Settler disacclimatisation: Lisa Fink, ‘Unsettled Ecologies: Alienated Species, Indigenous Restoration, and U.S. Empire in a Time of Climate Chaos’, PhD dissertation, University of Oregon, 2024 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler disacclimatisation: Lisa Fink, ‘Unsettled Ecologies: Alienated Species, Indigenous Restoration, and U.S. Empire in a Time of Climate Chaos’, PhD dissertation, University of Oregon, 2024

14Jan24

Abstract: This dissertation traces environmental thinking about invasive species from Western-colonial, diasporic settlers of color, and Indigenous perspectives within U.S. settler colonialism. Considering environmental discourses of species invasion through the lens of settler colonialism helps us better understand how ideas about race, Indigeneity, and nature continue to shape invasion biology’s language and practices—which erase Indigeneity and contribute to the marginalization of those constructed as “alien” within dominant U.S. racial discourse. Synthesizing Indigenous Studies, Asian American Studies, and environmental humanities, I argue that dominant invasive species discourses and management practices contribute to a broader settler colonial project of maintaining control over Indigenous lands and waters. I emphasize that such species’ ecological, economic, and social impact directly results from colonialism and capitalism, which prompts a necessary shift in language from “invasive species” to alienated species, an alternative term I propose to signal this interconnection. Reading various media such as U.S. Congressional proceedings, popular science, YouTube videos, social media, and reality TV shows like Duck Dynasty, I demonstrate how dominant discourses of species invasion rely on racial logics of purity and colonial logics of possession to construct such species as alien Others against which nativity and whiteness are defined. Close readings of contemporary literature emerging from communities constructed as “alien,” such as Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats (1998) and Marwa Helal’s Invasive Species (2019), reveal that, far from being value-neutral, these mainstream discourses and practices have as much to do with colonialism and race as they do with biology. As a counterpoint, I investigate differences between Indigenous and settler-colonial understandings of species’ migration, emphasizing relationships between Indigenous and so-called “alien” communities under settler colonialism. Focusing on approaches by the Anishinaabeg and CHamoru, I highlight how Indigenous ecologies, ecological knowledge, and practices focus on the possibilities of emerging relations with alienated species and envision radical alternatives for imagining place, migration, and belonging. I identify these responses in interview data from fieldwork conducted with nine Anishinaabe nations and in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s (Potawatomi) Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) and Craig Santos Perez’s (CHamoru) from unincorporated territory [hacha] (2008).

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