scholarly journals Rewilding, "the Hoop," and Settler Apocalypse

The Trumpeter ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-146
Author(s):  
Bruno Seraphin
Keyword(s):  
Great Basin ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Columbia Plateau ◽  
Ongoing Work ◽  
Environmental Thought ◽  
To Come

This paper presents an ethnographic account of a grassroots network of mostly white-identified nomads who travel in the northwest United States’ Great Basin and Columbia Plateau regions. Living mostly on National Forest land, this movement of “rewilders” appropriates local Indigenous peoples’ traditional ecological knowledge in order to gather and replant wild foods in a seasonal round that they refer to as the “Sacred Hoop.” I discuss the Hoop network in order to explore the environmental ethics of a group that is at once strikingly unique and also an embodiment of the problems of settler colonialism within the broader environmentalist movement. I begin by introducing the group's ecologies and ethics, and subsequently move into an examination of the multiple and sometimes-contradictory lines of apocalyptic narrative logic at work in Hoopster discourse. I assert that the Hoopsters’ conflicting accounts of the Anthropocene, and the temporality of its disasters, are a manifestation of their ongoing work grappling with their own racial positionality. Despite the Hoopsters’ uncompromising critiques of colonialism, capitalism, and environmental exploitation, they struggle to come to terms with their role in ongoing colonialism and the marginalization of Indigenous peoples. In this way, the Hoopsters echo the troubled narratives at work in broader North American environmental thought, which consistently reveres the idea of Indigenous cultures while failing to enter into solidarity relationships with contemporary Indigenous communities and their efforts toward decolonization.

scholarly journals Protecting Intellectual Property Rights and Traditional Ecological Knowledge: A Critical Look at Peru's Law 27811

2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-79
Author(s):  
Michelle Hak Hepburn
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Traditional Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Protecting Intellectual Property ◽  
San Martín

The Peruvian government's Law N. 27811, an intellectual property law passed in 2002 and designed to register and protect traditional knowledge, provides productive opportunities for critical analysis. Framed within the trajectory of international intellectual property rights and discussions that complicate the integration of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) into Cartesian scientific frameworks, this paper critically examines how the Peruvian law has been implemented and its impacts in Indigenous communities, particularly in the Andean Amazon region. The analysis is based on the author's work assisting Indigenous communities in San Martin register their knowledge through this law. While the law represents an advanced legal attempt to address power inequalities, it remains problematic. It does not address the impoverishment of Indigenous Peoples and continues to subordinate Indigenous TEK to Cartesian science. Although it is a symbolic recognition of the value of Peruvian Indigenous Peoples, other mechanisms are still required to redress the long history of colonization and racism.

Defiant Indigeneity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Nohelani Teves
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Native Hawaiian ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Kanaka Maoli ◽  
The Face ◽  
Hawaiian Literature ◽  
The Way

"Aloha" is at once the most significant and the most misunderstood word in the Indigenous Hawaiian lexicon. For Kānaka Maoli people, the concept of "aloha" is a representation and articulation of their identity, despite its misappropriation and commandeering by non-Native audiences in the form of things like the "hula girl" of popular culture. Considering the way aloha is embodied, performed, and interpreted in Native Hawaiian literature, music, plays, dance, drag performance, and even ghost tours from the twentieth century to the present, Stephanie Nohelani Teves shows that misunderstanding of the concept by non-Native audiences has not prevented the Kānaka Maoli from using it to create and empower community and articulate its distinct Indigenous meaning. While Native Hawaiian artists, activists, scholars, and other performers have labored to educate diverse publics about the complexity of Indigenous Hawaiian identity, ongoing acts of violence against Indigenous communities have undermined these efforts. In this multidisciplinary work, Teves argues that Indigenous peoples must continue to embrace the performance of their identities in the face of this violence in order to challenge settler-colonialism and its efforts to contain and commodify Hawaiian Indigeneity.

Kaitiakitanga: Maori perspectives on conservation

1995 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mere Roberts ◽  
Waerete Norman ◽  
Nganeko Minhinnick ◽  
Del Wihongi ◽  
Carmen Kirkwood
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
World View ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Conservation Movement ◽  
Indigenous Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Indigenous Conservation ◽  
Cultural Responses

Maori, like other indigenous peoples, are increasingly involved in attempts to provide appropriate cultural responses to environmental issues. These include efforts to translate and incorporate isolated parts of their language and traditional practises into the prevailing culture. Major problems with this process are the incommensurability of such attempts whereby the real meaning of a custom or word is frequently debased and divorced from its traditional cultural setting, so that its proper functioning is impaired. Added to this is the ignorance on the part of many concerning the conceptual world view, traditional beliefs and practices of the Maori ? or, if knowing these things, a lack of respect for their validity. On the other hand there are some, especially among the modern conservation movement, who have a more empathetic attitude towards indigenous ecological knowledge, but who thereby assume that their environmental ethics and those of indigenous peoples are motivated by similar philosophies and share similar aims. Not only is this assumption often wrong, it may also contribute to the inability of the western conservation movement to properly serve the needs of, and to fully empower, indigenous conservation aspirations as guaranteed to Maori under the Treaty of Waitangi. This paper addresses some of these issues by providing Maori perspectives on an increasingly important environmental concept: that of kaitiaki, and kaitiakitanga.

“The decision you make today will affect many generations to come”: Environmental assessment law and Indigenous resistance to urbanization

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 807-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Darrah-Okike
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Native Hawaiian ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Environmental Assessments ◽  
Indigenous Resistance ◽  
To Come ◽  
Land Struggle

In the early 2000s, the rural and predominantly Native Hawaiian Moloka‘i community faced another episode in a decades-long struggle against the commodification of sacred lands in the context of settler colonialism. In this paper I analyze a decisive moment in the land struggle: a public hearing over a legally mandated environmental impact assessment. Environmental assessments promise to improve environmental outcomes via public participation, but have often fallen short as a means to assert the values and interests of Indigenous communities. This paper adds insight into why this happens and shows how one community overcame the political limitations of the environmental assessments process. Through an analysis of public records and interview data, I show how corporate landowners engaged in extensive community consultation to pursue their commercial interests, in anticipation of the environmental assessments and in hopes of securing land-use approvals. However, in response, community members articulated Indigenous values and agency within (and beyond) a legal setting and environmental review process partially at odds with such values. I argue that defenders of a culturally sacred place, Lā‘au Point, both deployed and resisted Hawai‘i’s land-use and environmental laws. They leveraged the formal legal criteria of the environmental review process, yet they affirmed cultural meanings and relationships of moral responsibility to land by deploying multiple literacies—legal literacies as well as land and culture-based literacies—to protect a cherished place. Overall, this case study reveals the diversity, complexity, and resilience of Native Hawaiian resistance to urbanization and settler colonialism.

scholarly journals Values, Knowledge, and Rights Shaping Land Use in the Peruvian Amazon

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariaelena Huambachano ◽  
Lauren Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Land Management ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Peruvian Amazon ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Holistic Understanding

In the midst of climate change, population growth, and global food crisis scenarios, efforts to succeed in Sustainable Land Management (SLM) implementation are under enormous pressure. To contextualize Indigenous experiences on nature valuation in light of sustainable development efforts, we explored how the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of two Indigenous communities interacted with major land policies with sustainability implications through an ethnographic and community-based participatory research approach. Data collection tools included talking circles, storytelling, unstructured interviews, and participant observation with Indigenous community members of Shimaa and Diamante to understand how two major land management policies intersect in SLM, Indigenous values, TEK, and rights in the Peruvian Amazon. In complementation with secondary literature assessing the focal policies, the empirical data analysis, through a lens of TEK, provides a deeper examination of Indigenous peoples’ ways of knowing. Research findings show that TEK of Indigenous peoples can support values of nature and shape the design and implementation of SLM policies by incorporating Indigenous peoples’ holistic values of nature (e.g., relational and intrinsic values) and methods for sustainable and equitable land management, with improved outcomes for communities. However, the TEK of Indigenous peoples, values of nature, and rights can be at odds with the Eurocentric-oriented SLM in terms of values placed on nature, and results in a disconnection between international and national policy goals with realities at the local levels. This study concludes that to fully realize the objectives of SLM, it is imperative for decision makers to recognize the TEK of Indigenous peoples rooted in a holistic understanding of the multiple values attributed to nature, which resonates with the notion of a plural approach to valuing nature. Further, methods should include land management practices that are beneficial for such communities and not strictly for the production of goods for societal consumption, however long it may be sustained into the future. Such a management scheme would value ecologic stability, community resilience, and a wide range of human-nature values while still recognizing development needs.

Grounding Indigenous Teacher Education Through Red Praxis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Garcia ◽  
Valerie Shirley ◽  
Sandy Grande
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Education ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Theory And Model ◽  
Indigenous Teachers

Red Praxis centers Indigenous sovereignty rooted in epistemological and ontological orientations to place—to land. Applying Red Praxis requires teachers to understand, in greater detail, the ways in which settler and Indigenous ontologies represent not only different but also competing ways of being in the world. Red Praxis asks teachers to reconceptualize an intellectual space that reaffirms, reclaims, and (re)stories our relations to land as a decolonial practice and pedagogy of refusal. Red Praxis calls for Indigenous teachers and community educators to ground teaching in decolonial practices and aims to regenerate a sense of hope in rebuilding Indigenous communities. The exigencies of Red Praxis can be found within Indigenous teachers’ application of critical Indigenous theories and ongoing acknowledgement and protection of our relationship to land—the origin for our claim to exist as Indigenous peoples. In doing so, Red Praxis is about creating curriculum and enacting pedagogy that makes evident and mitigates the impact of settler colonialism on Indigenous communities’ knowledge systems and ways of being. Red Praxis is an extension of Sandy Grande’s theory and model of Red pedagogy. Grande proposed the pedagogical framework of Red pedagogy to rethink the ways in which teaching can confront the challenges Indigenous communities face in the 21st century. Red pedagogy is about critically analyzing the material realities resulting from the settler colonial project and creating decolonial spaces of resistance, hope, self-determination, and transformative possibility in Indigenous education. In addition to addressing structural issues, it is important for Indigenous teachers to address what is taught in schools—the curriculum—as well as how it is taught—pedagogy—as key factors in revitalizing and transforming Indigenous education.

scholarly journals Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Ocean Observing: A Review of Successful Partnerships

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
MaryJane Proulx ◽  
Lydia Ross ◽  
Christina Macdonald ◽  
Shayla Fitzsimmons ◽  
Michael Smit
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Traditional Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Global Ocean ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Knowledge Cultures ◽  
Ocean Observing ◽  
Ocean Observing Systems ◽  
Observing Systems

Understanding and management of the marine environment requires respect for, and inclusion of, Indigenous knowledge, cultures, and traditional practices. The Aha Honua, an ocean observing declaration from Coastal Indigenous Peoples, calls on the ocean observing community to “formally recognize the traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples,” and “to learn and respect each other’s ways of knowing.” Ocean observing systems typically adopt open data sharing as a core principle, often requiring that data be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). Without modification, this approach to Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) would mean disregarding historical and ongoing injustices and imbalances in power, and information management principles designed to address these wrongs. TEK from global ocean observing is not equitable or desirable. Ocean observing systems tend to align with settler geography, but their chosen regions often include Indigenous coastal-dwelling communities that have acted as caretakers and stewards of the land and ocean for thousands of years. Achieving the call of Aha Honua will require building relationships that recognize Indigenous peoples play a special role in the area of ocean stewardship, care, and understanding. This review examines the current understanding of how Indigenous TEK can be successfully coordinated or utilized alongside western scientific systems, specifically the potential coordination of TEK with ocean observing systems. We identify relevant methods and collaborative projects, including cases where TEK has been collected, digitized and the meta(data) has been made open under some or all the FAIR principles. This review also highlights enabling factors that notably contribute to successful outcomes in digitization, and mitigation measures to avoid the decontextualization of TEK. Recommendations are primarily value- and process-based, rather than action-based, and acknowledge the key limitation that this review is based on extant written knowledge. In cases where examples are provided, or local context is necessary to be concrete, we refer to a motivating example of the nascent Atlantic Regional Association of the Canadian Integrated Ocean Observing System and their desire to build relationships with Indigenous communities.

From Montserrat to Settler-Colonial Australia: the Intersecting Histories of Caribbean Slave-owning Families, Transported British Radicals, and Indigenous Peoples

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Curthoys
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
British Government ◽  
Intersecting Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Family Groups

Abstract When the British government abolished slavery in the Caribbean and compensated the slave-owners, some of the beneficiaries and/or their children and grandchildren went to Australia to make a new life and if possible a new fortune. This essay traces the history of one such family, the Shiells of Montserrat, alongside two other contemporaneous histories – that of Yorkshire radical and convict, John Burkinshaw, and his family, into which one of the Shiells married, and that of the several Indigenous communities these families encountered. Through the experiences of these disparate and intersecting family groups, we can gain insight into both the lived experience and the wider imperial context of the expansion of Australian settler colonialism.

Climate Change Communication and Indigenous Publics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candis Callison
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Development Economic ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Climate Agreements

Indigenous experiences with climate change have become increasingly visible through media stories of rising sea levels, heavy storms, and coastal erosion due to climate change in places as different as Tuvula in the South Pacific and Shishmaref in the Alaskan Arctic. Despite these bursts of attention, indigenous concerns and experiences have not been well or diversely represented in media coverage, nor have they been consistently studied in media scholarship—nor until recently, have indigenous people or knowledge been mentioned in major climate agreements and scientific assessments. There is, however, a growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship that draws on indigenous knowledge, experiences, and activism related to climate change. Indigenous peoples comprise 5% of the world’s population and live in over 90 countries around the world. Because indigenous communities are often located outside major urban centers, indigenous peoples are likely to suffer disproportionately from the impacts of climate change. Many indigenous people live in close connection with the ecosystems in their region, and collectively held Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is passed down through multiple generations, providing in-depth, systematic, meaningful, and historically informed views of climate change and potential pathways for resilience and adaptation. Indigenous people have often been portrayed in media coverage as victims with little attention paid to TEK, communal resilience, human rights and climate justice frameworks, or the historical contexts that may amplify climate change impacts. While indigenous people have diverse circumstances and histories, many are likely to have suffered enormous upheaval in recent centuries due to colonialism, resource development, economic shifts, loss of human rights, and lack of self-determination. Climate change often intensifies existing vulnerabilities and risks. These deeply intertwined social and environmental crises create distinct challenges for considering how and what climate change means for diverse indigenous peoples, how to address it at all levels of governance, and how media can and should be accountable to and represent indigenous publics.

Indigenous Feminist Notes on Embodying Alliance against Settler Colonialism

Meridians ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-357
Author(s):  
Maile Arvin
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Native Hawaiian ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
Native Hawaiians ◽  
Kanaka Maoli ◽  
Environmental Destruction ◽  
Asian Settler Colonialism ◽  
Foundational Work

Abstract How can we enact meaningful forms of solidarity across Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities? This essay, which focuses specifically on the context of settler colonialism in Hawaiʻi, examines existing or potential alliances between Indigenous feminisms and transnational feminisms. Written from a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) feminist perspective, the essay looks to the foundational work of Kanaka Maoli scholar-activist Haunani-Kay Trask as a too often overlooked theorist of settler colonialism writ broadly. The essay also looks more specifically at Trask’s theorizing of Asian settler colonialism in the Hawaiʻi context, in relation to contemporary examples of conflicts between Native Hawaiians and the state, as well as Native Hawaiian activists and white feminists. Overall, the essay questions how reframing Asian settler colonialism in more concerted conversation with Indigenous feminisms and transnational feminisms might provide space to move our practices of solidarity against settler colonialism, imperialism, nativism, militarization, and environmental destruction into a generative space for Kānaka Maoli and non-Indigenous peoples alike.

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