‘Alien. Invasive. Nuisance. Foreign. Noxious. Non-native. Exotic. Native.’: Sophie Duncan, ‘The Words We Use and The Worlds We Build’, Ethnobiology Letters, 9, 1, 2018, pp. 9–12 | settler colonial studies blog

‘Alien. Invasive. Nuisance. Foreign. Noxious. Non-native. Exotic. Native.’: Sophie Duncan, ‘The Words We Use and The Worlds We Build’, Ethnobiology Letters, 9, 1, 2018, pp. 9–12

22Jul18

Excerpt: Biologists shaped European colonization and European colonization shaped the future of biology. Colonization created racialized concepts of who is “native” to America and who is not, an “us versus them” mentality predicated on white supremacy. Identifying plants pre-1492 as “native” and post-1492 as “non-native” establishes a false narrative that American natural history began with the European invasion.

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