Indigenous Radical Resurgence and Elemental Cartographies
As we bear witness to the wastelanding of the earth by late liberal settler capital, now taking the form of melting glaciers, rising seas, acidification of the ocean, extended droughts, pulse flood events, the extinction of species, Indigenous peoples have been working to green the earth once more. Indigenous land-based governance is an arrangement of life premised on the laws of the elements, which supercede the profit-driven motives of the laws of humans. Rather than seeing climate change as apocalyptic, we can see that climate change is leading to the demise of capitalist economies of scarcity, making way for Indigenous economies of abundance.
As Anishnaabe writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson explains, Indigenous radical resurgence is based on reciprocal relationships between humans and the more-than-human worlds. We will begin the course by reading Simpson’s beautiful book, As We Have Always Done, which documents a conversation where Simpson convinced Naomi Klein that it was not enough to critique extractivism:the larger problem is capitalism, leading Klein to retitle her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. We will read the work of a range of Indigenous writers, artists and scholars, including Potawatomi writer Robin Wall Kimmerer’s personal essays in Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants (2015), Australian aboriginal writer Alexis Wrights’ novel The Swan Book (2018), Diane Wilson’s The Seedkeeper (2021), and Solomon Enos’ artwork.
We will then turn to Hawai’i to consider the literary representations of the work of Kanaka Maoli and their settler allies who advocate for working with the elements, not against them. My book, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, maps the stands that Kānaka Maoli have taken four major land struggles in Hawaiʻi: a light industrial park in Lualualei, the birthplace of Māui, the proposal to construct the Thirty-Meter Telescope, an eighteen-story observatory on the sacred lands of Mauna a Wākea, and maps used by restoration projects at Hoʻoulu ʻĀina in Kalihi and Paepae o Heʻeia at the Hale o Meheanu fishpond in Heʻeia Uli. The restoration projects of these places in have led to cascading impacts that work against climate change.
Kahoʻolawe can be seen as a microcosm of the military and corporate Anthropogenic impacts upon the earth. We will look to literary representations of the element of the wind and how mapping the winds is critical to the work of Kanaka Maoli who are regreening the island of Kaho’olawe, which had been used as a military target for fifty years. We will look to the mele that map the 300 winds of Kahoʻolawe and moʻolelo serialized in Hawaiian language newspapers, including Moses Kuaea Nakuina’s 1902 account, The Wind Gourd of Laʻamaomao.
In this course, students will be building their own archive, curating literary texts and visual images illustrating ancestral knowledges from different cultures that help us to make key interventions into climate change.
Possible Required Texts:
1) Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
2)Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done
3) Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants (2015)
4) Alexis Wright, The Swan Book (2018)
5) Diane Wilson, The Seedkeeper (2021)
6) Moses Manu, He Moolelo Kaao o Keaomelemele / The Legend of Keaomelemele (1906)
7) Candace Fujikane, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai’i (2021)
8) Moses Nakuina, The Wind Gourd of La’amaomao
9) Pualani Kanaka’ole Kanahele and the Edith Kanaka’ole Foundation, Kīhoʻihoʻi Kānāwai: Restoring Kānāwai for Island Stewardship (2009)
Other readings will be uploaded to Laulima.
Students will conduct independent research and will be assigning their research findings as course readings for the last third of the course.
Course Requirements
- 15-page research project (35%)
- Three-page project proposal with annotated bibliography that will grow into the research project (10%)
- 2 3-page papers (10% and 15%)
- Short assignments that will become parts of your research project (20%)
- Peer-editing (5%)
- Final exam (5%)