The vulnerability of settler ideas about Indigenous vulnerability: Kirsten Vinyeta, Ikpíkyav (To Fix Again): Drawing from Karuk World Renewal to Contest Settler Discourses of Vulnerability, PhD dissertation, University of Oregon, 2022 | settler colonial studies blog

The vulnerability of settler ideas about Indigenous vulnerability: Kirsten Vinyeta, Ikpíkyav (To Fix Again): Drawing from Karuk World Renewal to Contest Settler Discourses of Vulnerability, PhD dissertation, University of Oregon, 2022

18Aug22

Abstract: Klamath River Basin of Northern California has historically been replete with fire-adapted
ecosystems and Indigenous communities. For the Karuk Tribe, fire has been an indispensable tool
for both spiritual practice and ecological stewardship. Over the last century, the Tribe’s ability to
burn has been severely repressed by the United States Forest Service occupation of Karuk Ancestral
Territory. Only in recent decades has the federal agency come around to recognize the ecological
value of fire, subsequently seeking partnerships with the very Indigenous communities it once
delegitimized. This dissertation concerns itself with a critical examination of scientific and political
discourses of Indigenous vulnerability. My findings reveal how the settler state employs settler
colonial and racist logics to justify ongoing Indigenous dispossession. The irony is, of course, that
climate change and the contemporary wildfire crisis have been produced by settler colonialism. This
dissertation therefore also contests settler discourses of vulnerability by illustrating the complexity,
relationality, and resilience that characterizes Karuk World Renewal, the epistemological and spiritual
backbone of Karuk land management. In doing so, I make the case for the value of visual methods,
and specifically illustration, in serving the nascent field of Indigenous environmental sociology.

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