contributes.
Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands: La Frontera, The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Book Company.
Avatar. 2009. Directed by James Cameron. Los Angeles: Lightstorm Entertainment.
Clarke, Bruce. 2014. Neocybernetics and Narrative. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Dillon, Grace L. 2007. "Indigenous Scientific Literacies in Nalo Hopkinson's Ceremonial Worlds." Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Vol. 18, No. 1 (69): 23-41.
Dillon, Grace L. 2016. "Introduction: Indigenous Futurisms, Bimaashi Biidaas Mose, Flying and Walking towards You." Extrapolation, Vol. 57, Issue 1-2: 1-6.
Howe, Andrew. 2016. "The Post-9/11 Mohican: Avatar and the Transformation of the 'Manifest Apology'." In The New Western: Critical Essays on the Genre since 9/11, edited by Scott F. Sttodart, 116-136. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc.
Klassen, Chris. 2013. "Becoming the 'Noble Savage': Nature Religion and the 'Other' in Avatar." In Avatar and Nature Spirituality, edited by Bron Taylor, 143-160. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Kohn, Eduardo. 2013. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2010. "An Attempt at a 'Compositionist Manifesto'." New Literary History, Vol. 41, No. 3: 471-490.
Latour, Bruno. 2004. Politics of Nature: How To Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Merchant, Carolyn. 1980. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Morton, Timothy. 2014. "Avatar, Ecology, Thought." In Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction, edited by Gerry Canavan and Kim Stanley Robinson, 206-225. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Narby, Jeremy. 1999. The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.
Narby, Jeremy. 2005. Intelligence in Nature: an Inquiry into Knowledge. New York: The Penguin Group.
Sandhu, Sukhdev. 2009. "Avatar, full review." The Telegraph.
Fani Cettl holds a PhD in Gender Studies from the Central European University in Budapest. Her fields of interest are science fiction, Gothic fiction, science and literature, biopolitical theory and posthumanism.
Posted in Not afraid of the ruins, Not afraid of the ruinsTagged Avatar, decolonization, film criticism, indigenous, indigenous knowledge, sci-fi, science fiction, speculative fiction, traditional ecological knowlegeLeave a Comment on Avatar revisited
February readings
February is the shortest month, but holy crap we do have a lot of cool links for you. This month, we cover some new research about the limits of the good life, the impact of companies like AirBnB and Amazon on our cities, the changing Latin American politics, and the importance of Indigenous ways of seeing the world. The work of Steven Pinker and Jordan Peterson has also triggered a new series of discussions on the importance of science and its links to colonialism and racism. In the sci-fi department, we've got a whole new slew of fiction for you, analysis from writers like China Miéville and Kim Stanley Robinson, and a feature on black science-fiction writers.
La Barceloneta's Struggle Against (Environmental) Gentrification | Link
"A city-wide urban struggle that evolved in defense of the needs and rights of residents over capital and profit."
The Transition: towards a psycho-social history | Link
"The facts revealed in the historical record are clear: most people were terrified of their neighbours."
Encyclopedia of the mad gardener | Link
"They feel the smells seep into their nasal channels, dioxins boiled under the pink moon."
The collector | Link
"When you upload the dream, I cease to be a dreamer…"
Waterways | Link
"After the Division, Avon split from Greater Thames and declared a matriarchy"
Turns out that carbon capture is a pipe dream. Not many know that the fine print of the Paris Treaty relied on a dirty little secret: the advent of carbon capture technology. But it turns out that this is a pipe dream. The unavoidable fact is, we just have to make less stuff, burn less oil, and grow more trees. Read the stories from Wired, The Guardian, and the original report from EASAC.
You may have heard of Route 66, "the main street of America", but Highway BR-163 in Brazil may be just as epic. This beautiful photo essay about this single highway tells the story of the complex political ecology of rainforest deforestation.
The Samarco dam collapse in 2015 was Brazil's worst environmental disaster. What's happened since, and who's to blame? This investigative piece gives us the update.
Is it possible for everyone to live well? This study mapped indicators of well-being along with every country's environmental impact. Turns out most don't make the cut, and Vietnam comes closest to balancing the good life and environmental impacts. Though these numbers just tell part of the story, the study has had international impact, starting a much-needed discussion on what it means to live well today.
It's behind the scenes, as always, but new rounds of trade negotiations are happening and they will affect the world for generations to come. Here's an article dishing it out about the CEPA trade deal (EU-Indonesia), a perspective from Kenya by Justus Lavi Mwololo, a representative of small farmers, and an explainer about how the new NAFTA negotiations affect Mexican workers.
We're over one month into Turkey's invasion of the Kurdish canton Afrin in Syria, and since then, there's been an international outcry. This piece in Jacobin lays out the stakes behind the attack, here's an op-ed by the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy in the Wall Street Journal, another opinion piece by Rahila Gupta on CNN's website, and a piece by David Graeber asking why world leaders are backing Turkey's invasion. And here's a piece on the ecological initiatives happening right now in Rojava.
Here's a letter from Evin Jiyan Kisanak, the daughter of Gultan Kisanak, telling the story of the Kurdish political movement in Turkey and their oppression: "My mom, who still has traces on her body from the torture she suffered, always sees light in the face of profound despair. Today she is in prison again, but her belief in peace and equality is unrelenting. Her will is unyielding."
In the face of our climate crisis, a group of five activists known as the Valve Turners decided not to wait for the law to catch up and took matters into their own hands. This is a story on their direct action.
A striking piece in New York Magazine linking loneliness and the opioid epidemic: "This nation pioneered modern life. Now epic numbers of Americans are killing themselves with opioids to escape it."
Another photo essay, this time an intricate story about industrial farming in California, the migrant workers who toil the fields and processing plants, and how it intersects with climate change.
Introducing vTaiwan: Citizens are pioneering new public participation methods through online civic involvement. They've become so successful that the government has been forced to listen.
What happened in Catalonia? This article explores how the roots of the independence movement was in based in the fight for neighborhood, not nationhood—and this is what most outside observers don't seem to get.
Socialist organizing was never just about striking in the workplace. This article explores the vibrant dance halls, social clubs, Sunday schools, and film screenings of socialist movements, and why they declined starting in the 1950s. Today, as young people are once again becoming interested in socialism, they can stand to learn a lot from the block-by-block initiatives of the past.
Environmentalists are often caricatured as hippy-dippy young people, removed from common people's interests. In this beautiful photo essay, we're guided through the diversity of people resisting fracking in one village in North England.
Indigenous activism is seeing a resurgence, and, finally, growing interest amongst non-Indigenous and settler communities. What can the white left learn from Indigenous movements, and how can it build better alliances? This article explores what decolonization would mean in today's context.
What's wrong with the financial system? If you ask a banker or a politician, their ignorance of how money works, and how debt powers the whole system, will become immediately apparent. The organization Positive Money has been putting a lot of work into battling misconceptions and putting forward alternatives. They recently came out with a report on how we can escape the growth dependency that our money system forces us into. Here's a summary of the report in The Independent.
The local initiatives happening around the world can be a bit overwhelming. How can we think of them all together, understand them as part of one big movement? In this report, titled Libertarian Municipalism, Networked Cities as Resilient Platforms for Post-Capitalist Transition, Kevin Carson highlights the diverse movements in cities globally and the theories that can help us understand them.
Have you heard of Cooperation Jackson? It's a worker-owned cooperative in Jackson, Mississippi, but so much more. Through their efforts, they've successfully kick-started a movement led by black folks that eventually took over city hall. This video explains what's going on and why it's so important.
South Africa's shack dwellers see politics very differently than the average Westerner.
The new housing rights movements in the US have the real estate industry running scared. The Nation reports.
Have you heard of the Preston model? It's helping to start a new conversation about the role of local government in locally-driven economic revitalization and transforming ownership towards democratic alternatives.
A new series was launched in the Guardian, 'The alternatives', in which Aditya Chakrabortty looks at ways to make the economy work for everyone.
Jason Hickel on why, by removing the walls that separate the causes and consequences of climate change, we can encourage constructive action.
"This is real politics. It's personal. It's a lived experience that you are a part of and implicated in, whether you had asked to be or not." The staff strikes at Cambridge inspired Alice Hawkins to reflect on political engagement.
Different perspectives on human history, the Anthropocene, and climate change
David Graeber and David Wengrow rethink world history as we know it: contrary to the popular narrative which conflates the origin of social inequality with the agricultural revolution, egalitarian cities and regional confederacies are historically quite commonplace, and inequalities first emerged within families and households (it's worth mentioning that feminist scholars and other marginal voices have worked on stories of micro-scale inequalities for a long time). In an interview from 2016, Nancy Fraser discusses how the work involved in social reproduction is severely undervalued and taken for granted as 'gifts' in capitalist societies. This article highlights the need for thought on the Anthropocene to include African perspectives and scholarship, and a recent World Bank report provides new evidence of the massive ongoing extraction of the continent's wealth by the rest of the word.
The fact that young people are opting out of having children because of climate change is an urgent call for action, and so is the alarming research on how it is worsening public health problems. During these times of crisis we're facing, art can help us process what's going on, intellectually and emotionally.
An analysis of Latin American politics. Against the backdrop of state and gang violence, some of Latin America's most affected communities have taken radical measures to defend themselves and build new social counter-powers from below. Arturo Escobar discusses post-development and the fight for justice and pluralism in Latin America. "As inequality and environmental degradation worsen, the search is on not only for alternative development models but also for alternatives to development itself." Elsewhere, Pablo Solón discusses the cosmovisions emerging from Latin America's Indigenous movements, and Miriam Lang and Edgardo Lander talk about the slow demise of Latin America's "pink tide".
"This exploitation by powerful men of women and girls in the most abject of circumstances has been misleadingly framed broadly in terms of "sex work" and "sex parties" in dominant narratives in the Western press." Some good points and context on the Oxfam scandal and its aftermath.
A thought-provoking read from 2015 on the complex history and effects of humanitarian appeals.
A history of gun manufacturing and colonization, and the resulting underdevelopment it led to.
Restaurants are the new factories
Protecting the climate means strengthening Indigenous rights
The case against sidewalks
The logic of consumerism has come to infect what we mean by gentrification. "The poor are still gentrification's victims, but in this new meaning, the harm is not rent increases and displacement — it's something psychic, a theft of pride." When 'Gentrification' isn't about housing.
Technology and the new economy
The capitalist work ethic and the fear of leisure
The conversation about how human work is impacted by new forms of industrial technology continues. Here is a podcast from the Guardian which introduces different ideas about alternatives to work as we know it.
As Silicon Valley entrepreneurs turn "the end of work" and basic income into their new hobbyhorses, one article instead suggests a new public sector to guarantee both jobs and leisure time. Another article says "the end of work" is a sham—since new technologies in industrial production are driven by controlling labour and not liberating it. Others focus on a critique of work: on the capitalist work ethic which makes people too busy to think and (conveniently for capital) to be engaged in politics; on working less as a solution to everything and the long history of elites fearing the leisure time of the poor; and on how Ju/'hoansi hunter-gatherers can help industrial societies rethink work.
For a historical perspective on the discussion and on different ways of looking at new technologies, Thomas Pynchon's 1984 essay on Luddism is a must-read.
This past month, David Wachsmuth and his team at McGill University have come out with a hard-hitting new study on the impact of AirBnB on rents, and the way that it drives disruption in our cities. Here's the report itself, here's a feature in New York Magazine, and another at The Atlantic.
What Amazon does to poor cities: The debate over Amazon's new headquarters obscures the company's rapid expansion of warehouses in low-income areas.
The rise of digital poorhouses
Is energy efficiency a good thing? Not especially. This feature in The Tyee takes us through some of the thinkers and researchers like Jacques Ellul, Stanley Jevons, and Elizabeth Shove on the problems with efficiency in an economy that just keeps growing.
Blockchain won't save the world
Amazon and the socialist future
The movement for the right to repair. And a wonderful video on how some farmers are hacking their tractors.
Driverless cars could see humankind sprawl ever further into the countryside
On science and its problems
What are "Western values", really? Peter Harrison argues that the potential of a Western tradition lies "in the preservation of a rich and varied past that can continue to serve as on ongoing challenge to the priorities and "values" of the present."
Part of the Zapatistas' project of resisting indigenous genocide, capitalism, and political repression is their struggle to decolonize knowledge. This is an article on the discussions between Zapatistas and leading left-wing scientists during the second iteration of the ConCiencias conference in December 2017.
Indigenous knowledge is finally being recognized as a valuable source of information by Western archaeologists, ecologists, biologists, climatologists and others.
Even so, the relationship between traditional ecological knowledge and Western science remains problematic.
Massimo Pigliucci tackles scientism: "when scientistic thinkers pretend that any human activity that has to do with reasoning about facts is "science" they are attempting a bold move of naked cultural colonization, defining everything else either out of existence or into irrelevance."
"Current environmental policy textbooks are all stuck in a liberal narrative of environmental progress through political consent." Melanie DuPuis elaborates on the concepts that are missing from this narrative.
Race science—that we can prove the superiority of one race over another through science—is rearing its ugly head again, with Jordan Peterson and Steven Pinker playing some unwelcome roles. But as Gavin Evans shows in this Guardian article, it's still as bogus as ever.
China Mieville on the limits of utopia
"The utopia of togetherness is a lie. Environmental justice means acknowledging that there is no whole earth, no 'we', without a 'them'. That we are not all in this together… There is hope. But for it to be real, and barbed, and tempered into a weapon, we cannot just default to it. We have to test it, subject it to the strain of appropriate near-despair. We need utopia, but to try to think utopia, in this world, without rage, without fury, is an indulgence we can't afford."
Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation has been turned into eco-thriller movie, and people are pretty stoked. For Laura Perry, it "offers a roadmap to understanding and living with aliens and other unsettling forms of life". And there's a feature in Macleans on Jeff VanderMeer and his "new weird".
The future is now? Five science fiction writers speculate on what science fiction can do when the present seems more and more like a science fiction story. On the genre as social critique, an ethics of science, and a place to consider questions of meaning and value.
An interview with climate fiction and utopian science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson on the roles of science, fiction, and science fiction today, the limits of tech-only solutions to environmental problems, and sci-fi as the realism of our time.
And, speaking of reality merging with science fiction: Silicon Valley's vision of a future of oligarchical "smart cities" could be a dystopian story by Aldous Huxley.
A farewell-note to Ursula LeGuin, the interplanetary anthropologist
Five black sci-fi writers you may not (but should) know
In The progress of this storm, Andreas Malm both criticizes the increasingly popular environmentalist idea of the "death of nature" and imagines political change through an ecologically class-conscious popular movement. This interview covers the latter point and this review covers both.
A review of Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism by Melinda Cooper at Jacobin.
"Most resistance does not speak its name": James C. Scott, author of Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, talks about his work.
"How will we have enough resources to support those people sustainably and equitably? Should we develop new technologies to respond to those challenges? Or should we focus instead on trying to limit growth and develop more of a harmony with the nature around us?" Charles C. Mann's The Wizard and the Prophet is a testimonial to the art of the possible.
Posted in Front, Monthly links, Monthly linksTagged anthropocene, Barcelona, climate change, climate justice, decolonisation, degrowth, environmental justice, gentrification, indigenous, politics, sci-fi, science fictionLeave a Comment on February readings
January's readings
We've launched our series on sci-fi, near-futures, utopias, and dystopias, Not afraid of the ruins. The first three stories are now online! Expect a new piece every Friday.
Borne on a damaged planet | Link | Two books that do the hard work of thinking through the Anthropocene
Library | Link | A climate change poem
The naked eyes | Link | "Keith's livelihood was sandwiched between an ocean of algorithms and a ceiling of decision-making programs."
Why the left needs Elinor Ostrom | Link | An interview with Derek Wall, author of Elinor Ostrom's Rules for Radicals, on the need to think beyond market and state.
Our printing press' first paperback, In defense of degrowth, is hot off the press! You can order it at indefenseofdegrowth.com.
Defend Afrin!
Turkey, commanding the second-largest NATO army, has attacked the predominantly Kurdish region in Syria building a feminist & democratic governance system. The region under attack, Afrin, has gone the furthest in institutionalizing women's liberation. You can follow any updates or find local protests via #DefendAfrin.
More and more environmental activists are getting killed
The "Environmental Warriors" series from the LA Times chronicles stories from around the world, showing why and how increasingly more environmental activists are faced with repression and violence.
Indigenous occupation of oil platforms in the Amazon
"This is not a symbolic action." An investigative piece from The Intercept.
In India, women are fed up and starting their own agricultural collectives
"The movement is led by educated Dalit youth, who know they have been cheated of land that is rightfully theirs."
Brazil announces end to Amazon mega-dam building policy
While many threats to the Amazon remain, indigenous and environmental groups celebrated this victory which can be partly attributed to their resistance.
The World Bank admits it botched Chile's competitiveness ranking, charged with political manipulation
This is important. The International Organisation's dealings often don't get much scrutiny, but their reports can make or break a country. An informative Twitter thread here.
A victory for the movement against airports?
The Zone à défendre (ZAD) achieved a victory this month: France announced that it would no longer build the airport in Notre-Dame-des-Landes. But for ZADistas, it is a half-victory: "While we are trying to prevent the construction of an airport, more than 400 others are being planned or built around the world."
Happy new year! Essays on loneliness, happiness, and an accelerating world
We're more lonely now than ever: an article on the science of loneliness. To ramble: an ode to the stroll and loitering. An investigation into the new culture of mindfulness in the corporate world. A New Yorker article on the happiness industry. And a Jacobin piece on 'neoliberal perfectionism' and how it stands in the way of solidarity and a collective agency.
Maria Kaika on the falsehoods of urban sustainability
Smart cities, green urbanism, livable cities. The catchy terms keep proliferating, but does it come with better policies? Maria Kaika, foremost theorist on cities, opens up a bag of worms in this interview.
The globalisation of slums
An essay by urban geographer Pushpa Arabindoo on the increasing ubiquity of slums—and conversation about them—around the world.
A memo to Canada: acknowledge Indigenous right to self-determination
A striking essay on Canada's broken relationship with Indigenous people.
The case against GMOs: it's the industry, stupid
Charles Eisenstein widens the frame on the GMO discussion. "If you believe that society's main institutions are basically sound, then it is indeed irrational to oppose GMOs."
Seven cheap things
Last month we shared an interview with Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore about their new book: A history of the world in seven cheap things. This is a critical review by Ian Angus at Climate and Capitalism.
The book that incited a worldwide fear of overpopulation
How The Population Bomb triggered a wave of repression around the world.
Leading Marxist scholar David Harvey on Trump, Wall Street and debt peonage
"often current events are analyzed in a vacuum that almost never includes the context or history necessary to understand what is new, what is old and how we got to where we are."
Two years of radical municipalism in Barcelona
A documentary about what happened in Barcelona and why it matters, including resources for discussing the video with your local group. An inspiring interview on the new politics in Spain, and how people have used the internet in creative ways. Eight lessons from the last two years of radical municipalism. A report on the first Fearless Cities conference last year held in Barcelona, and another report on the Catalan Integral Cooperative, which is experimenting with a new economic system in the shell of the old.
New strategies to organize tenants
"Today's tenant organizers confront a highly fragmented and individualized rental sector. The challenge, then, is not just to mobilize tenants but to create a shared sense of being a tenant."
Living through the catastrophe
Editorial from the seventh issue of ROAR magazine, which examines the social and political nature of climate change. The issue also features an explainer on the relevance of Murray Bookchin's work for today's climate crisis.
Climate change and the humanities: a historical perspective
"If we can resist the age-old impulse to define binary oppositions between ways of knowing—scientific versus humanistic, expert versus popular—we will be in a better position to join forces across those divides towards understanding and action", argues Deborah Cohen.
Atlantic freedoms
"Haiti, not the US or France, was where the assertion of human rights reached its defining climax in the Age of Revolution." In light of President Trump's recent 'shithole' comments, this article from 2016 on Haiti's revolutionary history is worth revisiting.
The shitty new communist futurism
Aaron kicks off a new series of articles on the ENTITLE blog which questions the foundations of 'eco-modernist socialism' and 'communist futurism' as proposed in Jacobin's climate change issue Earth, Wind, and Fire.
A reading list on Indigenous climate justice
How to get new activists to stay engaged for the long haul
There's been upsurge in activism since the Trump election, but how do we keep people engaged? A nice how-to from Waging Nonviolence.
A critical framework for a just recovery
With increasing natural disasters and the retreat of the state, more and more people are getting involved with grassroots disaster response movements. Movement Generation has put out a document with a guiding framework for how to do people-based recovery. PDF here.
What's happening in Puerto Rico?
A thorough syllabus on the island's history and its not-so-natural catastrophes.
Ursula K. Le Guin on the need to end the narrative of the triumphant hero
"It is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story." Ursula K. Le Guin has died, and there are so many more worlds to explore. We'll build them with her in our hearts. This is one of our favorite pieces by her, "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction."
Luxury home developments of the future will include patented ecosystems
"Entire landscapes, replete with designer insects and subscription seed stock, will have the potential to be recognised as protected intellectual property. The proprietary ecosystem will emerge, financially and biologically controlled by a particular hotel chain, property developer or private homeowner."
Climate gentrification?
Welcome to the future: climate change will mean a new math for real estate investment.
Solarpunk wants to save the world
Move over cyberpunk. Say hello the new kid on the sci-fi block, solarpunk.
The world is full of monsters
We like our stories filled with weird creatures. A collection of shorts by Jeff VanderMeer.
Welcome to the wasteland
Ok, this isn't sci-fi, but it certainly feels like it. A graphic illustration of a post-apocalyptic festival.
A strategy for ruination
An interview with China Miéville about the limits of utopia.
Carbon omissions
"with looming climate change and the decline of cheap oil, I couldn't shake the question of what would power all these gadgets, and none of the futurists seemed to bring it up."
On seeing and beeing seen: Writing about Indigenous issues with love
"To truly write from another experience in an authentic way, you need more than empathy. You need to write with love." By Alice Elliott.
Women writing about the wild: 25 essential authors
A primer on some of the best nature writing you probably haven't read yet.
Posted in Monthly links, Monthly linksTagged anthropocene, Barcelona, canada, climate change, climate justice, climate movement, commons, decolonisation, environmental justice, gentrification, India, indigenous, newsletter, science fiction, social movements, speculative fiction2 Comments on January's readings
In India, dispossession in the name of conservation
by Eleonora Fanari
Sita Maji of the Santhal tribe sits in front of her temporary house in Munda, Mayurnbanj district of Odisha, India. She lives with her two children, one and three years old, along with her husband and her old mother. In the hot May weather of 45 degrees, this small house is the only escape for her family of five—70 km away from her ancestral village in Kabathgai, from where she was forcefully relocated by the Forest Department on May 28 2016.
Kabathgai was a village located in the core area of the Simlipal Tiger Reserve, one of the biggest and most recognized tiger reserves in the East Indian state of Odisha. While the home of many tigers, Simlipal has also been home to numerous tribal communities such as Santhal, Kolho, and Khadia, which have inhabited these lands for centuries.
The red silk cotton trees of semul flowers, which give the name to the Simlipal National Park, have been the house, the shadow, and companionship to tribal people like Sita. But today to respond to the need for environment conservation, in Simlipal, as well as in many other Tiger Reserves of India, many villages have been relocated outside the forest area, because they are considered a threat to the wildlife and the conservation of the tigers. No longer considered the protectors of the forest, they have been targeted by the government and the wildlife "experts" as encroachers.
The villagers of ex-Kabathgai engaged in building their own concrete houses.
The relocation
The relocation of Kathbagai village has been planned after the notification of the new Critical Tiger Habitat (CTH) in Simlipal Tiger Reserve. The critical tiger habitats (CTHs), also known as core areas of tiger reserves, are identified under the Wild Life Protection Act (WLPA), 1972, based on scientific evidence that "such areas are required to be kept as inviolate for the purpose of tiger conservation." The term "inviolate" has mostly been interpreted as "free of human presence". However, in many parks all over India, the demarcation of CTHs coincides with areas inhabited by numerous human settlements.
The Santhal village of Kabathgai fell under the demarcation of the new core tiger area in Simlipal, announced in December 2007. For this reason Sita's family was relocated, as her family was considered dangerous for the wildlife conservation and for the protection of the tigers.
With a yellow bright sari, and a tired expression, Sita is resting after a morning of hard work of building up her new houses in the relocated Munda place. She tells me how difficult their life has been since the relocation: "Out of the forest everything needs to be purchased from the market, and after the relocation the forest department helped us with only 1 kg rice per person for the first 3 months. The food available here is of bad quality and we are suffering from bad health issues". Sita explains about the conditions at the site of relocation, but her eyes glimpse only when she tells about her forest, remembering those days when their children could play freely on the ground, and the women used to rest under the big shading trees.
Sita Maji sits in front of her temporary mud house.
Relocated Munada site, Mayurnbanj district, Odisha.
The relocated site is still a temporary camp, where a row of mud houses has been covered by plastic black tents that function both as shade and protection for the rain. Firewood and kitchen utensils are spread throughout the house's lane where cooking, sleeping and washing clothes take place in the same narrow area. Electricity is still not available and a water pump and one temporary toilet have been considered to be enough for the entire community of 47 families.
"Here it is very hot. Without any trees, rivers and lands we feel lost! We are not used of living in such an environment and in the hot summer, we are suffering from lots of sicknesses and many people have been already carried to the hospital because of dehydration" says Sita Maji.
For two months the entire community have been working to build up their houses of about 10×8 feet per family, under the MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme), a National scheme aiming at enhancing the livelihood security of people in rural areas.
After the construction is finished they will need to take some other wage labour from outside in order to survive.
Checkpoint at the limit of the Critical Tiger Habitat (CTH) of Simlipal Tiger Reserve.
The tribal people: puppet of the legal regime
The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, or the Forest Rights Act, (FRA) 2006 is the legal instrument that recognises the rights of Sita to inhabit the forest area and to carry on her traditional activities.
The FRA is a milestone act with the aim of restoring the traditional and customary rights of the tribal and the forest dwellers' communities that have historically been denied and exploited by the colonial forest governance. Prior to the FRA, entire communities living inside protected areas were denied entitlements on their forest land, and always threatened by eviction due to being considered illegal in their own territory. Other forest entitlements such as grazing, fishing, collecting of minor forest products (MFPs) were also denied. Thus the FRA is a piece of legislation that gives hope to all the forest dwellers in India.
Sita's family have struggled for many years to obtain the piece of paper that could allow them to live in peace, cultivate the land, carrying on their activities in the forest and finally enjoy the legal rights which they have previously been denied. After a long struggle, Sita's community got their community title in 2015, but they were forced to relocate just after. "We fought for our land and for our children, but the pressure put on us by the forest department was unbearable, and we had to come out to find a bit of peace," says Sita remembering the day they got pushed out of their forest.
"People living in the Kabataghai village in the core tiger zone were forced continuously to relocate by the forest department. Department also sent middle-men to lure village residents into accepting the compensation package, lying that it is a one-time opportunity" says Sanghamitra, a member of Community Forest Rights Learning and Advocacy, a group of activists from across India advocating the FRA. She has been working closely with the Tribespeople living in the core zone of Simlipal.
According to the FRA, the people can be relocated by the Critical Tiger Habitat only if non-coexistence with wildlife have been proved through scientific studies, and only after the voluntary and written consent of the gram sabha (the elder's council). The people of Kobathgai were never keen to be relocated. In the middle of the winter, Sita's family had to leave their ancestral land. The entire colony was moved with trucks to this desolate piece of land close to the main city of Jashipur. "In that same day our houses were turned apart, our cropped land destroyed by elephant and our community villages took over by the authorities," explains Sita, remembering that day which is still very fresh in her memory.
Meeting on the Forest Rights Act implementation in the buffer village of Badhakasaira, planned to be relocated.
When the District Collector of Mayurbhanj, who is responsible for the relocation of the people, was asked if the relocation was forced he absolutely argued that all relocation have been voluntary. But is continuous harassment, destruction of crops, and physical and mental torture considered normal behavior by the Forest Department, who instead should have cooperated with the villagers and recognized their granted rights as per FRA.
With a package of 10 lakh rupees (US$15,000) and a false promise of land, the Kabathgai community had no option but relocation.
The rights recognized under the Forest Rights Act are now expired, according to the District Collector, and people are not anymore able to go back to their ancestral land, pursue their traditional activities, and to collect the MFPs for their livelihood. Landless and helpless, the people of Kabathgai are yet to realize how to survive out of the forest. The men seem to show more strength and hope about a new modern life, while the women are feeling the frustration and the fear of a life not corresponding to their needs.
Relocated site of Kiajhari, a village relocated from the buffer zone of Simlipal to the outside Khonduador area.
Sita's community is not the only one which has been forcefully evicted by the forest department disregarding FRA 2006. In the same Simlipal Tiger Reserve, since 20094 villages, 3 from the core tiger area and 1 from the buffer zone, have been already moved out of the forest. Conflicts between state forest departments and Indigenous people are being reported across the protected areas of the country. According to a report on displacement due to conservation published by the environmentalist A. Kothari, in the last 30 years a number between 100,000 to 300,000 people have been displaced in the name of conservation.
In Kanha Tiger Reserve more than 700 families of the Baiga tribe have been displaced since 1970. In Nagarhole National Park and Tiger Reserve a number of 3,400 families got displaced without any proper compensation and relocation; in Kaziranga in the state Assam a 2015 high court order has ordered the eviction of more than 2,000 forest dwellers inhabiting the area, among which many are Mising tribal people, Adivasis and Bengali minorities.
The Forest Rights Act continues to be ignored by the authorities which carry on with illegal evictions in the name of conservation.
A recent circular issued by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the government body that looks after the managing of the tiger reserves for the conservation of the big cat, ordered that 'no forest rights under FRA should be anymore granted inside the CTH'. This means the annulment of rights for forest dwellers like Sita, whose traditional livelihoods are dependent on their ability to collect MFPs.
The order could indeed seriously aggravate the situation on the ground. Tribespeople who have been fighting for their rights in the forest even after the FRA being in place are now compelled to come together to fight against the NTCA's order.
The conflict arising in the name of biodiversity conservation has been increasing in India as well as in many other part of the world. In the name of conservation today many communities are getting relocated and deprived of their means of survival without properly ensuring them any livelihood option and without any engagement in the real meaning of conservation.
Today conservation is just another name used as a justification for territorialism.
The positive connotation given to conservation is being used to hide the negative words of dispossession, land acquisition, and denial of rights. It is under this name that Sita's family was relocated from her village, last year during the monsoons without proper shelter or facilities, and with only the support of a few kilos of rice. "We could not sleep at night and the children were constantly crying. We are now working day and night in the hot weather to finish the construction of the house before the new monsoon season starts, but after this who knows what our destiny will be,' argues Sita.
While pronouncing these words she turns towards the empty space, and then looking at me she says: "We were before the protectors of the forest, now they turn us into its enemy!"
Children playing in the village of Kolha, a village who have received FRA land titles and developing a conservation community management committee (CCMC).
All photos by Eleonora Fanari
Eleonora Fanari is a researcher currently based in New Delhi. She has been working on the issue of social exclusion, minorities, and land rights in collaboration with several non-governmental organizations. She is currently associated with Kalpavriksh, a non profit organization working on environmental and social issues, where she is carrying on research on conservation and tribal rights in protected forest areas. She blogs here.
Posted in Report-back, Report-backTagged conservation, environmental justice, eviction, India, indigenous, political ecology1 Comment on In India, dispossession in the name of conservation
There is no wilderness in Kiruna
Kiruna at midnight. Photo by Rut Elliot Blomqvist
by Rut Elliot Blomqvist
Kiruna/Giron, July 1st, 9 pm. The sun won't set tonight, nor for another couple of weeks.
The recorded voice of Hans Forssell, a state attorney, booms from the speakers of the festival stage Cityscenen. A group of people are shouting "Jannok, Jannok!", drowning out the contemptuous, racist crap from a 2016 court case between the Girjas reindeer herding community and the Swedish state.
Sofia Jannok enters the stage to the sound of the cheering audience. Kiruna has been a mining town for 127 years, and the state-owned company LKAB—Luossavaara Kirunavaara Aktiebolag—has long been and is still a key contributor to Swedish state wealth. Jannok's stage at Kirunafestivalen has a view of both the Kirunavaara/Gironvárri mine and the surrounding mountains and woods where Sámi people lived for about ten thousand years before the crown and state of Sweden took an interest in these lands, and where Tornedalian farming settlements coexisted with Sámi culture for several hundred years before Swedish colonial settlements were established in the 17th century.
The Kirunavaara mine. Photo by Håkan Sandström
Jannok's drummer hits the snare drum in the march-like intro to the song "This is my land – Sápmi". Jannok points to the mine and sings: "If you want to ruin it all with big wounds in the mountain, then you're not worthy listening to this song". This line leads into a power yoik—yoik being the traditional Sámi vocal style which Jannok mixes with pop music, creating an evocative and original sound—which seems to me to embody both the anger and the joy someone feels when they fight to protect what they love. Her voice and her eyes express grief and loss, and then happiness and love; despair and anger, and then a fierce, euphoric fighting spirit—moving seamlessly between these inseparable feelings. In "I ryggen på min kolt" ("Backstabbing my gákti"), Jannok again points to the mine, singing: "Att sälja landet åt gruvor kallas folkmord", "To sell the land to mines is called genocide".
Before the song "Čuđit – Colonizer", Jannok talks about the last time she arrived at Kiruna airport where she remembers a sign that read "Välkommen till Europas sista vildmark", "Welcome to the last wilderness of Europe". She observes that wilderness means unpopulated; the sign at the airport suggests that Sápmi and Tornedalen were empty before they became part of the Swedish state. Jannok says, "there is no wilderness": "Who do you think named these mountains, in several languages?". People were living with the land and gave places names in Sámi and Meänkieli (Tornedalian) before others came to colonise the land.
"Čuđit – Colonizer"
Never empty, she was never wild
Stolen cruelly away from her child
Taken care for thousands of years
In seconds she's ruined seas to seas
Kiruna, or Giron in northern Sámi, means 'snow grouse.' Not incidentally, Jannok sings a song called "Snow grouse – Ii leat ivdni mus" which is about surviving:
Invisible though I've always been here
Like a snow grouse I fly though they want me to die
The crowd at the festival. Photo by Håkan Sandström
To my left, three young people in colourful, patterned gákti—the Sámi regalia—are dancing with a Sámi flag.
Behind them, there are a few older women in blue gákti.
To my right, a middle-aged man is standing alone, dressed in a smart checked shirt, jeans, and a black cap decorated with reindeer and a small Sámi flag. He removes his glasses, to wipe away what seems to be tears.
When I turn around to view the huge crowd, two women behind me who are dressed in contemporary European fashion speak—to me, I think—in a northern Swedish accent, saying "Hon är så jävla bra", "She's freaking awesome".
Closest to the stage by the fence is a line of young girls, many with Sámi handicraft—Duodji—handbags.
A few people in their twenties and thirties, seemingly a bit drunk, are dancing in front of me without paying much heed to the people around them, and two of them know the kids by the fence and sometimes hug and dance with them. Some of the kids don't seem entirely happy about this.
To the left of the drunken dancers, three people form a kind of line by hugging each other, watching and listening intently to Jannok.
A bit behind me on my right there is a group of people whom I read as queer. One of them is wearing a "don't assume my gender" t-shirt.
Between two of her songs, Jannok talks about "the strong souls who held on so that I can stand here now".
Sofia Jannok. Photo by Håkan Sandström
Before one of the last songs of the gig, Jannok says, "Whatever happened yesterday, you are still here". She presents the song through a powerful image: When horrible things happen, you take the hate this awakens and you close your fist around it like around a small stone, and you hold it there until it has become love and then you open your hand and let the love come out. You spread love. That's how you survive; that's why diversity and goodness still exist in a colonial world; that's how we are still here. Then Jannok sings "We are still here – Mii leat dás ain"—which is also the name of the tour.
After "We are still here", a big group of people near the stage shout what I would venture to guess is "one more time" in Sámi. Someone comments in Swedish that half of Sápmi is there at the gig.
I feel a bit introverted, hiding in my hoodie, wanting to be in a quiet place to think and feel everything Sofia Jannok's concert has made me think and feel.
I don't know if the people around me are representative of Sápmi, or of Tornedalen—the Torne river valley—or of Kiruna/Giron. Regardless, these people remind me that there are all kinds of people everywhere: in Gothenburg in the south where I currently live, in Sápmi and Tornedalen, in Kiruna; in an urban core, in Indigenous and other local communities, in a mining town.
I think about something Jannok said during the concert: "I wish that no one would ever have to argue with the state or with anyone else, saying 'yes, I do exist'". All of us exist and we are all different. She called the audience her rainbow and sang "Jag är regnbågen på din näthinna"—"I am the rainbow you see", or "I am your retina's rainbow". This is a theme Jannok returns to over and over again, like in "I ryggen på min kolt" which concludes with the words "Colours exist because everyone's here".
Leaving the festival, walking back to my father-in-law's flat in the midnight light, I wonder if anyone wearing a gákti will be harassed or beaten tonight, remembering the line from Jannok's song "Čuđit – Colonizer": "Go gávtti biggo šaddá návddiin diggot", "Wearing your gákti means dealing with beasts". I wonder if anyone will be sexually harassed or raped tonight—sexual harassment and rape have haunted Swedish festivals this summer, as they have always done. I wonder how many lonely people will get wasted and break down tonight, here in the area called the Vodka belt where talking about your feelings isn't always a priority. I wonder how many angry, underprivileged men will bond over racist comments about the Sámi and refugees tonight.
I wonder why some people, in particular here in the north, channel their despair, grief, loss, loneliness, and anger in the form of hatred towards the Sámi. That very few Sámi people have minor, relative privileges compared to some other underprivileged groups in the north seems like a simplistic explanation. I wonder if this hatred isn't also about a kind of jealousy: maybe people envy the Sámi for the Sámi sense of community. I know that, when Jannok sings about her love for the land and her people, I find myself longing for being in a community of people and land.
If a sense of community is what you want, no hatred is going to fill that empty space. Instead of spreading hate, it makes so much more sense to hold it in your fist until it becomes love and then spread that love. It makes so much more sense to build a local community with the people around you; to create your own story about injustice, extractivism, and colonialism; to define what you would demand from the state and other sites of power, and then join the Sámi in their struggle for local autonomy and land rights.
Just outside my father-in-law's house, from the parking lot, I can see the closed Luossavaara/Luossavárri mine in the distance. The name means Trout mountain. I wonder who gave it that name once. It looks lonely.
Rut Elliot Blomqvist is a songwriter, musician, writer, and PhD student in literature and environmental humanities who thinks a lot about environmental justice, degrowth, and the mythologies of contemporary Western society.
Posted in ReflectionsTagged indigenous, Kiruna, nature, Sámi, Sápmi, Sofia JannokLeave a Comment on There is no wilderness in Kiruna
Water and oil, death and life in Louisiana
Cherri Foytlin at a protest in solidarity with the DAPL and against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline. Photo: Avery White
by Nora Belblidia
Six months ago, a routine public hearing was scheduled in a nondescript gray government building in downtown Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
"Normally these hearings go over really quietly," said Scott Eustis, the Wetlands Specialist for Gulf Restoration Network (GRN). "Usually it's me, my associates, and like ten people." Instead, over 400 people showed up to the Baton Rouge hearing, and stayed for nearly six hours.
The debate centered on the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, a proposed route that would run 163 miles from Lake Charles to St. James, forming the "tail" of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), and effectively connecting oil fracked in North Dakota to Louisiana refineries. If built, Bayou Bridge would cross 11 parishes, 600 acres of wetlands, 700 bodies of water, and the state-designated Coastal Zone Boundary.
Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) is behind both the Bayou Bridge project and the more infamous DAPL, but the parallels run deeper than a mutual stakeholder. Just like in DAPL, those who resist the project are drawing connections between past wrongdoings, conditions today, and a future climate. Residents cite safety concerns, environmental racism, pollution, and threats to the region's wetlands and seafood industries as reasons to oppose its construction. "It's not one thing it's everything. It's the water, it's the land, it's the crawfish, it's the people's air in St. James, it's the climate, it's people's houses flooding – it really is – it's corruption, it's Trump," said Eustis.
By now the fight against Bayou Bridge is a familiar one: multinational conglomerate vs. the local little guys. The David vs. Goliath metaphor is obvious. But, Bayou Bridge is playing out in 2017, a time when Goliath has never seemed so large and so ruthless, and when the horrors and lessons in Standing Rock are still fresh.
"What we saw in Baton Rouge and Napoleonville at the hearings was hundreds and hundreds of people who had been inspired by people who had been kicked for eons, standing up to protect their water. You know what we can do that too, goddammit," said Eustis.
That inspiration stands against the narrative of Standing Rock's defeat. The camps suffered from a coordinated move to push the Dakota Access Pipeline's approval through, and were forcibly evicted in February. Taylor Neck, a New Orleans activist who lived at Standing Rock through the winter who requested that her name be changed, said, "When I got home and so many people were like 'Oh are you okay, I know it was such a loss,' and 'I'm sorry you guys lost' and were saying things like that, it was kind of shocking to me at first because from my view and from the people that I was with, like my camp was all Lakota, it was such a win."
In the DAPL's migration south, the Great Plains of North Dakota have been substituted by hundreds of square miles of bayous and rivers and basins, one of the more romanticized segments of the Mississippi River, and finally the Gulf of Mexico. Water composes the very contents of Louisiana's marshy soil and—with the threat of rising sea levels and natural disasters—is arguably the number one threat to its survival.
The spirit of an Indigenous-led environmental resistance has now come to a region wholly unique in culture and landscape. Cherri Foytlin, an Indigenous activist and the co-director of Bold Louisiana, called to the area's strengths in a rally before the Baton Rouge hearing, "I'm sorry, Energy Transfer, if you don't get it…but if you thought you saw some stuff up in North Dakota, you just get to the bayous," she said, "our campers walk on water."
The crowd at the hearing on the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Napoleonville. Photo: Avery White
Oil's grip on the land
The Gulf South has a long and inextricable relationship with the oil industry. When including offshore drilling, Louisiana is second only to Texas in its production of crude oil, and its 18 refineries account for roughly 20% of the country's refining capacity. Pipelines aren't new to Louisiana. Approximately 50,000 miles already cover the state and maintain the industry's century-long stronghold. For supporters of the pipeline, the attitude is often "Well, what's one more?"
Set to deliver 280,000 barrels of heavy and light crude oil every day, Bayou Bridge is promoted as a way to bring jobs to the region at a time when the state's budget is running close to a $943 million deficit and is, according to the Times-Picayune, "a hot mess." The website for Bayou Bridge reads "Good for Louisiana" and promises 2,500 new jobs. A report prepared on behalf of ETP (by Louisiana State University's Center for Energy Studies) estimated the economic benefit to be $829 million. Yet in their permit application, the company promised just 12 permanent jobs, with most positions being temporary and tied to the physical construction of the pipeline.
Mark Koziorowski works offshore on a boat that runs supplies back and forth to the oil rigs in the Gulf, spending about a month at sea at a time. He grew up in California but came to Louisiana when his uncle promised him a lucrative career. But he noted that the oil industry has suffered in recent years due to cheap oil prices and increased regulations. "A lot of the older people, like the captains that are in their 50s and 60s, they're getting really hurt by that because they've never had any other jobs, they don't really have another skill set."
While Koziorowski doesn't plan on staying in the field long-term, that isn't an option for everyone. "Being young and having the open air to be able to change careers gives me that power but if you've been stuck at one job it's kind of hard to uproot," he said. Of younger workers, "there's definitely a few that are looking into other options but there's also a diehard group of young people my age that are like 'I'll stick it out until it picks back up.'" Most people in the industry expect, and plan according to, boom-and-bust cycles.
Megan Falgout's family is from Dulac, a small shrimping and fishing town in southern Louisiana. Though it sits off the proposed pipeline route, Dulac illustrates the cross-section of Louisiana industries, and the threats that climate poses to vulnerable communities. She described a childhood in which she wore shrimping boots to walk from the house to the car, "Dulac Reeboks," she called them, "any bayou town they do that."
"There was a shrimp factory and a Texaco factory and literally everybody down there made a living off of shrimping and fishing, all the families, that's how they survived," she said. Falgout lived on Shrimpers Row until she was 8, when Hurricane Andrew destroyed most of her town and her family moved to Houma.
Her father worked in the oil industry since he was a teenager, first doing pipeline construction and then working his way up to management until his job was moved to Texas and he was laid off. Despite her family ties, Falgout is against Bayou Bridge. "I just think that we've exhausted that energy source and we just keep getting greedier and greedier," she said. Her father, on the other hand, is "for anything that will promote the oil industry in any kind of way, because of the job market down there," she continued, "It's crazy because it's an area that's affected but yet they're so dependent on it." Working in oil may come with its risks, but is one of the few opportunities to support a family on a high school diploma, and the high pay makes even temporary jobs welcome.
Photo: Avery White
Untold impacts
Supporters frame the debate as one of practicality, economic necessity, and, ironically, safety. Former U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu testified at the January hearing on behalf of ETP, in a move that elicited jeers from the audience. "There's millions and millions of gallons of crude oil and refined product moving through this country," she said. "Now there are many people in this room that think we should outlaw it all right now and that might happen one day, but that is not today. So the question before us is how to move this product as carefully as possible."
And yet safety is also the primary concern for opponents of the pipeline, who say the Gulf South has suffered at the hands of industry practices. The National Response Center tallied 144 pipeline accidents in Louisiana in 2016. Because spills in waterways are more difficult to contain than those on highways, groups such as GRN and Bold Louisiana warn that the pipeline will threaten wetlands, harm the region's crawfishing industry, contribute to pollution and climate change, and place undue burden on communities that have been historically disenfranchised.
Standing Rock called attention to environmental racism, where minorities face disproportionate exposure to pollutants as a result of discriminatory planning policy. Similarly, Bayou Bridge's proposed route runs through Bayou Lafourche, the drinking water supply for Houma Nation. It may also cut off the only evacuation route for St. James, a historically African-American community that is part of "Cancer Alley," the 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River known for its numerous industrial plants and its numerous cancer patients. The town has already suffered 13 petrochemical accidents this year.
Rev. Harry Joseph, the pastor of St. James' Mount Triumph Baptist Church, testified at the public hearing in Napoleonville. "St. James, I love it, but they have people in that place that are very sick from the plants that are already there. People are losing lives down there," he said. "It's a poor community, and the few rich people that they have down there, they're gone already. They're gone. The plants have bought them out…. But what's going to happen to the poor people?"
Eustis notes that while for supporters of Bayou Bridge, this may be just another pipeline, the proposed projectis particularly serious. "You know I've seen a lot of pipelines because there are so many pipelines on the Gulf Coast, but this one is bad from a bad company with a large amount of impact, with a very diverse kind of impact on different communities in Louisiana affecting everyone in kind of a different way, at a time where we can't really afford to lose more of our wetlands," he said.
Oil pipelines act as small dams in the waterways, which disrupts the water flow, turns it stagnant, and kills off plants and wildlife. Jody Meche, a commercial crawfisherman, testified at the hearing in Baton Rouge on the impact Bayou Bridge would have on his industry. "There are hundreds of pipelines criss-crossing the Atchafalaya basin that have been put in in the past six or seven decades, and [they have] crippled our ability to make a living," he said. "We're to the point of having hypoxic stagnant areas where we have to make our traps so tall that the crawfish can come up out of the water to breathe because they will die in our traps."
While wildlife and fishing industries are at risk due to the disappearance of wetlands, Louisiana faces the additional threat of natural disasters. During a hurricane wetlands absorb the impact of the storm; in heavy precipitation they act as a natural sponge. As climate change worsens and the surface temperature of the Gulf rises, water in the atmosphere increases and causes record precipitation. Last year Louisiana suffered devastating floods that resulted in 13 deaths and thousands of destroyed homes. A significant portion of that damage occurred outside a flood zone, indicative of the storms' atypical patterns.
In a debate framed by economic necessity, the cost of such storms is noteworthy. A report commissioned by the Louisiana Economic Development office estimated the flooding damages last year to total $8.7 billion, the majority of which was due to damages to physical items such as housing structures, housing contents, and business inventories. $836 hundred million was lost due to interruption to business. Meanwhile, a 2008 study published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences found that wetlands provided an estimated $23 billion in protection from natural disasters countrywide, with that protection being dependent on storm severity. The dollar impact of storms can be ignored, however, for the promise of high-paying jobs.
Former U.S. senator Mary Landrieu at the Bayou Bridge hearing. Photo: Avery White
The politics of industry
Alternative industries have yet to take hold in an economy with scarce well-paying blue-collar jobs and a culture in which tradition holds fast. In 2008 Louisiana promised tax credits for solar panels, spurring a mini-boom for the solar industry. In 2015, the state terminated the program after deciding it too costly, leaving residents who installed panels, expecting credit, in a lurch.
Koziorowski, the shipper running supplies to oil rigs, said there had been talk of windmill construction offshore when he began working in the industry. "I was kind of hoping seven years later that there'd be a little bit of business going into that but that doesn't seem to be happening," he said. When asked why that was the case he said, "It's got to be politics."
Representatives in Washington continue to vote repeatedly against environmental regulations in the name of small government and big business, and appear to have little to no interest in reducing their dependency on oil. Former U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, is now a lobbyist for ETP. Former U.S. Congressman Chris John is now president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. Rep. Garrett Graves authored a bill to keep oil lease auctions private. Politicians continue to maintain the state's literally toxic relationship with the oil industry, and in so doing, bet against Louisiana's future.
Actions and allies
Even as the hot Louisiana summer sets in, activists are busy calling attention to the risks that Bayou Bridge poses. Cherri Foytlin is leading the charge in organizing direct action trainings for volunteers, and building a resistance camp along the proposed route. Organizers have plans for floating platforms and Indigenous structures to suit the area's geography and have named the camp "L'eau est la vie," French for "Water is life."
Neck, the activist who participated in the Standing Rock encampment, is working with Foytlin, and she spoke of the camp's strategic and spiritual importance. "It's physically occupying the land that they want to construct on, it will give us a home that we can work from and conduct operations from, to non-violently stop the pipeline and stop ETP," she said. "It's a way for us to ask the Earth what she needs and what the community, what they need, because we're living in it, we're living with the water so…we can stay 'prayered up' as they said in Standing Rock."
She said her priority is to maintain the camp as a safe space. "It's such a hard fight against these giants that just getting to stand up for what's right is so healing and my priority is that these people get to heal and get to fight like they want because they need it, and they deserve to do it."
Pastor Joseph of St. James is another prominent community member leading the fight, and is using Mount Triumph Baptist Church as a hub for organizing efforts. He's listed as a plaintiff in a lawsuit recently filed by the Tulane University Law Clinic, which seeks to overturn the coastal use permit issued by the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Co-plaintiffs include Genevieve Butler, another resident of St. James, along with the organizations Humanitarian Enterprise of Loving People (HELP), Gulf Restoration Network, Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, and Bold Louisiana.
The petition for judicial review filed against the DNR states that "the Department refused to consider potential adverse environmental impacts of the project on the majority African-American residents of St. James, who are surrounded by crude oil terminal facilities, pipelines, and associated industry." It also claims the department failed to consider the impact of the pipeline on the community and "ignored evidence that the St. James community may be trapped in the event of an emergency and that no viable evacuation plan is in place for its safety."
Activists across the state are working to connect affected residents in order to mount pressure against politicians and the industry itself. "More than any other oil resistance fight in Louisiana, people are going to show up for this, locals are going to show up because we're mobilizing them," Neck said, citing conservatives opposed to eminent domain, Catholics, and the restaurant and tourism industries as unlikely allies. In connecting with potential allies, "the first thing I do is learn from that person, learn what they're going through or learn why they feel the way or what they're passionate about, and I teach them how that is intricately connected to the fight," a strategy which, she said, was informed by her experience in North Dakota.
Water protectors at Standing Rock rallied against the 'black snake,' the anthropomorphized symbol for the sinewy and serpentine Dakota Access Pipeline. Louisiana has had its own black snakes for decades, hiding out amidst the cypress stumps and tall grass, and fed by politicians and industry until they've fattened and coiled around the bayous. As the "L'eau est la vie" resistance camp is built out, and activists build their offense, the fight against Bayou Bridge is only just kicking into gear. The question now is if Louisiana residents can unite to break the snake's grip, and protect their water, their wetlands, and themselves.
Nora Belblidia lives in Baltimore, MD, where she writes in her free time. She's interested in science, politics, and environmental justice (amongst other things) and has previously lived in New Orleans, Montreal, and Los Angeles.
Posted in Conflict, Report-backTagged Bayou Bridge Pipeline, climate change, climate justice, Dakota Access Pipe Line, environmental justice, environmental racism, fossil fuel, indigenous, Louisiana1 Comment on Water and oil, death and life in Louisiana
After Standing Rock, a new unity emerges
December 20, 2016 September 13, 2017
Photo: Dark Sevier
by Nancy Romer
After eight months, starting with a few hundred young Native Americans and swelling to up to 15,000 people in the sprawling encampments of Standing Rock, North Dakota, a victory was celebrated. President Obama's US Army Corps of Engineers denied the request for an easement to allow Energy Transfer Partners (ETP)* and their "family" of logistics corporations to build the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) under Lake Oahe and the Missouri River, which that could threaten the water supply and sacred burial sites of the Standing Rock Sioux. The Army Corps of Engineers further required a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which usually takes months and sometimes years, to reconsider granting the easement.
DAPL is a $3.7 billion project that would link 1,200 miles of pipeline carrying over 500,000 barrels of crude oil every day from North Dakota through the mid-west and eventually to the east coast and south of the US. The sunny and wind-swept prairie of Standing Rock reveals the absurdity of building fossil fuel infrastructure that will further harm the planet when renewable energy is everywhere, waiting to be developed.
The December 4th decision came immediately after 2,500 US military veterans joined the "water protectors", as they are called, at Standing Rock. The vets formed a human shield protecting the water protectors from the myriad local law enforcement officers who work on behalf of the interests of the private oil and gas industries. Several of the vets said that, after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, their effort to protect Standing Rock was the first time they actually felt they were protecting the American people.
After almost 500 years of white settlers and the US government stealing land from Native American tribes and forging divisions between them, over 200 Native tribes have coalesced to protect Standing Rock. The history of government-sanctioned genocide and colonialism are recurring themes in this struggle.
The main "road" in the encampment is Flag Row, a long dirt path lined with hundreds of colorful tribal flags from all over the Americas, signaling unity. Strict rules of decorum prevail—no drugs, alcohol, or weapons of any kinds, total non-violence, respect for decision-making by the tribal council and for elders, and dedicating the encampment to non-violent prayer. Their slogan is "Water is Life". Thousands of Indigenous peoples from all over the world and tens of thousands of non-Indigenous peoples have come to Standing Rock to defend Indigenous rights and to protect Mother Earth. They want to kill the "black snake": DAPL. There lie the seeds of unity and dissent.
Mother Earth and/or Indigenous Rights
Indigenous activists such as Tara Houska, Anishinaabe lawyer for Honor the Earth and Tom Goldtooth, Navajo leader of the Indigenous Environmental Network, see fighting the pipeline as more than defending the tribes; they see it as defending Mother Earth. They see fossil fuel infrastructure as dangerous to the future of humans on earth. They want to see the development of renewable energy and the end of fossil fuels.
Dave Archambault, II, Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and primary spokesperson for the coalition of tribes, will be satisfied if the pipeline is re-routed away from the Sioux orbit. He has told the water protectors camping on the grounds to go home to their families for the winter: their jobs are done. He has repeatedly stated that he is not opposed to infrastructure projects or to "energy independence" but rather is opposed when Indigenous peoples are not consulted and when the pipelines go through their lands and waters. Native Americans, many of whom are desperately poor and denied opportunities, have sold mineral rights to their parcels of land to fossil fuel developers.
This is a basic contradiction for Indigenous peoples: those who see Mother Earth as their responsibility to protect for the next seven generations (a common saying for some Indigenous groups), versus those who want to address their own poverty which seems much more immediate. This is a global phenomenon.
Months of battles with brutal local law enforcement have left hundreds of water protectors facing arrests, rubber bullets, tear gas, concussion grenades, water cannons used in sub-freezing temperatures, serious injuries and brutal treatment when incarcerated. Images of this police brutality against Indigenous peoples and their supporters have galvanized support for the protests and brought thousands of people to the 5-6 camps that make up the sprawling Standing Rock encampment. Tribal elders often look askance at many of the "unofficial" actions advanced by the "Red Warrior Camp" and their allies because they have drawn so much violence against them. Nonetheless, the tribal leaders decry the violence and partisan nature of the "law enforcement's" savage response. Red Warriors see these direct action confrontations as the reason that Standing Rock has gotten any publicity at all and has attracted the attention and won the hearts of radicals and human rights advocates across the world.
Life at Standing Rock: Building liberated spaces
Standing Rock has developed massive camps, replete with many cooking tents each serving hundreds at every meal, large-scale donation operations, legal, medical, and psychological counseling services, schools, orientation sessions, and direct action trainings. Each morning and evening people gather around sacred fires and hear information, speeches, and music, and they dance and feel the power of unity.
They are creating a liberated space, a space where progressive people can come together to protect their ideas and their cultures together. The utopian feel of the place is immediately apparent.
Comparisons with Occupy Wall Street and its spin-offs would reveal a much larger, more on-going, and much more disciplined space in Standing Rock. It has captured the imagination and support of hundreds of thousands of people across the planet, from the Indigenous Sami peoples of Norway to workers from all over the US who are angry at the lack of support from organized labor, specifically the AFL-CIO.
The presence of youth is immediately noticeable at the camps though there are plenty of elders and children as well. Supporters mostly camp out and help to winterize the teepee, yurts, army tents, recreational vehicles, camping tents, vans and school buses that create a small city of protest. They are creating a liberated space, a space where progressive people can come together to protect their ideas and their cultures together. The utopian feel of the place is immediately apparent. The pull of such a liberated space is all the more meaningful in the face of US President-elect, Donald Trump. The encampment is simultaneously a historic throwback and a futuristic village of care and commitment to a more egalitarian and caring world.
The parallels with Occupy Wall Street are many—both aiming to build a new way with progressive and humanistic values, addressing the oppression of our people. Both captured the hearts of progressive folks and engaged mostly young people but Standing Rock's supporters include many more people of color of all backgrounds. The history of Indigenous tribes welcoming people of African descent, especially during slavery, is not forgotten in this solidarity. Standing Rock's success is grounded in Indigenous cultural values of respect, formal representative decision-making, discipline, and work that is further expressed through a deep spirituality that connects our human activity to the earth. Standing Rock is orderly and behavioral norms are clearly articulated and encouraged, if not enforced.
Naomi Klein, in her groundbreaking book, This Changes Everything, asserts that the climate movement can only be successful if it addresses racial, gender, and economic oppression as its main strategy and if it takes leadership from those most affected by climate change and the savages of capitalism. Without so much explicit language this is evidently what is happening at Standing Rock. The power of this strategy impacts everyone who enters the camp and the movement; the pull of this approach is enormous.
What lies ahead?
On December 4 and 5, over 15,000 people celebrated the Army Corps of Engineers decision to deny the permit to complete DAPL as planned, but the struggle is nowhere near over. Several factors make for a complex web of possibilities that underscore the necessity of the encampment and wide support to continue.
First, Trump can overturn Obama's US Army Corps of Engineers' decision and force them to grant an easement to ETP. That will be challenged in court as the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that federal agencies cannot change a settled ruling of a federal agency that is based on facts when a new administration takes over. The US Supreme Court declined to take up this ruling, leaving the Ninth Circuit decision to prevail. If Trump tried to get the permit without an environmental impact statement he would have an immediate lawsuit on his hands that would prevent the easement from taking effect, at least immediately. Additionally, Trump's reported investments in DAPL of $500,000 to $1 million may create a conflict of interest he cannot navigate. Other lawsuits against ETP are already in the courts and proceeding, further slowing down the process.
Further, Trump has talked about privatizing over 56 million acres of Native American reservations in order to facilitate exploitation of the natural resources of those lands. According to the Indigenous Environmental Network, Indigenous reservations cover 2% of US land but contain an estimate 20% of its oil and gas plus vast coal reserves as well. That fight will ignite much more organizing and fight back.
Second, and perhaps most important, are the specifics of the contracts between ETP and Sunoco Logistics, their partner organization in this project, and the dozens of major financial institutions that have invested in DAPL. These contracts can be negated and/or open to re-negotiation if the pipeline is not completed by January 1, 2017. At that point the financial institutions will have the legal right to back out of or diminish their investments. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of groups in the US that are pressuring these very financial institutions to drop their investments in DAPL. Many of the pension funds of public workers and others are invested in these financial institutions and supporters are mounting campaigns to uncover them and demand divestment.
Supporters have been cutting up their credit cards and closing their accounts from banks investing in DAPL. The Sightline Institute did a study of DAPL financing and found them to be "rickety". They found that the value of crude oil has declined by about 50% since these contracts were signed, making the windfall profits from this venture much less likely. They found a sharp decline in oil production that may signal no further need for the pipeline. For some of the investors, DAPL is looking risky on many levels.
Third, ETP has a way to sneak out of the job as well. Their contract indicates that they are not liable for project completion if "rioting" takes place. ETP along with their allies in local North Dakota law enforcement have been calling the direct action by water protectors "rioting", setting the stage for a possible exit from liability. The demonstrators have been peaceful if sometimes provocative and a great deal of video evidence indicates that the violence has emanated from the law enforcement officers, not the protesters. But "rioting" is the language ETP and the cops use, and for a specific purpose.
Fourth, the popular support for Standing Rock seems to grow with each day and each report of violence against the water protectors. There are similar challenges of fossil fuel pipelines in many parts of the US and they are gathering people to protest in those places as well. The model of encampments, of creating liberated spaces that protect the activists, land, water, and movement, has taken hold. No force will hold that back. From the AIM Spectra Pipeline, slated to go under the Hudson River and immediately past the Indian Point Nuclear Power Station 10 miles from New York City, to the Black Mesa Water Coalition of the US southwest, the struggles to reject fossil fuel infrastructure and to build a sustainable energy economy are everywhere in the US as they are across the planet.
A new solidarity is emerging. A new world is conceived. Its home is everywhere, its people are many.
A new solidarity is emerging. One that has a great deal of potential to unite the left under the joint banners of the oppression of people, particularly people of color, and the oppression of the earth itself. The hope lies in navigating that unity with a vision of solving both oppressions simultaneously. A new world is conceived. Its home is everywhere, its people are many. While its opponents are on the ascent, the struggle continues. Compassion, respect, clear demands and decision-making and solidarity can guide the way.
*The "Energy Transfer Family" of corporations involved in the logistics behind building the Dakota Access Pipeline are: Enbridge, Inc., Energy Transfer Partners, Energy Equity Partners, Marathon Petroleum Corp., Sunoco LP and Phillips 66
Nancy Romer is a life-long social justice activist starting in the tenants rights movement, then the feminist, anti-war, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, union, food justice and, now, climate justice movements. Nancy is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Brooklyn College and now writes primarily on climate movement-related efforts, with particular interest in agriculture and peasant movements in Latin America.
Posted in Essay, Report-back, Report-backTagged climate justice, climate movement, decolonisation, decolonization, environmental justice, indigenous, social movementsLeave a Comment on After Standing Rock, a new unity emerges
Moving slowly and deliberately at Standing Rock
November 16, 2016 September 13, 2017
Photo: Nancy Romer
In this report, I will try to give you a sense of what being at Standing Rock is like. Tonight completes my third day here. The weather has been mostly cold but very sunny. The colors, the sky, but most of all the people are startlingly calm and beautiful. The Standing Rock encampment is defined as a prayer site, a place to contemplate and to appreciate nature, "the creator" (not my words), and each other. The Indigenous people here from just about every tribe in the US and some from Canada are so welcoming and warm to outsiders. They repeatedly say how much they appreciate the presence of non-Indigenous folks and how they want to share with us. They are strict on the rules: no violence of any kind, no drugs, alcohol or guns, respect for Indigenous ways, making oneself useful.
The vast encampment contains 4 or 5 separate but connected camps, some on the Sioux reservation land, others outside.The largest one is immediately off reservation land, Oceti Sakowin Camp; it is the one in which most of the activities happen. The others are either defined by age—elders or youth—or vary by activity. We spend most of our time at Oceti but today I took a long walk and visited two of the other camps just to get a flavor of them.
NO DAPL stands for No Dakota Access Pipeline and signs with the slogan are everywhere as is "water is life". There is a religious feel to the camps and great respect all around. In many ways this is a very old-style Indigenous encampment and in many ways it feels like a post-revolutionary or post-apocalyptic future.
The pace is slow though everyone seems to move with great purpose. People jump in and do the tasks that seem to be needed: cooking, cleaning, helping each other to put up a yurt or a teepee, chopping wood, tending fires, washing dishes, offering legal, medical or psychological help. Cell and internet service is miserable and probably interfered with by the constant drones that fly above the camps.
For me the most impactful point was respect. They defined that as including slowing down, moving differently with clearer intention and less reactivity.
On Friday I attended a brilliantly presented orientation to the camp. One of the presenters was Maria Marasigan, a young woman who was active in the Brooklyn Food Coalition. It was the best anti-racist training for allies that I have witnessed: succinct, not guilt-trippy, and very direct. The three main rules are: Indigenous centered, build a new legacy, and be of use. They shared the Lakota values that prevail in the camp: prayer, respect, compassion, honesty, generosity, humility, wisdom.
For me the most impactful point was respect. They defined that as including slowing down, moving differently with clearer intention and less reactivity. They suggest asking fewer questions and just looking and learning before our hands pop up and we ask to take up space.
They clarified a gendered division of behavior and practice, including asking women to honor traditional norms of wearing skirts during the sacred rituals (including in the cooking tent) and for women "on their moons" to spend time in a tent to be taken care of and rest if they choose. Somehow it seemed okay, actually respectful, not about pollution and ostracism.
While I was helping out in the cooking tent—my main area of contribution—an Indigenous woman came by with about 10 skirts and distributed them to the mostly women in the cooking tent and we gladly put them on. It served as an extra layer of warmth over my long underwear and jeans. It was not what I expected but it seemed fine to all of us. We just kept chopping away at the veggies.
Later that day I attended a direct action training that was also quite thorough and clear. Lisa Fithian, an old friend from anti-war movement days, lead the training and explained how to behave in an action and how to minimize police violence. Lisa, along with two other strong, smart women, one Black and one Native, laid out a plan to do a mass pray-in in town the next day. My New York City travel companion and I both felt that we couldn't risk arrest and decided not to join that direct action but to be in support in any way we could.
At 8 am the next morning about 100 cars lined up in convoy formation at the exit of the Oceti Sakowin Camp, each with lots of passengers—including some buses and minivans—and went into Manwan, the nearest town. The Indigenous folks formed an inner circle and the non-Indigenous formed a circle around them. The Indigenous folks prayed, sand and danced. The tactic was exercising freedom to practice their religion while protesting the Dakota Access Pipe Line. No arrests were made despite massive police and drone presence. One local man tried to run over a water protector but she jumped aside; the man had a gun but was subdued by the cops. Lots of videos were taken and the man was brought to the local jail.
On Saturday I finally got a press pass as I got a request to cover the encampment from New Politics, a print and online journal. That gave me the right to take photos (otherwise not allowed), but still limited—no photos of people without permission or of houses or horses, again without permission from the people with them. I set out to interview people at the various camps and to get a sense of what people were planning to do for the winter.
I spoke with Joe, a part Lakota from Colorado who had been raised Catholic and attended Indian residential schools, taken from his parents by the state because they doubted the ability of the native community to raise their own kids. He said it was brutal. When asked why he was here, he replied, "This is the first time since Little Big Horn that all the tribes are uniting against a common enemy—the black snake—the pipeline that will harm our water, our people. This unity is making us whole."
At Rosebud camp just about a 1/2 mile from Oceti, I discovered a group of people building a straw-bale building that was destined to become a school. Multi took a break to tell me how they came to create this project with the full collaboration of parents and kids in the camp. Their project grew out of a team of people from Southern California who are builders and designers who use earth and straw as materials creating almost no carbon footprint and providing both strength of structure and extraordinary insulation—very important for a windy and cold winter ahead.
"We spent five days gathering ideas from people at the camp as to what they needed. They decided on building a school for the many kids who might stay the winter or come and go over time.The parents and kids helped to design the structure with the builders."
Multi told me, "We didn't want to bring the colonialist idea of what was needed and just tell people at the camp. We spent five days gathering ideas from people at the camp as to what they needed. They decided on building a school for the many kids who might stay the winter or come and go over time. The parents and kids helped to design the structure with the builders. All the decision-making was 'horizontal', engaging everyone with equal voice, avoiding hierarchy. It will be a one-room schoolhouse with nooks for specific tasks and will serve K-8th graders." A teen center is being built nearby.
When I visited there were five women and one man working on the project and they welcomed any help they could get to finish the project before the cold sets in. When I asked Multi why she was doing this project she said, "For me this is about coming together as a global culture, a people who have the resources we need for future generations. We are here to protect our futures together. Building a schoolhouse is a manifestation of that ancient technology for our future together."
"This is all about the water and who lives downstream. We are testing a new economic system that requires governance, self-governance from the ground up."
Down the road I met Danielle who was helping to build a multi-purpose center housing a kitchen, dining area and meeting room. She told me that "This is all about the water and who lives downstream. We are testing a new economic system that requires governance, self-governance from the ground up. The needs must evolve for us to create a system that will fit them." She is particularly excited about engaging people to serve and to be united, to be able to work together with their passions for service, to be happy together in this way. The materials for the building were donated by people from Ashville, NC and were deeply appreciated. All over the camps one sees evidence of creative problem-solving, cooperation and contributions brought from afar. The "donations" building is brimming with winter clothes (adults and kids), foods of all kinds and practical items.
I was particularly interested in the many families that were at the camps, including lots of kids of all ages, including infants. One family from Boulder, Colorado, with 8-year old Oscar and 11-year old Audrey, were unpacking their car when I came upon them. Their mother, Susan, said, "We are here to support the protest and to have our kids learn from it. I want my kids to understand that we do what we can to take care of the water and support the Indigenous people. To step it up these days we have to hold some ground. This is one of the places we can meet. It would be great if Obama would release the land and kill the pipeline." Amen.
I encountered a father-son pair from Manhattan. Fourteen-year old Declan Rexer learned about the encampment from a single segment on MSNBC news but couldn't find anything else about it in the corporate media. He was particularly upset by the police attacks on elderly protesters. He then went to alternative and social media and found an enormous amount of information. His interest grew and his father, William Rexer, decided to bring him out to North Dakota to learn for himself.
They plan to bring back lots of information for Declan's classmates and encourage more people to come out to see for themselves. William, a media professional himself, connected with some of the young documentarians at the camp and will provide some material support to them in order to advance their work.
"I've been here from the beginning and I will stay to the end. All winter if that's what it takes. We have been colonized and divided for 500 years."
I spoke with Joseph, a Salish man from Montana. I asked him how long he was planning to stay at the camp. He told me, "I've been here from the beginning and I will stay to the end. All winter if that's what it takes. We have been colonized and divided for 500 years. This is our time to unite and resist. We must protect our water and our tribes." He thanked me for coming to Standing Rock and being an ally. He asked me to tell my friends to come out and join the encampment, to be water protectors.
Generosity is evident all over the camp. I particularly love working in the kitchen, a huge army tent with large tables, stoves and lots of equipment. On each of the two days that I worked in the kitchen there were about a dozen people busily working in happy unison. There was a chief organizer and then 4 or 5 people who were in charge of a particular dish, each with 1-3 assistants. I was an assistant, happy not to have to mastermind anything. The chatter amongst the workers reminded me of the Park Slope Food Coop squads where people work together with shared goals. As one man put it, "We come together here with one vision. We are building a new world together."
I am moving slowly and deliberately and thinking about the world we need to build together, on a much larger scale.
While I attend trainings and sacred fire circles, chop veggies, talk with people, drive people around, and walk around the various camps, I am struck by how happy I feel. Sure, this is temporary. Sure, this is not my "real world". But it is a lovely world, a loving world, a kind world, where each person is greeted with kindness. Young men and women ride through the camps on horseback, connect to ancient traditions, and bask in the glory of a shared culture of resistance. I don't come from this culture but I do support their determination, their right to protect their land and water and people, their valiant attempt to build a better world. I am moving slowly and deliberately and thinking about the world we need to build together, on a much larger scale. Can we decide to be kind to each other, to collaborate, to try to remove ego from our day-to-day practice? I don't know the answer to these difficult questions. But I do know that when people share a common struggle we can be beautiful. I bask in that beauty at Standing Rock.
Nancy Romer is a life-long social justice activist starting in the tenants rights movement, then the feminist, anti-war, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, union, food justice and, now, climate justice movements. Nancy is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Brooklyn College and now writes primarily on climate movement-related efforts, with a particular interest in agriculture and peasant movements in Latin America. Read their first report on life at the camp here.
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Posted in Indigenous, Narrative, Report-backTagged climate justice, Dakota Access Pipe Line, decolonisation, decolonization, environmental justice, indigenous, NoDAPL, social movements, Standing RockLeave a Comment on Moving slowly and deliberately at Standing Rock
Decolonisation in Europe
November 9, 2016 September 13, 2019
Sofia Jannok at Standing Rock. Photo: Jeff Schad
The European core nations have colonised the world. This system is not only based on the unequal exchange of land and labour—as the anthropologist Alf Hornborg has shown in Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange—it is also on the verge of making the planet uninhabitable. So the world must be decolonised. But what would it mean to decolonise Europe? How do we decolonise the core of the world system—the area of the world that gave birth to colonialism itself?
Another world exists
In the north of Scandinavia, there is an Indigenous culture that has persisted against colonisation. The land is called Sápmi. The Sámi, like all Arctic Indigenous peoples, are experiencing the severe effects of rapid global warming and decolonisation is now more than ever a matter of survival.
Sofia Jannok is a songwriter, yoiker (yoik is a traditional Sámi vocal style), and pop singer; activist, environmentalist thinker, and reindeer owner. Through her words, melodies, activism, and existence, Jannok pushes for decolonisation. The title of the last song on her latest album ORDA: This Is My Land is "Noaidi," a Northern Sámi word that means shaman but that she also translates as "Decolonizer." The noaidi drives out the colonisers and their mentality. The noaidi reveals another world, a story that has been silenced in the history of the Swedish nation state.
For me, the encounter with Sofia Jannok's music and stories opened the door to a new world-view. I am an urban middle-class Swede brought up to think that industrialisation is necessary and that this mode of production combined with better welfare distribution means progress for all. I have always had a nudging feeling of something being wrong with the story I have been told but other narratives are rarely given space in the media, nor in the academic contexts or political organisations I have been part of.
I was able to interview Jannok to explore the connection between her music, the decolonisation of Sápmi and of Europe, and the necessity of Indigenous rights and Indigenous peoples' perspectives for all of humanity. This article tells the story of the other world that already exists in Jannok´s Sápmi. I weave a pattern of our conversation, her songs, images of what her stories make me feel, and examples of colonisation past and present.
Jannok and I begin by talking about music. I ask her about the role of music in Sámi decolonisation work and she emphasises that the increased focus on Sámi musicians and artists in the Swedish media often misses the historical ties between artistic expression and political struggle in Sápmi:
The national media in Sweden are only now opening their eyes to what is happening in Sápmi, because music is bringing these things to the fore. But music has always been an essential part of the decolonisation work that Sápmi has undertaken for as long as I have lived and long before my time.
She tells me that she sees her voice as a continuation of the voices of the past. Some of her influences, or precursors, are the yoikers, musicians, and activists Áillohaš (Nils Aslak Valkeapää) and Mari Boine. She also mentions all the music that came out of the action in Alta in Norwegian Finnmark in 1981—a manifestation, Jannok says, that made Norway take Sámi politics seriously, leading them to open a Sámi parliament and sign ILO 169 (the UN convention on Indigenous peoples' rights, which Sweden still has not signed).
I continue what previous generations started: mirroring the contemporary world—as art always does, or at least I think it should.
Indigenous art can be an important mirror: it reveals parts of reality that are obscured or distorted by the colonial mirrors that dominate many people's view of the world:
It's through art and culture that we can look back on what another time was like. From my perspective, neither history books nor the media are impartial. With regard to us in Sápmi, an efficient way of obscuring and oppressing is to say that we don't exist at all. And because of that I think that art and culture and music gives a more fair and true image of reality, because it is told through the eyes of the ones who experience it. All over the world, the history of Indigenous peoples has mainly been told by the colonisers and of course that yields a pretty slanted image and a very short-term perspective too because the time that colonisation has been going on is only a second if we compare it to how long we have existed on the earth.
Through a decolonised picture of reality—this is how we can see the other world that is possible.
Colonial blindness and Indigenous grief
On her latest album ORDA: This is my land, Jannok has a song that contrasts these two reflections of reality—the colonial and the Indigenous one.
"Grieving: Oappáide"
Not grieving the loss of you home sweet home
Not grieving your walls that for all times are gone
Not grieving, because they were already gone
Your house was built on an old woman's home
I'm grieving the wide open wound that I see
When will they understand when to let be?
I'm grieving for her because she lost it all
Under your kitchen floor buried is her soul
The first time I heard this song, all illusions about the goodness and soundness of my society started to melt away. I felt that it spoke to me; that I was the "you" that this song is directed to:
I—the grieving Sámi.
She—our mother, the earth.
The kitchen—the food, energy, of the colonising world, which has buried our mother's soul.
You—the blind people in the colonial state, who do not see what they have lost.
They—the core of the Swedish state, which colonised Sámi land and whose colonial project is ongoing.
Like the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (North America) who are right now protecting their home and the earth from the Dakota Access Pipeline and the expansion of the Tar Sands, Jannok and the Sámi see that the colonising industry wants to "steal our mother"—a line from Jannok's song "We are still here"—and so they are protecting the land, water, air that we all depend on. Jannok was in fact part of a Sámi group that went to Standing Rock in North Dakota to show their support for the activists there.
But the core of colonial society in Sweden contests the parallels between the Sámi and other Indigenous cultures. On ORDA: This Is My Land, Jannok shows this very clearly by including excerpts from a hearing in a court case between the Sámi reindeer herding community Girjas and the Swedish state—a case that Girjas won, though the state has appealed and a new trial will be held in 2017.
In the hearing the State calls a witness, a non-Sámi resident of Finnish Sápmi, who voices the opinion that the Sámi are not an Indigenous people and that the colonial theories that have been developed "for North America and Australia" do not apply to "Lapland" (or Swedish Sápmi). Jannok explains why she contests this claim on her album:
I draw parallels to other Indigenous peoples precisely to debunk the opinion that Sámi people aren't Indigenous. As if that was an opinion when it's fact, and facts are facts and can't be overlooked: the Sámi are an Indigenous people. The opposite is to claim that the earth is flat and try to discuss from the starting-point of the earth being flat when we have already agreed that the earth is round. Let's start the discussion from there. We are an Indigenous people. Grant us our rights, that we have maintained for ourselves for thousands of years.
This fact does not stop the Swedish state from telling its own story about the Sámi. In one of Jannok's samplings from the hearing, the state attorney questions the concept of ethnicity and its relevance to the description of the situation in Sápmi. Listening to this, I remember the music video to Jannok's song "Viellja jearrá" ("Brother asks") where the history of racial biological studies on the Sámi is shown. In the light of the history of Swedish eugenics, we can begin to understand the degree of disrespect shown by the state when it now refuses the Sámi the right to define themselves as an Indigenous community. The state in the past studied the Sámi as a "lower race" and now instead wants to do away with the concept of ethnicity. It is hard to find a better example of how Sámi politics are reframed to suit the political agenda.
The state attorney also says that "the State has done its utmost to regulate the reindeer husbandry trade in a generous way" and that "the Sámi have not been subjected to discrimination by the State". These types of statements can feed widespread prejudices in Sweden about the Sámi as privileged—prejudices claiming that the Sámi both receive special privileges to keep reindeer and benefit from modern infrastructure and technology. What these claims entirely leave out is that the Sámi did not choose to be incorporated into this modern industrial society. The state never asked the Sámi if they would like to abandon a subsistence lifestyle for a professional, regulated reindeer trade.
Part of the decolonisation work is to confront this racist discourse about Sámi privilege. An example of this in Jannok's music is one of her most fiercely political songs, "I Ryggen på min Kolt" ("In the back of my gákti"—gákti being the Sámi word for a traditional regalia) which is directed at the Swedish state and its double standards; when it wants to use Sámi culture for advertising in the tourism industry but not grant Sámi people their rights. She sings:
Du söndrar mellan grannar som lärt sig leva bredvid varandra
Sprider lögner om min familj, mitt folk
Dina ord en dolk
Rakt i ryggen på min kolt
You're sundering neighbours who've learnt to live next to each other
Spreading lies about my family, my people
Your words, a knife
Right in the back of my gákti
The song reveals how, in a classic case of "divide and conquer," the idea of Sámi privilege is used by elites to play out oppressed groups against each other. There are numerous examples of what this sundering of neighbours has led to today—ranging from racist comments on the internet, verbal harassment, and vandalisation of Sámi language road signs, to hate crimes such as assault and battery, killed reindeer, and arson of lávvu (the Sámi equivalent of the North American tipi).
But "I ryggen på min kolt" tells us that this racism was not always there, that we are all being told lies about the Sámi and the history of Sweden and that this is creating enmity. Decolonisation requires retelling history.
Decolonising history
The slanted colonial story of the past and present has been and is motivated to a large extent by the mining industry which has fed the modern Swedish economy, although colonisation through farming settlements goes back several hundred years before this as well. The "golden age" of social democracy and the welfare state was funded by the unequal exchange of land and labour between the core and periphery in the Swedish territory. Jannok, in her work, unearths this inconvenient truth:
"Snölejoninna: Snow lioness"
Antirasist my ass,
när du inte ser från vem du snott all din cash
Han, hon, hen "son"
av oss stal du landet en gång
Urfolkskvinna, snölejoninna, jag är regnbågen på din näthinna
jag är allt det men jag är mer, "mon lean queer",
har funnits här i tusentals years
An outspoken anti-racist, my ass
You don't even recognize the people from whom you've stolen all your cash
"Son", he, she and ze;
Once you stole this land from me
A native empress, the rainbow you see, a snow lioness; well, all that is me
All of it, yes it can all be found here, yet I am something more, as I am queer
Residing here for thousands of years
("Son" is the Northern Sámi third person singular pronoun, which is always gender neutral.)
This song shows the reality of the resource flows in the colonial-industrial economy, but its focus is on the Sámi as dynamic, as queer—without even a grammatical gender divide—and diverse. It is about telling her own story about who she is and can be, or could be. Jannok says:
"Snowlioness" is partly about how the box that society wants to squeeze me into doesn't have to be a box. Instead I can be all of this and still have the right to be Sámi.
"Diverse" is a good word to describe both Jannok's Sápmi and the history of northern Scandinavia. The nomadic Sámi population and the settlers of the north coexisted in the past and both groups benefited from their cooperation. Some non-Sámi people had reindeer and many farmers housed Sámi families on the move between summer and winter pastures.
This decolonised story of the past is slowly gaining space in mainstream media because of the music and activism of people like Jannok, and finally also in some history books. One of these books is Urfödan: Om självhushållets mat hos folk i Lappland (Ancient food: On the food of self-sufficiency among people in Lapland) in which Lillian Ryd interviews people from the last generations of both settlers and nomads who lived traditional, self-sufficient lives in northern Sweden before industrialisation all but erased these livelihoods. Through such stories about the past, we can begin to see that the people who benefited from the exploitation of land and labour in the north of Sweden were responsible both for the colonisation of Sápmi and for taking the land away from farmers through the 19th century enclosure movement ("Laga Skifte").
What has happened to people's livelihoods in this process is that they have been incorporated into the industrial structure of big society. This is true for both the Sámi and the settlers. One example of this that Jannok mentions in our conversation is the state's regulation of reindeer herding:
The term "renskötsel" (reindeer husbandry) alone is a very clear example of how society has wanted to label a lifestyle to enter it into its laws and regulations, and then deciding who can do reindeer herding and not. To have zero experience, not even having seen a reindeer or visited a reindeer herder's everyday life, and still regulate and make decisions that don't match reality. So you only see the tip of the iceberg if you see a privilege.
The traditional lifestyle of the Sámi has in modern history been undermined by the establishment of national borders, mines, the forest industry, hydroelectric dams, military test ranges, and wind parks. It has also been attacked culturally through eugenics, boarding schools, forced sterilisation, and forced Christianisation—which among other things entailed a ban on yoik. Then, after these atrocities, the state came up with the term renskötsel—a word that, Jannok says, doesn't even exist in Sápmi traditionally—in order to incorporate this lifestyle into an industrial-professional economy. Reindeer-owning Sámi people became professionals in the reindeer food business. Sámi people who did not own reindeer lost their legal right to be Sámi, Jannok adds:
This led to internal conflicts and differences between Sámi people and Sámi people, which has severe consequences even to this day.
If we look beneath the surface, what we see instead of privilege is the attempt by a colonial state to eradicate an Indigenous population:
For the Sámi, the equation doesn't add up, and it will be the death of us unless someone listens soon. That's the way it is. This is an Indigenous culture and it depends on the right to land and water and the reindeer and our settlements. Every day that you infringe on these rights it becomes a little harder for us to survive. We have nowhere to go anymore. That's just how it is. And it doesn't add up. It doesn't add up.
Hearing these repeated words, I feel the grief that Jannok sings and yoiks in "Grieving". I feel called on to share a decolonised story of our past with all those who still take out their sense of loss and their anger on the Sámi. Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, or the world market should be the target of everyone's anger, and we should work together to build other ways of living with the land—our mother.
Another world through consensus-based decision-making and Indigenous knowledge
There are alternative ways of living—we do not have to sabotage the home we live on in order to live good lives. In fact, if we exploit and pollute the earth, then none of us—like the Sámi now—will have anywhere to go. Colonial society is blind to this. Jannok explains that it is much clearer to her than to many others since she has had the benefit of growing up in a family that is entirely dependent on what nature gives.
The relationship to the earth, Jannok says, gives Indigenous peoples an insight that is lost in the industrial core countries of the West. So, as one decolonisation strategy, could we perhaps imagine a Sámi council in Sweden that advises on environmental issues and pushes back colonial-industrial values from decision-making?
Absolutely. We even have an example of this in the management of the Laponia world heritage area which is located in a very large part of Swedish Sápmi. Sápmi has fought seven hard years to get a majority on the board. Now every decision has to be reached through consensus, which is a typical way to reach decisions in reindeer herding communities.
Majority rule doesn't work if you are Sámi you know, we'll lose every vote. We are so few. There are alternative ways of solving it. I really believe in a council where Sápmi actually has the right to say something. Because as it is today there is supposedly consultation and dialogue around every infringement on Sámi land—with LKAB for instance, a large mining company, if they want to prospect for minerals, then the Sámi community is supposed to have a say—but that's not how it is in reality.
You can voice your opinion but no one takes it into consideration. And that's not dialogue. That's information. So I think an influential Sámi council is a great idea. I don't understand why it isn't already like that, with Sápmi having an obvious role in saying how things affect life, nature, the water, the air, the earth. We are dependent on it and for us it is extremely clear but it's actually for the benefit of everyone. We can't drink poisonous water, that's just how it is.
Jannok goes on to describe what has been lost to a great part of the world's population, and to show that Indigenous rights are important not only for Indigenous peoples but for humanity and the earth itself:
A big part of the world's population has lost the connection not only to the earth but also with the elders and the knowledge that generations before us had built up. People have been cut off from this, because of industrialism, individualism, egoism, greed. But it is still here, we are still here. Indigenous peoples exist all over the world and we have still got that connection, not least with the elders, the old generation. And with animals and the places we live in. We see how they change. I mean, it is not a coincidence that all the research reports that indicate evidence of climate change and that the gulf stream is changing, these are things that Indigenous peoples have already confirmed decades before. So there is already a lot of evidence that it can be for the good of all to actually listen to these people. This competence that you can find among Indigenous peoples should be used, and it doesn't have to be proven in accordance with Western methods to be valid. We see, we listen, we feel, we can remind others about how you do this, because we all come from the earth so of course everyone has this ability. To listen.
Singing yourself and the new world into existence
To get more people to listen and reconnect with their own ability to see, hear, understand the earth and other living beings, Jannok has moved from singing primarily in Northern Sámi to singing mainly in English, and some Swedish as well. And the soundscape, production, and rap-inspired vocal style on her latest album also contribute to a sense of her music being more confrontational:
It is a more direct rhetoric. I have moved away from writing more poetically—I've always been critical in my songs but allowed art to be art, giving the listener a chance to interpret it in their own way. Now, on my latest album, I don't want to do this, I want to be as direct as possible. I want to say things that for me have been like saying that the sun rises or something: It's that it's light all summer; it is that we are still here. For me it is self-evident, but it apparently isn't to the ones who always go, "hey, but, what do you mean with Sámi, do you even exist?" I also want to say "This is my land," because the focus is always on something other than the fact that this is Indigenous land. Though it is described on every single map—there isn't one map of Sweden that doesn't have almost all names in Sámi in northern Sweden. So these self-evident things are what I want to write and I don't want to leave any space for misinterpretation. It should be clear as daylight what I mean.
Jannok and others like her, from Sápmi and other parts of the world, are giving a voice to alternatives. These stories have the power to change people's minds and dreams—and so they can also change the society we all build together.
Hope. But there will still always be doubt. Anxiety. We can never know if it will be enough. To find the will to live can be a struggle. All we can do is listen, understand, act, and pass the torch, the fire, on to the people who come after us:
What else can I do but to sing all these songs,
to sing and to hope that we'll always belong?
I sing to the healing of ancestors' soil
For future sisters I'm singing this song
What else can I do but to sing all these songs?
For future sisters, I hope they keep strong
To support these future sisters (oappáide means "to the sisters"), to help Sápmi stay strong, Jannok has donated money to the Sámi youth choir Vaajmoe—a choir that developed from the need for a meeting-space after the suicides of several young Sámi. And, of course, Jannok's own music is part of that same movement of singing yourself into existence, making a place in the world for yourself and the people who walk with you. Jannok's song "Áhpi: Wide as Oceans" is also about suicide; a tribute to those who have left and a comfort to the ones left behind.
Áhpi sheds light on a reality that exists and that has a taboo on it: mental health issues. To simply shed light on things that are real but invisible is to acknowledge people who live that life. To be seen.
Light, life, love—a land for everyone
Light. She constantly returns to this—to the bright summers with the midnight sun and to the fire that lights your way in the winter:
It's not in the fight for my own existence that my fire has its source. It's in life. And life is so beautiful, rich, full of laughter, hustle and bustle between bare mountains, forest lakes and cities. With strong ties to my people, both the ones who have passed and the ones who are and the ones who shall come. My inspiration for everything comes first and foremost from all the colours of life. From the riches of Sápmi; pride, power, and the indubitable fire of existence; from love for people and my beloved hoods. Everyone who claims that we're a minority, on the verge of extinction, a disappearing part of world history, haven't been to my world. Anyone who has seen it could never claim such a thing. We are fully alive as long as the earth breathes, because we are connected to our land and we will protect it as if it were a matter of protecting our own lives. Because that's what it is.
Indigenous people are survivors, and they must survive for all our sakes—they are at the forefront of the struggle against the accelerating industrial-colonial society that would rather drive us all into the darkest abyss of collapse than to degrow, decolonise, scale down at a controlled pace and find the way back to the land. To survive, the Sámi gain strength through the yoik, through the words and melodies and stories of another world that is possible, a world that is not dead and must not be reinvented because it still lives in these people. Jannok's yoik is the sound of the noaidi driving out the colonisers from the land and from people's dreams.
Sápmi is the norm, power, beyond doubt. I sing about what I know. I sing about truths that have been censored, removed. But music, language, culture wouldn't be alive if it weren't for the human beings. Us. Human beings keep fires alive. And fire in its turn keeps humanity alive. So I can but show respect and gratitude to those who've given me the chance to live with pride, all my forefathers and foremothers who have gone before us and shown the way. Mum, dad, family and sinewy ancestors. Without these people we wouldn't exist, and the music wouldn't exist. It comes from us. I honour the people who've clung to the tundra as the windswept mountain birches, and who never let go no matter how hard the wind blew in times far harder than these.
Sápmi as the norm is an alternative to the slanted, short-term perspective of colonial society. Through Jannok, the noaidi's voice comes to bring a new world to both the minds of Indigenous peoples and the minds of the people in settler societies who may not even understand their own role in the world system. It tells the story of a diverse world where there is room for everyone and where we all know the land. I long for that world, for a place where I can exist. Jannok describes a home that I have been denied by my colonial-industrial culture.
Listening to this story of another world, looking at the world through the grieving eyes of Sámi people, we can find ways to decolonise everyone's minds and the land we are part of—in Sápmi, Sweden, Europe, and the world.
Another world is not only possible. It already exists.
"This is my land: Sápmi"
This is my land, this is my country
and if I'd be the queen you'd see
that I'd take everyone by hand and sing it so it's out there
that we'll paint this land blue, yellow, red and green
If you say that this girl's not welcome in this country,
if she must leave because her face is brown
Well, then I say you go first, 'cause frankly this is my land
and here we live in peace, I'll teach you how
This is my pride, this is my freedom,
this is the air that I breathe
and you'll find no kings, no queens, here everybody's equal –
men, women and all who are in between
This is my home, this is my heaven,
this is the earth where I belong
and if you want to ruin it all with big wounds in the mountains
then you're not worthy listening to this song
This is my land, this is my country,
these lakes, rivers, hills and woods
If you open up your eyes you'll see someone is lying
I've always been here, welcome to my hoods
Sofia Jannok's new album, ORDA: This Is My Land, is available on Discogs, Amazon, iTunes, and Spotify. You can buy other merchandise on her website, www.sofiajannok.com.
Posted in Essay, Indigenous, InterviewTagged decolonisation, decolonization, decolonize europe, indigenous, Sámi, Sápmi, Scandinavia, Sofia Jannok, SwedenLeave a Comment on Decolonisation in Europe
Returning to Indigenous world governance
March 19, 2016 September 13, 2017
In 1974, a group of Mohawk families occupied Moss Lake in New York state. After three years of heavy activism and high tensions, they signed an agreement with the state and were granted the area as a land trust. Source: Ganienkeh.net
by Kanenhariyo
I have a dream that our people will spread out from the reservations we call territories and establish new communities steeped in our languages, laws, traditions and clans. I have had this dream since I was a teenager. I have come to a point in my life where I believe the time for me to be a part of that movement has arrived.
For those of you with the same or similar dream I encourage you to let yourself be known. Let's join forces and make our dreams of freedom and national independence our reality.
I also recognize community building takes committed people willing to work together to make possible the betterment of everyone's future generations. I am ready to find solutions together with others to make this dream become reality.
I started to investigate if there was a way to establish a collective land holdings in a collective commons outside of a nation state. If that has been done before I wondered what examples exist and how a group or a collection of groups should go about structuring and organizing and protecting such a land holding.
What my research found was that in fact there are several examples of such land holdings. They are often referred to as "community land trusts" or "land trust protectorates."
After World War Two several of these sorts of land trusts were established to assist lands and populations who had experienced colonization or relocation establish themselves with protection from other nation-states invading them.
Amazingly a structure and legal apparatus does exists at the international level.
I initiated the process to hire a lawyer prepared and willing to build the nessary legal apparatus to achieve ratification at The Hague. However at the time I had not reached out to others to assist in fundraising and adding to the discussion and development.
I had at the time been too worried about sabotage to put it out there in the world. I was always aware that this sort of project could not be pursued without help so I have come to accept that there will be negative people out there and that we must focus our attention and work with those that seek similar goals and like minded people and not worry about the saboteurs.
Although I do not agree with what has happened in Palestine and Israel, Israel was in fact set up as a collective land trust protectorate.
There currently are several land occupations occurring in Canada by Indigenous people reoccupying their territories. However there are no legal apparatuses protecting these people or their lands.
Thus the road map and international legal apparatus does in fact exist. I propose that we create an Indigenous land trust that we collectively govern together for the protection of the land and of the people living together. And that we hold lands through the globe as an international land protectorate.
There are several land trusts that hold lands in different countries that buy up or accept donations of lands for environmental protections. This is not a new concept. Except in this case we would link arms and hold each others lands and territories in common, and acknowledge each other's land stewardship in the places across our Mother Earth where we have lived for thousands of years.
I started the process of paying for the legal work to get this done but I can not pay for this all on my own. I simply do not have the means.
Canada and other counties are still operating on the premise of the doctrine of discovery.
There currently are several land occupations occurring in Canada by Indigenous people reoccupying their territories. However there are no legal apparatuses protecting these people or their lands. I continue to hear word that plans for more reoccupations are in the works.
Canada and other counties are still operating on the premise of the doctrine of discovery. They also claim Indigenous people within the territory are citizens and therefore any and all Indigenous issues are perceived in the international community as internal issues. Therefore, outside nation-states are not able by international law to intervene.
So I'm proposing that we build an international land protectorate forming alliances both with each other and nation-states willing to offer support politically, financially, and militarily. There would be many smaller nations, and a few larger ones that are willing to assist.
It's not a huge jump—if a jump at all—to recognize that we all have the same Mother Earth. Building protective laws for our mother and the people that live with her isn't a huge stretch either. I think we would be wise to build a single collective that touches as many continents and people as possible.
In these collective territories, we would all have a responsibility to support and protect each other, share resources, knowledge, and improve our collective internal trade.
In practice the land trust organization that would hold all the lands of its members in common would be made up from all the stewards of each different territory. Effectively this would be creating an Indigenous United Nations, where each group of Indigenous stewards selects their own representative to carry their interest within the collective land trust.
Together we can affirm each other's stewardship of lands. We can create stewardship agreements that ensure autonomy and governance over territory by the stewards so long as they continue to maintain certain "laws" to protect the people and the land.
And we hold these lands we live on and with in common. And we work together to create a constitution that ensures protection for the people and the land. With governance at the local level by the people, in accordance to their cultural practices and values that have protected the land for thousands of years.
Holding lands in trust in this sort of manner would make it harder for a nation-state or corporation to make a treaty with some sideliner or a group looking to forfeit their peoples' rights to the land for a few bucks.
Right now many or most of us have few protections and continuously struggle with small numbers and the inability to raise the capital or people or defend ourselves against corporate interests and foolish nation-state leaders.
Creating a collective Indigenous land trust with stewardship agreements would greatly reduce this struggle by increasing our numbers, creating protectionary laws, and having the international community's protections apply to the lands and people within the trust. There are several nation-states willing to support such an effort. It's good for the Earth. And it's a different model than the current global structure in many ways.
In a sense I suppose I am proposing a form of Indigenous world governance. Perhaps it is time that we return to it.
Kanenhariyo is a co-founder of Real People's Media and the host of the podcast What's Going On?
A version of article originally appeared on Real People's Media.
Posted in Essay, IndigenousTagged indigenous, indigenous rights, land trustsLeave a Comment on Returning to Indigenous world governance
Decolonizing nature, the academy, and Europe
In one article, Zoe Todd tells a story of how she, as a small child, used to go fishing. Whenever her line got caught on a weed, she would shout out to her parents in the cabin, exclaiming that she had caught a fish. An adult would then come down and untangle her line. But one day, she had actually caught one—and no one came to help her reel it in. Finally, when the adults looked out at the lake and saw the little girl trying to wrestle with the fishing rod, they ran down and her father helped her reel in a giant northern pike. Her father calls this story "Zoe and the Big Fish", and after telling it, Todd remarks "Ever since I caught that fish I have been obsessed with prairie fish and their hidden lives in the rivers and lakes of my homeland. The way that their bodies narrate stories we, collectively, have forgotten to listen to."
This summer, I found myself on a canoe on the Georgian Bay, Canada—Go Home Bay to be precise—with a fishing rod. I've heard a story that "Go Home Bay" is so-called because when European settlers arrived, the Anishinaabe people there told them to "go home."
Go to Go Home Bay and you'll see the raw, exposed rocks, the crooked pines bent by the hard winds and the heavy snow, clamoring for space on the rocks. You can't help but imagine what this landscape might have looked like in its pristine form, unsullied by humans. The untouched trees, the clear water heavy with life, the rocks shot through with veins of marble and granite—they seem to carry stories that have little to do with the cumbersome wooden chalets that line the water.
Another story telling the origin of Go Home Bay is that loggers, after floating freshly-cut timber down the Musquash River, would deliver them to steamers who would then chug their way to the timber mills around the Great Lakes. After this, the loggers could finally "go home."
These two stories might be conflicting—but they both indicate that this landscape is far from pristine. The primary forest has long been cut down—the timber industry left barely any trees standing. The fish stocks have long been depleted by colonial fishers, robbing the Indigenous people from a major source of subsistence. And there were people living here before the picturesque chalets were erected: the Anishinaabeg. This land carries their stories, stories that are still being told. There is no "pristine" nature without humans, not even here.
I have little experience fishing. But on my second cast—the first cast I caught nothing but weeds—I caught an enormous pike. I was obviously elated—it's rare to be that lucky. But I couldn't help thinking back to Todd's article about her own relationship with fish and their importance to Indigenous people. In it, she describes how a history of colonialism in Canada is literally inscribed on the bodies of fish—the depletion of their populations and the toxins in their bones. As she tells it, "Fish bodies betray the damage to their habitats. Their bodies tell stories of our negligence and silence."
Todd's writing led me to wonder what stories that pike had carried, and what stories the Anishinaabeg had for it. I felt like an intruder—this catch wasn't really a victory; it was more like a symbol of loss.
For Indigenous people in North America, colonialism is not a force of the past. It violently affects them on a daily basis. And they are constantly resisting and developing new ways of asserting their culture and governance systems.
I have often wondered how to carry home what I've learned from the struggles of indigenous people in North America. How can Europeans, who have learned to remove themselves in time and place from the horrors of colonization, learn to take responsibility and start a process of decolonization? These questions inevitably leaked in to my own research—how can I do field research, keeping in mind that colonization continues today, both in my "field" (neighborhoods facing gentrification) and within the academy?
Todd's work offers crucial contributions to these questions. Todd is a Métis scholar who has just become a Lecturer at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, and is also completing her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. Her main research revolves around human-fish relations, colonialism, and Indigenous governance and legal orders in Canada. Some of her other interests include decolonizing anthropology as a discipline, urban planning, and non-academic writing.
What first drew me to Todd's evocative writing was her article on the Scottish independence movement. In it, she suggests that since the Scots and Irish were colonized, their struggles for self-determination should be seen from a decolonial perspective. In her own research on human-fish relationships and the legal orders that Indigenous people put in place to maintain those relationships, she helps inform the nature-culture debate. And in several other articles she suggests ways that anthropology, as an academic discipline can engage in a process of decolonization. One such article—a critique of the "ontological turn"—went viral in anthropology circles last year.
Through all this, Todd remains giving and forgiving in her writing. She writes lucidly and poetically, noting injustice while stressing accountability. And she is not content with just telling stories of oppression: she consistently offers stories of resistance and paths for transformation.
I was grateful to be able to interview Zoe Todd to further explore these topics. After a discussion that was cut short by poor Internet service on my end, we continued the conversation via email. I've put together these two conversations in a shortened, more legible, format.
Colonialism, past and present
Could you explain a bit how your work challenges this idea that colonization is "a thing of the past"?
Colonialism is an ongoing reality in Canada. In recent years, I have worked with people who experienced the horrific impacts of Canada's Indian Residential School System. The Residential School that many of the people I worked with attended didn't close until 1996. There are residential school survivors in Canada who are only a bit older than me. In my own family, the impacts of colonialism are also visceral. I am two generations removed from my grandfather's lifetime, when he and his parents were kicked off their land in northern Alberta at the St Paul des Métis settlement. But the stories, the trauma of that? Real and present. Not as direct as they were for my grandfather's generation, but still present. In May, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released an executive summary of its forthcoming six-volume report on its inquiry into the experiences of Residential School survivors. Reading that summary, which lays out the awfulness and violence of the Residential School System, and hearing Justice Murray Sinclair declare that Canada is guilty of perpetuating cultural genocide? That really makes it clear that colonialism is an ongoing reality in Canada. (It's also why my colleagues Joseph Paul Murdoch-Flowers and Erica Violet Lee and I started a video project called #ReadTheTRCReport in which people have uploaded videos of themselves reading sections of the report—there is a visceral, embodied experience in reading it aloud that makes it impossible to ignore the stories and findings within the report).
How does your own research go beyond depicting Indigenous people as victims, but rather as actively struggling against colonization?
I work in the Canadian Arctic, in a small village or hamlet in an Inuvialuit community named Paulatuuq. I'm looking at how Inuvialuit people in this community have negotiated their reciprocal and ongoing duties to the land and to fish while contending with state-imposed ideas about the appropriate ways to define animals, define the land, define how to engage with exploitative industry. People in Paulatuuq are asserting their laws, but doing it in a way that negotiates a simultaneous but contradictory sameness and difference between their legal orders and their relationship to place (and to the State). Engaging with those aspects of state law that they absolutely have to. So the word I used to describe it is they're "refracting" colonial forces by asserting their laws in the ways that they can. It may appear that people are being co-opted into co-management but when you're sitting in those meetings and you're talking to people it is apparent that they are engaging actively with the scientists and the bureaucrats in a really creative way.
What's so amazing about Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination is that people are finding these really creative ways to continue to assert their cosmologies or world-views or laws in the face of all of these competing left-leaning, right-leaning, neoliberal, socialist definitions of how people should behave.
Could the formalization of Indigenous law by a settler state contribute to the continued colonization of Indigenous people? Some people have argued that this was the case in Bolivia, where sumak kawsay (Buen Vivir), an Indigenous concept, was put into law.
My work is really so small and nascent compared to the incredibly nuanced and ongoing work on Indigenous legal orders and legal pluralities that Indigenous scholars John Borrows, Val Napoleon and Tracey Lindberg (among others) are doing here in Canada. I think their work really demonstrates why it's important for States like Canada to acknowledge their duties to the legal orders of the people whose ancestry and knowledge and stories of this place stretch to Time Immemorial. I think that the legal pluralistic approach that Borrows advocates for is really important. It demonstrates that Indigenous legal orders that incorporate reciprocal relationships between people, the land, the non-human constituents of the land, water and sky are incredibly important for this country as it contends with increasing pressures to extract oil and gas, mine ore, and dam more waterways.
On cities
Why would an anthropologist have a blog called "Zoe and the City?"
I started my blog in 2010 when I was wrapping up my MSc at the University of Alberta. My passion is Indigenous issues and decolonization in urban prairie contexts. (Having grown up as a Métis woman in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada). I had done a pecha kucha talk on 'Edmonton as an Aboriginal City' at a city sponsored event in June 2010 that garnered quite a bit of positive response, so I started the blog to keep writing about my observations and thoughts about how Edmonton had so thoroughly erased evidence of Indigenous peoples and history in its built form. Though my interests have expanded to other issues, I keep the name of the blog because everything for me still comes back to the land I grew up in: urban Edmonton—amiskwaciwâskahikan, pêhonan, home.
Whereas before the colonisation of Canada was framed as an issue of terra nullius, Glen Coulthard argues that urban spaces that Indigenous peoples occupy are conceived as space that belongs to nobody or 'urbs nullius'.
Many people might be surprised that Indigenous issues and urban issues are so linked. But having lived in Canada I've seen this play out quite directly—even just the fact that there's such large Indigenous populations living in Canadian cities. In fact often urban spaces were designed specifically to keep out 'loitering' and 'homeless' First Nations or Northern Indigenous people. Do you think it is possible for cities to be spaces for Indigenous people, and what practical urban planning strategies could make that a reality?
Well, every city in Canada is on Indigenous land! So, by necessity, we have to address this fundamental relationship between land, Indigenous nations and urbanism in Canada. My mentor, Dr. Frank Tough, was the first to really point that out to me. He pointed out that many non-Indigenous folks were framing urban Indigeneity as a 'recent phenomenon', but in fact, every city in the country is built on Indigenous land. And cities like Edmonton are built in a very very old gathering place, known in nehiyawewin (Plains Cree) as pêhonan. My friend and colleague Sara Breitkreutz, an anthropology PhD student at Concordia University in Montreal, wrote her master's dissertation on the 'revitalization' of Cabot Square in Montreal, wherein I understand that a lot of anxieties about race and Indigeneity came to the fore in discussions about re-designing the space. In Edmonton, there are a lot of tensions around the presence of urban Indigenous people in spaces that urban planners, architects, developers, politicians want to 'revitalise'. Yellowknives Dene scholar Glen Coulthard argues that one of the fundamental issues at play in urban gentrification in Canada is that it is an extension of settler colonialism. So, whereas before the colonisation of Canada was framed as an issue of terra nullius, Glen argues that urban spaces that Indigenous peoples occupy are conceived as space that belongs to nobody or 'urbs nullius'. So, I totally agree with you that urban planning continues to marginalize Indigenous people. I think that in order to change that we have to re-frame cities in Canada as what they are: urban communities built on Indigenous land. And in that, we must centre the reciprocal relationships between non-Indigenous people to Indigenous peoples, Indigenous lands, Indigenous legal orders, language, and community.
Decolonizing academia
Currently there is a lot of work being done, partly inspired by Bruno Latour, challenging this idea that there is a nature-culture divide, which anthropologists now call the 'ontological turn.' How do you criticize this from an Indigenous perspective?
The real crux of my critique of the ontological turn is not that it is wrong. They're on the right track by acknowledging the nature-culture divide. They are absolutely correct, as an Indigenous feminist I read that as a hopeful moment. But we have to acknowledge that any movement is embedded in institutions and structures and the ontological turn itself has been developed by really wonderful Indigenous thinkers as well as non-Indigenous thinkers. However, as Sara Ahmed points out, it seems that white male scholars are often those that are cited within philosophy and the broader academy, and other people are ignored.
I think that if we're going to talk about the nature-culture divide we need to be explicit about scholarly work as a colonial tool, and Indigenous legal structures as credible, robust, and dynamic ways of thinking. And also ways of asserting and thinking through relationships between people, whether they're human or not.
My real critique is that Indigenous thinkers all over the world have been making exactly this point for decades, if not centuries (if you read or listen to the accounts of how the Historic Numbered Treaties in Canada were settled, Indigenous thinkers were asserting a view of the world that inherently disputes the Euro-Western nature-culture divide). But they aren't often credited—for example, Val Napoleon and her colleague Hadley Friedland argue that Indigenous legal orders are not fragile, but in fact very robust. I think that if we're going to talk about the nature-culture divide we need to be explicit about scholarly work as a colonial tool, and Indigenous legal structures as credible, robust, and dynamic ways of thinking. And also ways of asserting and thinking through relationships between people, whether they're human or not. So for me, I think that the danger with the ontological turn is that it's still coming from a Eurocentric perspective and doesn't acknowledge, not just ideas but the laws that Indigenous people form that hold people accountable and that place the environment as a sentient thing. And so, I think we need to re-examine how we as scholars are also enacting legal governance and ethical duties toward our work.
Do you see that conversation happening in anthropology?
In Canada, with the work of Indigenous scholars, there is a direct acknowledgement that when Indigenous people are talking about their works, they're not just talking about ontologies, they're talking about concrete laws and ways of resolving conflict and engaging with the world. To be brutally honest, my experience in the UK really didn't give me hope that scholars can be held directly accountable to the people that they're speaking for.
People make claims about how they're speaking with people, and I want to see us actually ask: how do you assess that? Why are there no Indigenous people on the panels? There were very few Indigenous anthropology students in the UK that I've met. For me, the proof will be in how the diversity of a department actually reflects the diversity of the people that we say we work with. The academy itself has to make a change. There are concrete ways that can happen and there are people that are already talking about how that can happen.
A new breed of environmentalists, calling themselves eco-modernists, seem to have run with 'the ontological turn', arguing that since 'there is no nature', conservationism actually won't help, it is totally up to us to manage, maintain, and design the Earth. What would you say about these "ecomodernists" who take Latour's argument to another level, using it to justify apolitical, technological solutions?
Frankly, that whole idea of technology saving us from our own capitalist exploitation of the environment is just wishful thinking. What Indigenous legal orders (ontologies if you must) bring to the table is an acknowledgement that we have reciprocal duties to the land, to the other-than-human. And in those duties, there are responsibilities not to destroy entire watersheds, pollute whole lakes, raze mountains for ore. Because there are real legal-governance, social, cultural, living consequences to those actions. I'm hopeful that maybe some technological solutions can help us with the immediate crises we find ourselves in. But we cannot continue to relate to one another, to the land, to the fish, the birds, the bears, the plants in the way that we have been doing since the beginning of the Industrial revolution. Indigenous legal orders, the little bit that I can claim to understand of them, orient us to a much more accountable legal-governance relationship between all things/people/beings.
On Scottish independence
How do you see Scottish independence from an Indigenous and decolonial perspective?
I was studying at Aberdeen in the Department of Anthropology. Since October 2010, I've been splitting my time between Canada and Scotland. I had a front seat to the independence debate and the referendum. For me as a Métis woman with Scotch-Irish roots on my Métis side of the family, it was really really fascinating and kind of amazing to be there to witness that. Particularly because of the entanglement of histories between Scottish people and Indigenous people in Canada.
As an Indigenous person from North America I think that we need to have robust conversations about how, in the case of Scotland, at least, as a group of people that were internally colonized, or who had their self-determination violated by the Enlgish, they also, in turn, came in very large numbers to what is now Canada and participated actively in the dispossession and colonization of Indigenous peoples here. So I'm a bit weary of making direct comparisons between Scottish independence and Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty in North America, just because I think we also need to deconstruct that relationship between people re-visiting or re-creating their colonization or oppression upon another group. I call it the circulation of colonial violence. But I do think there's a lot to be learned from these movements where people are pushing back against capitalist nation-state violation of people's relationships to their own legal order and self-determination. Speaking as an Indigenous person from Canada, I do think there's a lot that we can learn from Indigenous thinkers, activists, and philosophers.
Did you see those conversations happening in Scotland, where they link their own movements for autonomy in solidarity with Indigenous autonomy movements?
I have a complicated answer to that question. There was a lot of discourse in the Canadian media and the British media making a comparison between Quebec and Scotland, saying that Quebec independence and Scottish independence are the same thing. Or, sort of, learning from one another. But the thing with the Quebec independence movement is that it often involves a denial of Indigenous sovereignty in the province. And so I actually didn't think the comparison in Scotland is really analogous (or helpful—because it erases or glosses over this egregious problem with the way Quebec sovereignty discourses can deny that Quebec exists because the French occupied sovereign Indigenous lands. That's a conversation for another day, though).
The analogue, I think, for me, is that the Scots did manage to assert their own nationhood in a way by legislating and administering Canada into existence. Our first Prime Minister was a Scottish person, John A. MacDonald. This discourse of the English saying that the Scots don't have what it takes to run a country I find really amusing. If we're going to make really simple analogies, I think that an under-recognized discourse is how the Scots played such a heavy role in administering Canada into existence. So, in that sense, the Scots have already proven they can govern—they helped bring a whole nation state into existence! However, it's very difficult to talk about the Scottish role or complicity in British colonialism within Scotland. I got the sense that it is a very taboo topic—it disrupts the framing of Scots as victims of the English.
I acknowledge that it's a big ask for me as an Indigenous person to demand that 5 million Scottish people admit their complicity in the ongoing colonial realities of British Empire. But there were moments where I did have conversations with people. And people were amenable to, kind of, discussing those complicated relationships. And I found that really hopeful because colonialism is so paradoxical and complicated.
One thing I'm very weary of is when Scottish people talk about themselves as an 'Indigenous' people. The problem, as I learned through my time living there, is that this is a co-optation of the meaning of the word "Indigenous", as it is defined by the United Nations. I was speaking to someone who said that some of the politicians promoting a pro-independence discourse deliberately strayed away from acknowledging Indigenous peoples (like me and other people from around the globe) who live in Scotland. This was deliberate because in Europe, Indigeneity has been co-opted by white supremacists, who talk about indigeneity as, you know, 'Indigenous white people' being impacted by non-white people moving in to their country. My understanding is that Pro-independence politicians didn't want to invoke that scary xenophobic discourse, and I appreciate that. It's so dangerous to conflate that white supremacist narrative so dominant in Europe at the moment with indigeneity of people who were moved out of the way and whose lands were taken and who were brutally oppressed to enable Europeans to colonize their nation. However, I hope we can some day talk about how Scots do have a reciprocal relationship to the peoples that were colonized by them—including Indigenous peoples around the globe.
Decolonization in Europe
As a Métis scholar who has lived in Europe, what was your experience of attitudes toward Indigenous people? How would you like to see those conversations going forward?
I think that some people really truly do care about the impacts that European colonialism has had on the world. I think that there are care-full and accountable people everywhere, and I don't want to paint with too-broad brush strokes. However, in my time in Europe I had a keen experience of the disconnect between the visceral issues I see and experience and bear witness to at home—such as the direct and painful impacts of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Two Spirit People and Girls on Indigenous communities in Canada— and the way these issues are abstract, intellectual, distant in Europe. In Europe, I feel that the direct and visceral [ongoing!] colonial experiences of Indigenous peoples are attenuated by space and time. It's so hard to convey what these violent, painful issues lived and experienced by Indigenous peoples mean, in an embodied and lived sense, to Europeans when people in Europe are not physically present in our diverse and dynamic Indigenous territories in North America to see the impacts for themselves. In that sense, I think it becomes easy to romanticize and distort the ongoing colonial experience of Indigenous peoples, to not see the harm in appropriating Indigenous material culture or legal orders or stories. Whereas in Canada there is an ongoing legal-governance conversation about Indigenous nationhood and peoplehood, about the 'nation to nation' relationship that was acknowledged in the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples—in Europe there is none of this understanding of direct legal-governance accountability, reciprocity or indeed a very robust conversation about reconciliation (in all its nuances and complexities and problematics). So, I think that at the very least, the conversation needs to start with: colonialism is an ongoing imperative. We have ties that bind us across the ocean. Indigenous peoples are very much alive, to reference Thomas King's (2013) work in his book The Inconvenient Indian. I get the sense that many Europeans simply assume Indigenous peoples are what King calls 'dead Indians' (King 2013:53) and I think that many Europeans only want to deal with the idea of Indigeneity. But, the reality is that Indigenous peoples are very insistently ALIVE. And so the conversation needs to start from a) acknowledging how contemporary Europe still benefits from its colonial imperatives and b) understanding that any kind of contemporary conversation requires addressing Indigenous peoples as living and present.
The reality is that Indigenous peoples are very insistently ALIVE. And so the conversation needs to start from a) acknowledging how contemporary Europe still benefits from its colonial imperatives and b) understanding that any kind of contemporary conversation requires addressing Indigenous peoples as living and present.
What could 'decolonizing' European activism look like?
I think it starts with dealing with the deeply rooted ideologies that Europe exported in its colonial work. In the UK, I see the suffering and class hierarchies and exploitation of the downtrodden as a harmful series of ideologies forced onto other peoples/nations/societies around the globe. I see the logics that Canada's First Prime Minister, Glasgow-born John A. MacDonald, employed to send Indigenous children to residential school echoed in the 'welfare' (and that is really too generous a word for what the UK government is doing to the poor) policies of the UK government. So, for me, a 'decolonizing' European activism tackles the very intellectual and political and social theories and beliefs that were used to justify violence and dispossession around the world. It requires a conversation about what a generous, kind, caring governance and societal model would look like. It means stopping the needless suffering I saw in Europe—tackling the vicious anti-immigration rhetoric that pervades many European jurisdictions, tackling the angry anti-poor rhetoric used by the government. And dealing with ongoing racism in European institutions. Stuff like that. Loving accountability, if you will.
You are a prolific writer as well as an academic. How does your writing fit in with your academic pursuits? How do they compliment each other?
Writing is how I stay alive. It is a way of being and a way of rooting myself in place when I don't have a permanent home or place to attach myself to. I would say in that sense my writing is very much part of my Métis diasporic identity. It gives me a way to create home when that is something uncertain or unstable in my life. I also use my blog to write about things that do not directly relate to my research, so that I have a place to hold those thoughts while I work on other academic projects.
Writing is how I stay alive. It is a way of being and a way of rooting myself in place when I don't have a permanent home or place to attach myself to. I would say in that sense my writing is very much part of my Métis diasporic identity. It gives me a way to create home when that is something uncertain or unstable in my life.
How do ideas form that you want to write about? How do you start writing a piece, and what drives you when you write?
One of my friends noted in awe when something I wrote went viral—'you wrote that darn thing in an hour, didn't you?'. And it's true. I usually formulate ideas over an extended period of time, usually while I'm walking around. Walking is really important to me—it is when I sort out ideas and narratives. When I sit down to write something it's usually already roughly planned out in my head and then I just put it to paper (or blog). I write because I want to contribute to conversations about issues that matter. I write because I want there to be a place for divergent voices. I know that quite often what I am writing wouldn't make it through the regular channels. I love that blogs and social media are such a powerful medium for those not broadly represented in the physical make-up of the academy.
Looking to the future, what projects are you working on? Is there anything you've recently read that has inspired you?
I just started a tenure-track position so my current focus is on wrapping on the PhD and really digging my feet into my new role. I'm incredibly excited to start teaching. As for my work—I'm starting to plan out a new research project. I will be returning back to Alberta, to my home territory, to examine human-fish relationships there. To apply what I've learned to experiences and stories in my own homeland. So I am incredibly excited.
And the most recent thing I read that inspired me is Dr. Tracey Lindberg's debut novel Birdie. It is about Indigenous women's strength, power and resurgence. It left me awestruck.
Zoe Todd (@ZoeSTodd) (Red River Métis/Otipemisiwak) is a Lecturer at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada and a PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. She is a 2011 Trudeau Foundation Scholar. She researches human-fish relations, colonialism and Indigenous legal orders/governance in Canada.
Aaron Vansintjan studies ecological economics, food systems, and urban change. He is editor at Uneven Earth and enjoys journalism, wild fermentations, decolonization and degrowth, and long bicycle rides.
All photos in this article are by Aaron Vansintjan, photographed in Go Home Bay on Anishinaabe territory.
Posted in Indigenous, InterviewTagged anthropology, Bruno Latour, canada, decolonisation, decolonization, ecomodernism, indigenous, Métis, political ecology, Scotland, Scottish independence, urban planning, urban theory, Zoe Todd1 Comment on Decolonizing nature, the academy, and Europe