In this course, we will consider the genealogies, possibilities and predicaments of writing about indigenous peoples in ecology. In the past few decades, environmental organizations have increasingly emphasized the value of indigenous peoples? approaches to ecology, sometimes associating indigenous communities with tribalism, ecological wisdom and stewardship, the pre-modern, and a place that is crucial to culture and lifeways. In turn, in ecocriticism, such ideas of indigenous peoples as ?exemplary rainforest dwellers? are often dismissed as exploitative constructions and appropriations.
In this course, we will try to negotiate the problem of too easily embracing and speaking about indigenous approaches in ecology with the problem of too easily dismissing indigenous struggles in ecology as romantic, colonial constructions. Questions central to the course include: how do histories of colonialism and nation-state formation, as well as concepts of blood and race, structure and mark environmental literature? How do the politics of heritage, tradition, and authenticity define who belongs and who is excluded in environmental struggles? How are processes such as urbanization, globalization, political violence, and displacement figured into indigenous literatures about ecology?
We will read and view a range of interdisciplinary material drawing from novels, poetry, film, theory, selected UN documents, and activist writing, including from India, Aotearoa/ New Zealand, Australia, Samoa, and the Pacific coast of North America. Among these materials, we will centralize indigenous literatures, asking how they might pick up on and create what is unexpected, unanticipated, excluded and made more precarious in both politics and environmentalism. |
