Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate
- The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Historical Shifts in Climate Consciousness
- Part II Current Issues in Climate Change Criticism
- Part III Ways of Telling Climate Stories
- Part IV Dialogic Perspectives on Emerging Questions
- Science Fiction and Future Fantasies
- Collective Climate Action
- Love Letters to the Planet
- Diverse Indigenous Voices on Climate
- 17 Climate Change and Indigenous Sovereignty in Pacific Islanders’ Writing
- 18 Literary Responses to Indigenous Climate Justice and the Canadian Settler-State
- Redefining ‘the Real’
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
18 - Literary Responses to Indigenous Climate Justice and the Canadian Settler-State
from Diverse Indigenous Voices on Climate
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 March 2022
- The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate
- The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Historical Shifts in Climate Consciousness
- Part II Current Issues in Climate Change Criticism
- Part III Ways of Telling Climate Stories
- Part IV Dialogic Perspectives on Emerging Questions
- Science Fiction and Future Fantasies
- Collective Climate Action
- Love Letters to the Planet
- Diverse Indigenous Voices on Climate
- 17 Climate Change and Indigenous Sovereignty in Pacific Islanders’ Writing
- 18 Literary Responses to Indigenous Climate Justice and the Canadian Settler-State
- Redefining ‘the Real’
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
Summary
Within a context of cultural- and land-based Indigenous resurgence, contemporary Indigenous writers, artists, theorists, and activists have made the settler-state and extraction economy of Canada a flashpoint of the global climate emergency. Indigenous peoples often exist on the front lines of climate change, finding their lives and livelihoods threatened by the effects of rising temperatures even as they have been excluded from many of the benefits afforded by carbon-intensive economies. This chapter examines how Indigenous writers place climate change within a long, ongoing history of colonial resource appropriations, ecological loss, and violent suppression of Indigenous bodies and cultures in Canada. The chapter also addresses the diverse ways they respond to its challenges, including: crafting texts and practices of political dissent, solidarity-building, and land reoccupation; grounding present experiences in enduring stories of Indigenous response to environmental and political change; and refashioning genres such as science fiction, horror, or post-apocalyptic imaginaries to explore Indigenous futurisms in a climate-altered world. Above all, Indigenous writers make clear that climate change cannot be extricated from decolonisation and matters of sovereignty. The restoration of Indigenous lands and land-based ways of knowing is the starting point for the pursuit of climate justice.
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- The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate , pp. 269 - 280Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022