Environmental Justice through a Decolonial Lens

WEBINAR SERIES 2023 | The Indigenous Gaze: decolonising visual cultures

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ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE THROUGH A DECOLONIAL LENS

Spring Ulmer

Dina Gilio-Whitaker argues that environmental justice must be indigenized, “capable of a political scale beyond the homogenizing, assimilationist, capitalist State,” and, therefore, “requires the use of a different lens, one with a scope that can accommodate the full weight of the history of settler colonialism, on one hand, and embrace differences in the ways Indigenous peoples view land and nature, on the other” (As Long as Grass Grows, 2019). With a nod to Secwepemc grand chief George Manuel’s 1974 coining of the term “Fourth World,” Gilio-Whitaker favors the term “fourth world nations” over “Indigenous nations” as it de-emphasizes the state and repositions Indigenous peoples into self-determining peoples (“Idle No More and Fourth World,” 2015). Māori filmmaker Barry Barclay similarly theorizes “Fourth Cinema” as a flexible space in which…