Settler colonialism and the climate crisis: David Osborn, ‘Toward earthbound climate movements: The importance of understanding ontology and settler colonialism in engaging the climate crisis’, in Kristin Haltinner, Dilshani Sarathchandra (eds), Resolving the Climate Crisis: US Social Scientists Speak Out, Routledge, 2024 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonialism and the climate crisis: David Osborn, ‘Toward earthbound climate movements: The importance of understanding ontology and settler colonialism in engaging the climate crisis’, in Kristin Haltinner, Dilshani Sarathchandra (eds), Resolving the Climate Crisis: US Social Scientists Speak Out, Routledge, 2024

13May24

Abstract: Despite widespread mobilization on climate change, social movements have not engaged the roots – in worldviews and ways of being – of the climate crisis. In this chapter, settler colonialism is presented as an ongoing process in which relations are structured in such a way that climate change, itself part of a broader crisis of life, is created, allowed, and continued. Climate movements have a part to play in either constructing or contesting these dominant ways of being and exercising agency in the support of existing lifeways and in the creation of new ones. White settler people and White-dominant movements are identified as especially in need of change and are the focus of the chapter. Empirical research on the direct action climate movement in the Pacific Northwest is presented in which, for the mostly White settler respondents, there was an emergent transformation of worldviews and ways of being. These changes positively supported engagement in movement work even while lacking explicit discussion and development within the movement.

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