"We are fighting": Global Indigeneity
and Climate Change
MARTIN PREMOLI[*]
Recently,
numerous islands across the South Pacific have appeared in headlines for their increasingly
acute vulnerability to our global climate crisis.[1]
The most recent climate models predict that if the Earth warms by two degrees
Celsius, many low-lying islands (such as Tuvalu, Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and
the Maldives) will disappear beneath the ocean's rising water levels. Signs of
this possible future have already started to manifest: today, these island
communities face an onslaught of environmental problems linked to climate
change, such as fresh-water shortage, unpredictable and intensified storm
patterns, flooding, coral degradation, and the destruction of crucial foodways.
Even though these island nations have done little to set the global climate
crisis in motion, they are in many cases the first to feel the blowback of
climatological breakdown.
In response to the magnitude of this
crisis, islanders from the South Pacific have developed numerous forms of
aesthetics-based activism, drawing on creative expression to advocate for
climate justice. Their work emphasizes the necessity of bolstering climate
change discourse with questions of social justice and Indigenous sovereignty.
This can be seen, for instance, in the poetry of CHamoru poet, activist, and
scholar Craig Santos Perez. Over the past decade, Perez has emerged as one of
the leading voices from the Pacific for navigating the Anthropocene's submarine
futures. His work is often inspired by his ancestral and personal ties to
Guåhan (Guam), and he has received several prestigious literary awards for his
writing, such as the Pen Center USA/Poetry Society of America Literary Prize
(2011), the American Book Award (2015), and the Hawai'i Literary Arts
Council Award (2017).
Across his oeuvre, Perez draws on and
experiments with poetic form to explore the intersections of colonialism,
climate change, and Indigeneity. His excellent 2020 collection, Habitat
Threshold, serves as a useful case in point. In this collection, he draws
on a range of poetic forms (such as odes, sonnets, haikus, and elegies) to
frame, unsettle, and invigorate numerous environmental issues, including
species extinction, plastics pollution, nuclear toxicity, and food sovereignty.
His poems toggle between local and global scales, allowing for a diversity of
perspectives to emerge. As Eric Magrane writes in his review of Habitat Threshold,
"this is a vital book of ecopoetry: Perez is an essential voice in the face of
the ongoing and relentless intertwining of ecological and social calamities of
the Anthropocene/Capitalocene" (393).
As an example of his climate justice
based approach to Anthropocene discourse, we can turn to the climate change
visualization that launches Habitat Threshold. Perez begins his
collection of poems with a seemingly straightforward climate graph. This graph,
charting global sea-level rise, is based on the fifth assessment report
developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—an
organization that has deeply influenced the direction, tone, and outcome of
policy and public debates surrounding climate change.[2]
At first glance, Perez's reproduction of the graph appears to simply echo the
information found in the IPCC's fifth assessment report. His graph presents
readers with information pertaining to the issue of long-term sea level rise,
based on scenarios of greenhouse gas concentrations. Following the conventions
of a standard bar chart, the horizontal "X" axis functions as a timeline,
starting in the early 2000s and ending at the year 2100. Meanwhile, the
vertical "Y" axis measures sea level rise in meters. Reading these two axes in
relation to each other allows us to visualize sea level rise as it is projected
to occur in the future.
(Original) (Reproduction by
Perez)
Upon closer inspection, however, we
begin to notice how Perez has made crucial changes to the graph's content and form, pushing readers to re-think the graph's significance.[3]
This is clear, for example, through an examination of the graph's (re)titling. While
the IPCC's visualization of sea-level rise is titled "Global mean sea level
rise," Perez instead opts for a very different header: "We are not drowning..."
Those familiar with climate justice movements in the South Pacific will
immediately recognize this phrase as the rallying cry of the Pacific Climate
Warriors, whose Oceania-based activism protests the ongoing violence of Western
climate imperialism. As stated in an article by 350.org, climate activists
deploy this phrase to combat the "common perception that the Pacific Islands
are drowning from sea-level rise" and to remind people that "it's not yet time
to give up on the Islands" (Packard, "We are not drowning"). The effect of
Perez's re-titling is thus deeply significant: through this new (and
anti-colonial) title, Perez's graph challenges the reductionist tendencies of
the IPCC's official climate visualization, which reduces the complexity of
interactions between climates, environments, and
societies in order to predict a singular—and typically
apocalyptic—climate-changed future (Hulme, "Reducing the Future to
Climate" 247). (This is what geographer Mike Hulme has characterized as
"climate reductionism," which might be viewed as a variant of climate
determinism.) Rather, his graph insists on the importance of recognizing that
the future is not foreclosed and that struggles for life are still of paramount
importance.[4]
Through this formal innovation, then,
Perez points toward the disruptive and empowering potential of Indigenous
activism in the movement toward climate justice. His poem does not denounce or
deny the insights offered by positivist models of knowledge production (this
would be a dangerous maneuver in our current political climate), but it does
push back against the overriding tendencies toward extinction that so often
characterize graphs on climate change.[5] The poem thus demonstrates the potential that can
come from "entangling epistemologies": that is, integrating Eurowestern
positivism with "ways of knowing based in speculation, multigenerational
experience, social relations, metaphor and story, and the sensing and feeling
body" (Houser 5).[6] These "other
ways of knowing," Perez suggests, are crucial for combating climate injustice
and for preserving the lifeways of frontline communities in the South Pacific.
Of course, Perez is not alone in seeking
climate justice for Indigenous communities across Oceania. Numerous poets from
the region have highlighted the simultaneous risk and empowerment of Pacific
Islanders when faced with "sinking islands." In 2014, Marshallese poet and
activist, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, was invited to speak on the imperiled position
of the Marshall Islands for the opening ceremony of the United Nations
Secretary General's Climate Summit. During her opening remarks, Jetñil-Kijiner
argues that we "need a radical change in course" if we hope to tackle the
global climate crisis (1:43). She powerfully
elaborates on this point through a reading of her poem "Dear Matafele Peinam,"
an ode to her seven-month-old daughter and their vanishing home island. As
another example, during the UN Climate Conference in Paris, four spoken word poets—Terisa
Siagatonu, John Meta Sarmiento, Isabella Avila Borgeson, and Eunice
Andrada—performed creative pieces that called attention to the everyday
realities of climate disaster, while demanding a global response to the issue.
In her poem "Layers," Siagatonu asks her audience why "saving the environment rarely
means saving people who come from environments like mine, where black and brown
bodies are riddled with despair" (1:01).
While poetry has been a particularly
rich site for climate justice advocacy, artists from the South Pacific have
worked across the spectrum of aesthetic forms. This includes theatre and
performance-based awareness projects (as seen in the performance Moana: The
Rising of the Sea), film and documentary (see Anote's Ark), and
other modes of literary expression (Keri Hulme's short story "Floating Worlds,"
for instance). Rather than fulfilling the victimization narrative desired by
the traditional media, these cultural interventions highlight the simultaneous
risk and empowerment of Pacific Islanders when faced with "sinking islands"
(Ghosh "Poets Body as Archive"). And they foreground the values and insights
offered by Indigenous communities in combating the climate crisis. Through
their work, then, these artist-activists challenge, nuance, and re-write
narratives about the climate crisis—their work has become crucial for
navigating what Elizabeth DeLoughrey terms "the submarine futures of the
Anthropocene" ("Submarine Futures").
I begin with this quick overview of recent Oceania-based
climate activism and artistic uprisings as they speak to the motivating
concerns at the heart of this special issue of Transmotion. Around the
world, Indigenous communities are leading movements to redress and counteract
the violence of anthropogenic climate change, along with its driving forces of
colonialism and capitalism. These movements critically reflect on how Indigenous
peoples define their relationships to the land and water, to other humans and
non-humans, and to history and time in order to push back against the genocidal
wave of ecological violence. As
Jaskiran Dhillon puts it,
Indigenous peoples are challenging
structures of contemporary global capitalism, standing up and speaking out to
protect the land, water, and air from further contamination and ruination, and
embodying long-standing forms of relationality and kinship that counter Western
epistemologies of human/nature dualism. Indigenous peoples are mapping the contours
of alternative modes of social, political, and economic organization that speak
to the past, present, and the future—catapulting us into a moment of
critical, radical reflection about the substantive scope and limitations of
"mainstream environmentalism" (1).
This
issue of Transmotion builds on these insights, focusing on the
innumerable and profoundly consequential ways that Indigenous peoples have
shaped and contributed to debates surrounding the Anthropocene, particularly
through forms of storytelling and cultural production.
Our focus on stories resonates with
Donna Haraway's claim that "it matters what stories we tell to tell other
stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts,
what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what
stories make worlds, what worlds make stories" (12). In the spirit of this
sentiment, our contributors examine stories from a plurality of aesthetic forms, such as literature,
photography, film, and other related modes of creative expression. Drawing upon
their knowledge as scholars of literary and cultural studies, our contributors
tease out the ways in which Indigenous storytelling depicts the complex
negotiations of "nature" and "culture" in the Anthropocene. This special issue thus takes seriously
the Anishnaabe understanding that "stories are vessels of knowledge" and that,
as such, they "carry dynamic answers to questions" posed by various Indigenous
communities (Doerfler et al.)
Given the global scope of the climate
crisis, this issue of Transmotion focuses on the significance of
Anthropocene narratives in a global Indigenous arena. In operationalizing a
trans-Indigenous framework, we support Chadwick Allen's assertion that we must
undertake Indigenous-centered scholarship that reads Indigenous texts in
comparative terms, rather than in relation to a Eurowestern canon. Following
Allen, our aim is "not to displace the necessary, invigorating study of
specific traditions and contexts but rather to complement these by augmenting
and expanding broader, globally Indigenous fields of inquiry" (xiv). Across
disparate locales, we consider the potential that an anti- and decolonial
Anthropocene discourse can hold for transnational solidarity and global
Indigenous sovereignty. Our contributors reflect on how Indigenous artists and
activists reconcile the local exigencies of their environment with the global
discourse on climate change. Through
our deployment of a trans-Indigenous methodology, we hope to offer a
thought-provoking venue to explore the diverse and interrelated forms of
Indigenous creativity from across the globe.
In what follows, I begin by overviewing
some of the main interventions Indigenous thinkers have made in relation to
Anthropocene discourse, emphasizing their strategies for decolonizing,
problematizing, and unsettling dominant perspectives in this growing field.
This is not a comprehensive summary of the field, rather it is a survey
featuring some of the voices that have contributed to this vibrant conversation.
With this context established, I turn to the growing dialogue between
eco-critical and Indigenous literary studies to consider how these fields have
increasingly dialogued since the acceleration of Anthropocene thinking, and I
provide an overview of the scholarly contributions that comprise this special
issue.
Decolonizing the Anthropocene
The central theme of this issue has inspired a
significant amount of critical interest in recent years. Before discussing how aesthetic works,
in particular, have responded to discourse on the Anthropocene, it's useful to
map out how Indigenous scholars from a variety of disciplines have productively
engaged with and problematized discourse on the Anthropocene. The term
"Anthropocene" was coined and popularized by ecologist Eugene Stoermer and
atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen at the turn of the 21st century. In
their initial formulation of this term, the Anthropocene designates a newly
proposed geological epoch in which humans are considered a collective
geophysical force, responsible for drastic changes to the planet's overall
habitability. For the first time in Earth's history, humankind had altered the
planet's deep chemistry—its atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and
biosphere—in massive, long-lasting ways. Crutzen and Stoermer dated this
rupture to the late eighteenth century beginnings of the industrial revolution,
when unprecedented developments in trade, travel, and technology resulted in a
drastic increase in global concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane (which
are evident in recent analyses of air trapped in polar ice). Along with this
important historical moment, they further identify a "Great Acceleration" in
the mid-twentieth century, when human population, consumption, and greenhouse
gas emissions all skyrocketed. For these reasons, they argue that the "impact
of human activities on earth [across] all scales" has made it "more than
appropriate to emphasize the central role of mankind in geology and
ecology" (17).
Since its early formulation, the term has become the subject
of ever-growing critical debate. In particular, numerous critics have taken
issue with the term's tendency for generalization and abstraction: Crutzen and
Stoermer's hypothesis frames climate change as a problem caused by the human
species writ large (this is evident in the line referenced above). Moreover, their
framework obscures the ways in which environmental violence is
disproportionately created and differentially distributed, particularly along
the lines of race, class, and gender. To counteract these tendencies, scholars
across disciplines have theorized spinoff "-cenes," ones that more closely
inspect the historical processes and epistemologies that directly contributed
to anthropogenic climate change. Jason Moore's notion of the "Capitalocene"
identifies the global capitalist system—with its prioritization of
limitless growth and "cheap nature"—as the primary culprit in the
creation of climate vulnerability. Another influential alternative, the
"Plantationocene," links climate change to the transatlantic slave trade and
its afterlives. Developed by Sophie Moore and collaborators, this term
confronts the enduring legacies of plantations and unpacks the ways that these
integral sites were produced through processes of intensive land usage, land
alienation, labor extraction, and racialized violence (first indentured
servitude, and later slavery). These terms thus highlight the reality that "we
may all be in the Anthropocene, but we are not all in it in the same way"
(Nixon 8). And, moreover, they speak to the crucial implications of how we
define, delimit, and narrate our ecological and climatological crisis.[7]
Writing from an Indigenous studies
framework, Zoe Todd (Métis) and Heather Davis have offered one of the most
compelling reconceptualizations of the term. In their article, "On the
Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene," they examine the
ways that climate change discourse might productively shift if we reconsider
the Anthropocene's origin point. Challenging the typical mid-20th century
start-point, Davis and Todd propose linking the Anthropocene to the
Columbian exchange (1610). This is an important historical flashpoint, they
explain, for two reasons:
The first is that the amount of plants
and animals that were exchanged between Europe and the Americas during this
time drastically re-shaped the ecosystems of both of these landmasses, evidence
of which can be found in the geologic layer by way of the kinds of biomass
accumulated there. The second reason, which is a much more chilling indictment
against the horrifying realities of colonialism, is the drop in carbon dioxide
levels that can be found in the geologic layer that correspond to the genocide
of the peoples of the Americas and the subsequent re-growth of forests and
other plants (766).
In
other words, this moment is significant because it offers the kind of
"evidence" that geologists and scientists need for determining the onset of a
new geologic epoch. When large-scale events have occurred in the earth's deep
history (such as global cooling events), they leave a geologic marker that is
visible in the earth's sedimentary strata—this is referred to as a
"golden spike." In order to determine if the Anthropocene constitutes a new
epoch, scientists have endeavored to trace and locate a new golden spike within
the earth's geologic bedrock (and indeed, multiple "golden spikes" have been
proposed). As Kathryn Yusoff notes, this method operates as a disciplinary
endeavor to geologically map the material relation of space and time according
to stratigraphic principles and scientific precedents—and it is therefore
grounded in the distinctly positivist values inherent to a Eurowestern
scientific system (Yusoff, Chapter 2).
Todd and Davis find the aforementioned
moment to be significant for other reasons, however. Using a date that
coincides with colonialism in the Americas, they explain, allows us to
understand the nature of our ecological crisis as inherently ascribed to a
specific ideology that is animated by proto-capitalist logics based on
extraction and accumulation through dispossession. This process also entailed
the disruption of the kin relations that characterize Indigenous perspectives
and forms of knowledge. As they put it, the Anthropocene registers "a severing
of relations between humans and the soil, between plants and animals, between
minerals and our bones" (770).
These logics of accumulation and
dispossession, however, are not sequestered to a remote past. As Todd and Davis
observe, they continue to shape the present day, producing our current era of
growing climate destabilization. Today, the economic infrastructures of
settler-colonies around the world depend on extractive industries: natural
resources are transported to international markets "from oil and gas fields,
refineries, lumber mills, mining operations, and hydro-electric facilities
located on the dispossessed lands of Indigenous nations" (Coulthard "Thesis
2"). In many cases, cooperation between the federal government and private
businesses paves the way for these extractive processes, further cementing
settler control over the land while undermining Indigenous authority and sovereignty.[8]
In recent years, this has led to the frightening manifestation of what Ashley
Dawson describes as "extractivist populism," wherein the bigotry and repression
of authoritarian populism has combined with and amplified the ecocidal
intensification of resource extraction—both in the name of "progress" and
the "people's good" (Amatya and Dawson 6). These ongoing instances of energy
and resource extraction consistently highlight the recursive or cyclical nature
of climate violence, which cuts across linear conceptions of time and
straightforward notions of progress. To adapt the
words of Patrick Wolfe, settler colonialism as climate change is a structure
and not an event (388).
Beyond identifying capitalism and
colonialism as the core problematics of the Anthropocene, Indigenous scholars
have also stepped forward as central figures in providing alternatives to
climate colonialism, offering "both knowledge and leadership in understanding
and addressing environmental crises" (Deloria et al. 13). The Potawatomi
scholar and activist Kyle Whyte has dedicated much of his work to crafting what
he calls "Indigenous climate change studies," an Indigenous-based approach to
climate change. His formulation of Indigenous climate change studies is
supported by three basic tenets. First, climate change is an intensification of
the ways colonial structures of power have always shaped environments. Second,
Indigenous communities can better prepare for climate change by renewing
Indigenous knowledges, including languages, sciences, and forms of human and
nonhuman kinship. Third, the perspectives of Indigenous peoples who are already
adapting to the postapocalyptic conditions of colonialism changes the ways
these communities imagine futures affected by climate change. Together, these
elements yield a mode of praxis wherein one "perform[s] futurities that
Indigenous persons can build on in generations to come. [It is] guided by our
reflection on our ancestors' perspectives and on our desire to be good
ancestors ourselves to future generations (160).
Instances of Indigenous climate change
studies have proliferated as climate breakdown has accelerated, signaling the
salience and necessity of this approach. In one example, Whyte describes a
collaborative encounter between the state of Alaska and Koyukon people of
Koyukuk-Middle Yukon region in the Arctic. In order to navigate unprecedented
climatic shifts in the region, the state proposed hunting regulations on moose
that would hamper Indigenous harvesting practices. As an alternative, Koyukon
youth and elders drew upon their traditional knowledge of the seasonal round to
create an alternative system that displayed their own understanding of
seasonality. Ultimately, their seasonal wheel demonstrated that "shifting the
moose hunting season later so as to correspond with the Indigenous view of
seasonality makes more sense than the date proposed by state and federal
regulators" (218). The Yukon example thus illuminates the promising potential
of Indigenous climate change studies, and it illustrates the central role that
Indigenous self-determination must play in planning for climate change
adaptation.
Importantly, Whyte and other Indigenous
scholar-activists, have cautioned that these practices should not be utilized
as tools for last-ditch efforts at climate recovery. Numerous attempts at "integrating"
Indigenous knowledge systems (such as the work found in the "Our Common Future"
report) have often been reductive and appropriative in their approach. As
Leanne Simpson observes, Eurowestern environmentalists often believe that
"traditional knowledge and indigenous peoples have some sort of secret of how
to live on the land in a non-exploitative way that broader societies need to appropriate"
("Dancing the World into Being"). This kind of approach has the tendency to
romanticize Indigenous knowledge, reproducing stereotypes of the "ecological
Indian"—the "traditional" Native who lives in harmony with the untouched
environment. Moreover, Eurowestern approaches to Indigenous knowledge often
operate through a logic of intellectual extraction, in which knowledge is
removed from its context, from its originary language, and from traditional
knowledge holders. To counter the extractive and fetishistic tendencies of
mainstream environmentalism, it is crucial to cultivate a model of
"responsibility"—an environmentalist approach founded on respectful,
long-standing relationships with Indigenous people and with place ("Dancing the
World into Being").[9]
Finally, it is
crucial to recognize that decolonizing
Eurowestern environmentalisms is only part of what is necessary for advancing
an ecological model grounded in responsibility and humility. As Eve Tuck and K.
Wayne Yang explain (and as is suggested by both Whyte's and Simpson's emphasis
on place), decolonization must agitate for practices of restorative land
justice. In their article "Decolonization is not a metaphor," Tuck and Yang
argue that "decolonization in the settler colonial context must involve the
repatriation of land simultaneous to the recognition of how land and relations
to land have always already been differently understood and enacted; that is, all
of the land, and not just symbolically" (7). For Tuck and Yang, decolonization
cannot function as a stand-in for "the discourse of social justice"; instead,
it must aim to recover the Indigenous lands that were stolen by settlers
through numerous and ongoing appropriative strategies. In turn, land recovery
would then allow for the resurgence of "Indigenous political-economic
alternatives [that] could pose a real threat to the accumulation of capital in
Indigenous lands..." (Coulthard "Thesis 2").[10]
Such insights are crucial for developing an anti-colonial approach to the
Anthropocene: these scholars help us understand that implementing Indigenous
modes of environmental knowledge—which are tethered to
place—necessitates the dismantling of extractive capitalism and the
repatriation of Indigenous lands. Ignoring this reality impedes the restoration
of the life-ways, practices, and kinship networks that are necessary for living
responsibly in the midst of profound ecological change.
As this overview suggests,
Indigenous studies has already proven to be a pivotal site of exchange for
conversations surrounding the Anthropocene—and this critical work is only
continuing to grow and evolve as the climate crisis spins further out of
control. The various activists and intellectuals I have discussed above allow
for a fuller (and more accurate) picture of our current geological epoch to
come into view. Their work powerfully demonstrates the numerous ways that
capitalism and settler colonialism have ushered in our warming world—and
they illustrate how these violent logics are ongoing and evolving. Just as
importantly, however, these thinkers also emphasize how efforts for resistance
and resurgence are being led by Indigenous communities around the world. In
doing so, they push for an honest conversation regarding how we have found
ourselves in the throes of global environmental catastrophe—and,
possibly, how we can imagine a future freed from domination, and built instead
on a foundation of climatological justice.
EH, Indigenous Aesthetics,
and Climate Justice
The work of imagining futures anchored in climate
justice has been a primary endeavor for scholars in the environmental
humanities (and the subdiscipline of eco-criticism). As an interdisciplinary
(and sometimes anti-disciplinary) field, the environmental humanities "envision
ecological crises fundamentally as questions of socioeconomic inequality,
cultural difference, and divergent histories, values, and ethical frameworks"
(Heise 2). Rather than insist on the belief that science, data, or technology
can awaken us to the severity of our climate's breakdown, scholarship in EH
insists on emphasizing the political, social, cultural, and affective forms
that the climate problem takes in different communities, cultures, and
imaginaries (2). While scholars in EH acknowledge the importance of scientific
understanding and technological problem-solving, they also remind us that these
discourses are themselves colored by the disciplines that grant them power, and
that they "stand to gain by situating themselves in [a] historical and sociocultural
landscape" (2). The reality of this notion comes into clear view when we
consider the ongoing nature of the climate change "debate," particularly as it
has played out within the United States. As scholars such as Mike Hulme and
Dale Jamieson have shown, doubling down on the insights generated by the
scientific community does little to shift social and political opinion about
the climate crisis, especially when these insights remain disconnected from the
larger cultural contexts and histories that influence our ideas and experiences
of the climate (3). To dream of more sustainable futures, then, we must tap
into the capacities of narrative (and other humanistic disciplines) for
reimagining "the environment" and humankind's place within it.[11]
This special issue
approaches the environmental humanities from an Indigenous-oriented angle,
combing EH's interests in climate and narrative with the kinds of questions and
concerns I've outlined in this introduction's second section.[12] Scholars working at this critical
crossroads have already begun exploring some of the most crucial concerns
raised by Indigenous creative work. Much critical analysis, for instance, has
examined how different genres (such as the gothic, dystopian, or speculative)
assist us in navigating the specific epistemological and ontological challenges
posed by the jarring disruptions of the Anthropocene (Anderson, DeLoughrey, Dhillon). Other
work has documented the ways that Indigenous narratives intersect with and
inflect forms of environmental activism and protest (Cariou, Kinder, Streeby).
A growing body of literature considers the archival function of Indigenous
storytelling, tracing how these stories retain and transmit ecological
knowledge across long swathes of time (LeMenager, Perez). Other work has
discussed some of the ways that Indigenous narratives foreground questions of
multi-species kinship, gender and sexual equality, anti-racism, and
environmental justice in order to advance more equitable climate futures
(Adamson, Goeman). And most recently, a collection of scholars encourage us to
re-consider the
utility of the Anthropocene metric in and of itself: "the Anthropocene is a
narrative, one cooperatively composed and begging now for crowdsourced
revision, with sequels that are not linear or conclusive but alternately
recursive and speculative, plodding and precipitous, stale and untried" (Benson
Taylor 10). These are only some of the issues and insights examined by an
Indigenous-oriented ecocriticism—one that works toward the development of
a decolonial climate movement on a global scale.
Our special issue aims to further
explore such preoccupations and discover new points of critical reflection. We begin with an essay by Kasey Jones-Matrona on Jennifer Elise Foerster's Bright Raft in the Afterweather. In this essay, Jones-Matrona examines how Foerster's
poetry draws on Indigenous scientific literacies (that account for both human
and nonhuman knowledge) to re-map Creek lands, histories, and futures in the
Anthropocene. Jones-Matrona then connects these re-mapped cartographies to the
prospect of healing, arguing that, even in works with catastrophic themes and
settings, healing is a crucial aspect of Indigenous futurist work. In centering
the significance of healing, Jones-Matrona elucidates and "amplifies an
Indigenous-specific notion of the Anthropocene."
Through an examination of Ciro Guerra's Embrace of the Serpent, Holly May Treadwell explores and further develops
the notion of the Capitalocence (as theorized by Jason Moore). As Treadwell
explains, Embrace
of the Serpent rejects the
notion of the Anthropocene and its homogenous view of "human" activity,
explicitly demonstrating that it is specifically capitalism as an extension of
colonialism that is having such detrimental and violent effects on the climate.
Treadwell focuses specifically on the way that the Capitalocence, as depicted
in Embrace
of the Serpent, paves the
way for extinction on three fronts: "the extinction of people via forced labor,
decimation of land, murder, and dispossession; the extinction of Indigenous
cultures, comparing the personification, conservation, and kinship with nature,
to capitalism's commodification, exploitation, and demonization of nature; and
the extinction of nature itself via its domination and cultivation." Treadwell
closes their essay by asking how Indigenous knowledge might challenge the wave
of extinction propelled by the capitalization of nature.
Abdenour Bouich's essay on Tanya Tagaq's novel Split Tooth looks at the ways in which Tanya Tagaq's formally
inventive work critiques the destructive "developmental" ethos of colonial
capitalist modernity, which targets Indigenous Inuit peoples of Canada. In
particular, Bouich's reading focuses on the text's depiction of the ecological
disasters provoked by resource extraction and global warming brought about by
global capitalism and, in particular, Canadian capitalist expansionism in the
Arctic region. While accounting for the scale of such petro-violence, Split Tooth, Bouich contends, also employs
a variety of literary forms to catalyze the resurgence and the recovery of
"Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, and politics that have long been
dismissed by colonial discourses and narratives." In doing so, the text can be
read as what Daniel Heath Justice calls an Indigenous "wonderwork"—a
genre-crossing text grounded in the resilient worldviews of the Indigenous
Inuit of Nunavut.
In their essay on Celu Amberstone's novella
"Refugees," Fernando Pérez Garcia also considers the affordances of formal
experimentation, focusing on the decolonial possibilities of Indigenous
futurism. The article draws on Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's
and Glenn Coulthard's work on Indigenous resurgence to explore how the novella
comments on Canada's exploitative economic system, which relies heavily on the
extraction of natural resources and the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous
communities. According to Garcia, Indigenous futurist fiction not only provides
"Indigenous meaning to past and ongoing colonial experiences," but it projects
an Indigenous presence and epistemology into the future. "Refugees," in
particular, acts as a channel for the expression of possible collective
self-recognition through relationships based on reciprocity between human and
non-human forms of life. Such an imaginative endeavor—which envisions
sovereignty from Indigenous perspective—is central for conceptualizing
alternatives to environmental collapse.
Similar concerns are taken up by Kyle Bladow, in their
essay on Louise Erdrich's speculative novel, Future Home of the Living God. Bladow's essay assesses how "recent literary
depictions of Indigenous futurity coincide with grassroots activism that has
been ongoing for generations and that is finding new iterations in current
movements for climate justice and against settler colonial resource extraction."
Bladow coins the useful term "oblique cli-fi" to describe recent
post-apocalyptic novels, written by Indigenous writers, which feature
catastrophes that are not necessarily caused by climate change (but which have
been considered under a cli-fi rubric due to the increasingly close
relationship between climate change and catastrophe). Erdrich's oblique cli-fi
shows how responsibilities toward land and kin were never contingent upon permanent,
unchanging ecologies but instead exist in states of dynamism and change,
allowing for flexible re-creations of environmental stewardship. From this
perspective, Future
Home of the Living God envisions hopeful
prospects for a reservation community in an otherwise dystopian narrative.
Finally, Isabel Lockhart's contribution considers
the diverse work of Métis writer, scholar, documentary filmmaker, and
photographer Warren Cariou as a formal counterpoint to dominant representations
of the Athabasca tar sands. In contrast to the aerial aesthetics favored
by Canadian photographers, such as Edward Burtynsky and Louis Helbig, Cariou
favors literary and aesthetic forms that approximate the feel and smell of
tar. Crucially, this "from below" perspective on the tar sands not only seeks
to make sensible the impacts of the oil industry, but it also illuminates
Indigenous presence against the settler social relations that underpin
extraction in the region currently known as Alberta. Lockhart's essay thus
concludes with an examination of how Cariou develops an alternate, Indigenous
politics of action that switches, as they put it, from representation of bitumen
to relationships with bitumen. "By intervening directly in the use and
meaning of bitumen," Lockhart argues, "Cariou's practices offer us an
alternative to the terms of urgency, visibility, and action that so often frame
climate art."
These reflections, anchored in the rich field of
Indigenous literary studies, can help re-signify and reorient interdisciplinary
conversations about the Anthropocene, particularly when it is framed as a
product of longstanding colonial violence. Moreover, these contributions seek
to emphasize the necessity of centering Indigenous voices in conversations
about climate justice, sovereignty, and environmental sustainability, while
modeling generative approaches and methodologies for this endeavor. Such work
is crucial for attending to life-destroying and world-creating effects of the
colonial Anthropocene.
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