April 25, 2016

Petteruti Lounge

Disrupting Settlement, Sex and Nature: An Indigenous Logic of Relationality

A Public Talk by Dr. Kim TallBear, University of Alberta.

We live in an era of decimation dubbed by some the “anthropocene.” Settler-colonial states such as the US and Canada disproportionately consume the world. As we reconsider violent human practices and conceive of new ways of living with Earth, we must interrogate the colonial reconfiguration of relations between humans and with nonhumans. This talk wove together diverse intellectual threads—older and newer indigenous intellectual work with conversations from feminist science studies, critical animal studies, political ecology and the new materialisms—in order to re-insert indigenous thought into contemporary conversations and research. The talk also interrogated settler sexuality and family constructs that have made both land and women into property, and portrayed indigenous family forms as dysfunctional. Indigenous peoples have been disciplined by the state according to a monogamist, heteronormative, marriage-focused, nuclear family ideal. Settler sexuality and its unsustainable family forms do not only harm humans, but they harm the earth. This talk considered how expansive indigenous kin relations, including with nonhumans, can be more emotionally, economically, and environmentally just.