1

Indigenous Climate Change Studies: Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene

Kyle Whyte
Forthcoming 2017 in English Language Notes.
Introduction
Indigenous and allied scholars, knowledge keepers, scientists, learners, change-makers,
and leaders are creating a field to support Indigenous peoples’ capacities to address
anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change. Provisionally, I call it Indigenous climate change
studies (Indigenous studies, for short, in this essay). The studies involve many types of work,
including Indigenous climate resiliency plans, such as the Salish-Kootenai Tribe’s Climate
Change Strategic Plan that includes sections on “Culture” and “Tribal Elder Observations,”
policy documents, such as the Inuit Petition expressing “the right to be cold,” conferences, such
as “Climate Changed: Reflections on Our Past, Present and Future Situation,” organized by the
Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Working Group, and numerous declarations and academic
papers, from the Mandaluyong Declaration of the Global Conference on Indigenous Women,
Climate Change and REDD+ to a special issue of the scientific journal Climatic Change devoted
to Indigenous peoples in the U.S. context. i
Indigenous studies often reflect the memories and knowledges that arise from Indigenous
peoples’ living heritages as societies with stories, lessons, and long histories of having to be well-
organized to adapt to seasonal and inter-annual environmental changes. At the same time, our
societies have been heavily disrupted by colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization. Regarding
Indigenous peoples in the Arctic, Callison writes that climate change is “Understood as an
emergent form of life… climate change presents the need for excavation and reassessment of
what a recognition of climate change portends for those who have endured a century of immense
cultural, political and environmental changes.” ii Indigenous studies, then, arise from memories,
knowledges, histories, and experiences of oppression that differ from many of the nonindigenous
scientists, environmentalists, and politicians who are prominent in the framing of the issue of
climate change today.
As a Potawatomi scholar-activist working on issues Indigenous people face with the U.S.
settler state, I perceive at least three key themes reflected across the field that suggest distinct
approaches to inquiries into climate change:
1. Anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is an intensification of environmental
change imposed on Indigenous peoples by colonialism.

2. Renewing Indigenous knowledges, such as traditional ecological knowledge, can bring

together Indigenous communities to strengthen their own self-determined planning for
climate change.

3. Indigenous peoples often imagine climate change futures from their perspectives (a) as
societies with deep collective histories of having to be well-organized to adapt
environmental change and (b) as societies who must reckon with the disruptions of
historic and ongoing practices of colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization.
In engaging these themes, I will claim, at the end, that Indigenous studies offer critical,
decolonizing approaches to how to address climate change. The approaches arise from how our
ways of imagining the future guide our present actions.
2

Back to the Future: Climate Change as Intensified Colonialism

Colonialism refers to a form of domination in which at least one society seeks to exploit
some set of benefits believed to be found in the territory of one or more other societies, from farm
land to precious minerals to labor. Exploitation can occur through military invasion, slavery, and
settlement. Colonialism often paved the way for the expansion of capitalism, or an economic
ideology based on wage-labor that prioritizes growth in monetary profits for the owners of assets
as the underlying focus, incentive, and purpose of major human social endeavors. iii
Together, colonialism and capitalism then laid key parts of the groundwork for
industrialization—or carbon-intensive economics—which produce the drivers of anthropogenic
climate change, from massive deforestation for commodity agriculture to petrochemical
technologies that burn fossil fuels for energy. The colonial invasion that began centuries ago
caused anthropogenic environmental changes that rapidly disrupted many Indigenous peoples,
including deforestation, pollution, modification of hydrological cycles, and the amplification of
soil-use and terraforming for particular types of farming, grazing, transportation, and residential,
commercial and government infrastructure.
Colonially-induced environmental changes altered the ecological conditions that
supported Indigenous peoples’ cultures, health, economies, and political self-determination.
While Indigenous peoples, as any society, have long histories of adapting to change, colonialism
caused changes at such a rapid pace that many Indigenous peoples became vulnerable to harms,
from health problems related to new diets to erosion of their cultures to the destruction of
Indigenous diplomacy, to which they were not as susceptible prior to colonization. Indigenous
peoples often understand their vulnerability to climate change as an intensification of colonially-
induced environmental changes.
Scientific syntheses, including the U.S. National Climate Assessment and
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment reports, provide evidence that
anthropogenic climate change affects Indigenous peoples earlier and more severely than other
populations. Indigenous peoples, for example, are already among the first “climate refugees” in
regions such as the Arctic or Pacific where sea-level rise is occurring. iv Climate change affects
the integrity of Indigenous cultures and economies as the habitats change for species such as
salmon that are important to Indigenous cultures, health, and economies. v
Shifting habitats and climate-induced displacement have implications for Indigenous self-
determination. They can offset agreements with nations over designated harvesting areas, such as
treaties, that are difficult to renegotiate with more powerful nation-state parties who are heavily
influenced by corporations and constituencies of citizens who are largely ignorant about
Indigenous peoples. Or they can throw Indigenous peoples into bureaucratic processes of
emergency management in which Indigenous peoples’ voices are silenced by states, corporations,
and local governments. vi
Indigenous scholars discuss climate vulnerability as an intensification or intensified
episode of colonialism. Wildcat claims that Indigenous climate relocation today is part of three
removals occurring as part of U.S. colonial, capitalist, and industrial expansion. The first two
removals were “geographic” (displacement, e.g. Trail of Tears and the forced occupation of
reservations), and “social” and “psycho-cultural” (such as through removal of children to
boarding schools). Now,
As ice sheets and glaciers melt permafrost thaws, and seacoasts and riverbanks erode in
the near and circumpolar arctic, peoples indigenous to these places will be forced to
move, not as a result of something their Native lifeways produced, but because the most
technologically advanced societies on the planet have built their modern lifestyles on a
carbon energy foundation…. vii
3

For Wildcat, the immediacy of climate refugees is like the experience of déjà vu given that
relocation and displacement are part of the history of colonially-induced environmental changes
that harmed Indigenous peoples. Hence scholars such as Kimmerer can claim that, “Once again,
we are in a situation of forced climate change adaptation.” viii
Colonially-driven environmental change destroyed ecosystems on which Indigenous
peoples relied, boxed Indigenous peoples into small reservations that were fractions of their
original territories, or simply displaced Indigenous peoples from their homelands to new
ecosystems. Boarding schools forced Indigenous peoples to adopt English as their primary
language, thereby erasing the knowledges encoded within their own languages about how to live
in relation to certain ecological conditions; Indigenous students had to adopt heterosexual and
patriarchal gender norms that demoralized and disenfranchised Indigenous girls, women and two-
spirit persons. The U.S. forced Indigenous peoples to take on corporate government structures
that incentivized Tribal government leaders to depend on and buy into extractive industries and
other capitalist enterprises (today, gaming is one of them but so is the coal industry).
Through each of these practices of colonialism, Indigenous peoples witnessed the away-
migration of their nonhuman relatives. Kimmerer writes that “Like the displaced farmers of
Bangladesh fleeing rising sea levels, maples will become climate refugees. To survive they must
migrate northward to find homes at the boreal fringe. Our energy policy is forcing them to leave.
They will be exiled from their homelands for the price of cheap gas.” ix Mastak et al. see
colonialism “as the literal planting and displanting of peoples, animals, and plants—as inscribing
a domination into blood and soil…” x Away-migration also occurs in a “psycho-cultural” sense, as
Wildcat calls it, when people lose customs, protocols, skill-sets, and identities (e.g. animal clan
identities in some Tribes) related to particular plants, animals, insects, and ecosystems.
Indigenous studies, then, seek to understand vulnerability to climate change as an
intensification colonialism. Chief, in work spanning several collaborations she is part of, analyzes
the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe’s (PLPT) vulnerability to climate stressors in relation to their
identities as Kuyuidokado/Kooyooee Tukadu, or cui-ui (fish) eaters whose relationship to the fish
has been eroded, on a cyclical, though intensified, basis, by the Derby Dam built some 100 years
ago, high demand for water by settlers, and settler-caused environmental changes that exacerbate
droughts. xi So climate change is related to settlement and it is the actions of settlement that
opened up PLPT territories for the development of cities such as Reno, Nevada.
Marino and Maldonado discuss how climate change is an intensification of colonialism
which opened up territories for settlements and forced some Indigenous peoples to relocate.
Marino, working with the Kigiqitamiut people in the Village of Shishmaref, Alaska, writes that
“Previous flexibility to environmental shifts and unexpected hazards allowed the community to
adapt to abrupt changes.” Yet now a colonially-driven “relatively immobile infrastructure and
development requires people to stay in place in order to carry out their daily lives.” xii Maldonado
shows the vulnerability to sea level rise that is forcing the displacement of the Isle de Jean
Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians arises from a number of colonial factors tied
to energy and agriculture including dredging canals, cutting oil and gas pipelines, constructing
dikes and levees, damming the Mississippi river, and large agricultural developments. xiii
The intensified déjà vu experience of climate change engages some of the most critical
issues Indigenous peoples face today, gender being one of them. Climate change impacts affect
Indigenous women more acutely, in many cases, while colonial policies for addressing climate
change devalue the leadership of Indigenous women. xiv Moreover, Sweet claims that that “With
warming temperatures and melting ice comes greater accessibility to the [Arctic] region, leading
to more outside influences and more potential human security threats,” including sex
trafficking. xv Oil production fields, such as the Bakken production field in North Dakota, form
“man camps” for laborers that attract violent sex trafficking of Indigenous persons. xvi Of course,
4

as a large literature in Indigenous gender studies shows, colonial domination and gender
violence/oppression are of a piece.xvii Climate change, then, is both a gendered form of colonially
imposed environmental change, and another intensified episode of colonialism that opens up
Indigenous territories for capitalism and industrialization that occurs through gender violence.
In the studies just referenced, Indigenous persons and allies examine climate change less
as a future trend, and more as the experience of going back to the future. For anthropogenic
climate change is an intensified repetition of anthropogenic environmental change inflicted on
Indigenous peoples via colonial practices that facilitated capitalist industrial expansion. The same
colonial practices and policies that opened up Indigenous territories for deforestation and
extractive industries are the ones that make adaptation difficult for Indigenous peoples today.
Anthropogenic climate change makes Indigenous territories more accessible and
Indigenous peoples more vulnerable to harm, just as did laws, policies, boarding schools, and the
like in previous episodes of colonization. A rising number of scholars, such as Cameron, Stuhl,
Haalbloom and Natcher, are adamant that the analysis of Indigenous climate vulnerability cannot
occur in the absence of the history and present practices colonialism and capitalism in Indigenous
homelands. xviii

Renewing Relatives: Indigenous Knowledges and Climate Change

Indigenous knowledges, in the simplest terms, refer to systems of monitoring, recording,
communicating, and learning about the relationships among humans, nonhuman plants and
animals, and ecosystems that are required for any society to survive and flourish in particular
ecosystems which are subject to perturbations of various kinds. Indigenous knowledges range
from how ecological information is encoded in words and grammars of Indigenous languages, to
protocols of mentorship of elders and youth, to kin-based and spiritual relationships with plants
and animals, to memories of environmental change used to draw lessons about how to adapt to
similar changes in the future. xix Indigenous peoples see their knowledges as containing important
insights about how to negotiate today’s environmental issues; they often see the renewal of their
knowledge systems as a significant strategy for achieving successful adaptation planning.
Sakakabira, in her work with Iñupiat communities in the arctic, discusses how people live
according to relationships of moral reciprocity with whales, an animal they depend on
economically, culturally, and for health. The connection is so intimate Sakakabira calls it
“cetaceousnes” (whale-consciousness). While Iñupiat whale knowledge provides practical
information on whale lifecycles that facilitate hunting and other practices that secure human
benefits from whales, the knowledge also brings people together to respond to climate change.
For example, climate change is experienced through changes in the availability of the whale
tissue used for traditional drum membranes. Whereas historically drum ceremonies expressed the
whales’ invitations to bring people together, climate induced disruptions in whale cycles have
been associated with a resurgence in drumming ceremonies in some communities. The
ceremonies now express humans’ invitation for whales to come back to reciprocal relations (with
humans). xx
Norgaard and Reed seek to renew Karuk knowledge, especially burning practices, as a
basis for bringing the community members together to address climate change today—a goal they
call “knowledge sovereignty.” Reed views “climate change as a strategic opportunity not only for
Tribes to retain cultural practices and return traditional management practices to the landscape,
but for all land managers to remedy inappropriate ecological actions, and for enhanced and
successful collaboration in the face of collective survival.” xxi Through rekindling traditional
burning connected to many human, plant, fish, and animal interactions, the Karuk climate change
5

strategy renews Karuk knowledge to convene the community members themselves and improve
the basis for collaborating with nonindigenous parties.
The St. Regis Mohawk Change Plan, spurred by the leadership of Arquette and Benedict,
is organized entirely from the human relationships with plants, animals, spiritual beings, and
ecosystems of their Thanksgiving Address and that are part of Mohawk knowledge of how to be
good environmental stewards. The plan’s sections are divided into “The People, Mother Earth,
The Waters, The Fish, Small Plants and Grasses, The Berries, Three Sisters, Medicine Herbs,
Animals, Trees, The Birds, The Four Winds, The Thunderers, Grandmother Moon, The Sun, the
Starts, the Four Beings, the Creator”. xxii Each section in the vulnerability analysis begins with a
story and a description of the cultural and historical significance of the relationships, followed by
comparisons between observed changes and scientific information about climate change.
Solutions to climate adaption in the report involve the continued renewal of the relationships,
whether through education or stewardship practices, to mobilize community members to take
action to address climate change.
In McNeeley’s work with Koyukon people of Koyukuk-Middle Yukon region in the
Arctic, one of the issues was that the state of Alaska, in order to cope with the consequences of
climate change, was imposing hunting regulations on moose that would restrict Indigenous
subsistence harvesting. The collaborators constructed, using Koyukon knowledge of their
seasonal round, a seasonal wheel that shows their understanding of seasonality. The Seasonal
Round original sketch was hand drawn by a Koyukon youth after a community focus group.
Subsequently, different iterations were reviewed by elders and community members. The
seasonal wheel, which illustrates numerous human relationships, terrestrial and aquatic plants and
animals, and technologies, demonstrates that shifting the moose hunting season later so as to
correspond with the Indigenous view of seasonality make more sense than the date proposed by
state and federal regulators. xxiii
Renewing Indigenous knowledges can bring together Indigenous communities to
strengthen their self-determined planning for climate change. In the cases just described renewing
knowledges involved renewing relationships with humans and nonhumans and restoring
reciprocity among the relatives (i.e. the parties to the relationships). I call this process renewing
relatives, as it involves both restoring persisting relationships that are part of longstanding
Indigenous heritages but also creating new relationships that support Indigenous peoples’
mobilizing to address climate change. While Indigenous knowledges obviously have useful
information about the nature of ecological changes, it is perhaps more interesting to explore how
renewing Indigenous knowledges serves the motivation of people and communities to address
climate change.
Of course, many Indigenous persons are understandably concerned that climate scientists
will intentionally or naively clamor around Indigenous communities to exploit the information
Indigenous knowledges might possess that could fill in gaps in climate science research. Hardison
and Williams, in their work at the Tulalip Tribe’s Treaty Rights Office and at the United Nations,
have designed improved ethical policies and practices for bridging epistemic, power and
privilege, cultural, and political differences that scientists often are not trained to understand. Yet
as Hardison and Williams show, the more scientists understand the significance of the practice
and renewal of Indigenous knowledges for Indigenous peoples’ own purposes of preparing for
climate change and protecting their ways of life (sometimes called the governance value of
Indigenous knowledges xxiv), the more scientists will grasp richer senses of their responsibilities to
work with Indigenous collaborators mutually instead of exploitatively. xxv
6

Indigenizing Futures
The First Alaskan’s Institute, an Indigenous organization, includes as one of its slogans,
“progress for the next 10,000 years,” referring to Indigenous Alaskans’ own histories of living in
that region for that long. Since Indigenous peoples in North America think at this scale, the time
period of European, U.S., and Canadian colonialism, imperialism, and settlement appears very
short and acutely disruptive. Indigenous conceptions of the future often present striking contrasts
between deep Indigenous histories and the brief, but highly disruptive colonial, capitalist, and
industrial periods. Moreover, many Indigenous histories are explicit about the fact that
Indigenous peoples, as collective actors, have also influenced local and regional environments.
Many peoples’ calendars and seasonal rounds explicitly demonstrate how Indigenous peoples,
through practices such as burning and fishing, managed and maintained certain ecosystems.
These ecosystems also changed through human interventions such as regional trading.
A term like “anthropogenic” has very diverse meanings for Indigenous peoples, from
gradual changes, such as the adoption of new “relatives” (e.g. adoption of the horse in North
America) to the shaping of habitats for certain plants and animals, to disruptive settler
colonialism, such as practiced by Europeans arriving in North America. “Anthropogenic climate
change” or “the Anthropocene,” then, are not precise enough terms for many Indigenous peoples,
because they sound like all humans are implicated in and affected by colonialism, capitalism and
industrialization in the same ways. xxvi
Davis and Todd argue that the Anthropocene is rooted in colonization. For colonialism
has always included terraforming that tears apart what they call the “flesh” xxvii of human-
nonhuman-ecological relationships. That colonizers today, from settlers to imperialists, are
concerned about climate change, suggests that they are now being affected by the seismic waves
of massive ecosystem transformation that began over 500 years ago. xxviii Mitchell cautions against
“marking European colonization as a driving force of the Anthropocene,” because doing so may
“naturalize” colonization. That is, the “risk of equating human forms of agency with ‘natural
forces’ is that they come to be seen as inevitable, determinate and less contestable than ‘political
forces’.” Mitchell points out that “the Anthropocene is not the product of ‘humanity’, but rather
particular segments of it.” xxix
For Indigenous peoples, we do not tell our futures beginning from the position of concern
with the Anthropocene as a hitherto unanticipated vision of human intervention, which involves
mass extinctions and the disappearance of certain ecosystems. For the colonial period already
rendered comparable outcomes that cost Indigenous peoples their reciprocal relationships with
thousands of plants, animals, and ecosystems—most of which are coming back. As Gross claims,
“Native Americans have seen the end of their respective worlds… Just as importantly, though,
Indians survived the apocalypse. This raises the further question, then, of what happens to a
society that has gone through an apocalyptic event?” xxx
Some answers to Gross’ question lie in the work of Indigenous Climate Change Studies
described already in this essay. Indigenous imaginations of our futures in relation to climate
change—the stuff of didactic science fiction—begin already with our living today in post-
apocalyptic situation. Had someone told our ancestors a story of what today’s times are like for
Indigenous peoples, our ancestors would surely have thought they were hearing dystopian tales.
For Indigenous peoples live in worlds so changed by colonialism, capitalism, and
industrialization that our collective self-determination and agency are compromised to a degree
our ancestors would have been haunted by. Indigenizing our futures involves our reflecting on
why our ancestors’ would have thought today’s times are dystopian.
In our case, reflecting on why our ancestors’ would have perceived the present as
dystopian provides guidance on how to live under post-apocalyptic conditions. The Menominee
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Nation’s recent development of culturally, spiritually, and economically significant sustainable

forest was actually their response to the colonially-induced destruction of their relationships with
many species. The transition to forestry involved envisioning and performing certain relationships
and responsibilities that would have mattered to their ancestors—just now in relation to forest
biodiversity. The Menominee’s relationships to the forest motivates their ongoing leadership in
addressing climate change. xxxi Indigenous climate justice activism is also about performing xxxii
these ancestrally inspired visions, including the recent insistence by some leaders of the Standing
Rock Sioux Tribe that their resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline is primarily about prayer,
ceremony, honoring their ancestors, and renewing their reciprocal responsibilities with water. xxxiii
Indigenous climate change studies perform futurities that Indigenous persons can build
on in generations to come. That is, our actions today are cyclical performances; they are guided
by our reflection on our ancestors’ perspectives and on our desire to be good ancestors ourselves
to future generations. Wildcat calls this performance “indigenuity;” Kimmerer, “returning the
gift” (if we think broadly, in a multigenerational sense, about what Kimmerer means, here). xxxiv
So for Indigenous peoples, “the Anthropocene epoch,” as a concept some people invoke often to
envision the future, does not present us, at first glance, with the specter of unprecedented
changes. Indigenous Climate Change Studies is a field that opens up our interpretations of our
own histories and futurities, with the goal of supporting Indigenous capacities to address climate
change and the continuance of flourishing future generations.

NOTES
i Joanna Harrington, "Climate Change, Human Rights, and the Right to Be Cold," Fordham Envtl. L. Rev. 18 (2006);

Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, Climate Change Strategic Plan (2013); Sara
Shepherd, "Conference at Haskell Explores How Climate Change Affects American Indians " Lawrence Journal-
World, September 22 2016; Mandaluyong Declaration, "Mandaluyong Declaration of the Global Conference on
Indigenous Women, Climate Change and Redd Plus," in Indigenous Women, Climate Change & Forests, ed. Tebtebba
(Baguio City, Philippines: Tebtebba Foundation, 2011). REDD+ refers to the United Nations program, Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries; Julie Koppel Maldonado, Rajul E.
Pandya, and Benedict J. Colombi, "Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples in the United States: Impacts, Experiences,
and Actions," Climatic Change 120, no. 3 (2013).
ii Candis Callison, How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts (Duke University Press, 2014),

42.
iii Moraña et al., Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate (Duke University Press, 2008).
iv Julie Koppel Maldonado et al., "The Impact of Climate Change on Tribal Communities in the Us: Displacement,

Relocation, and Human Rights," Climatic Change 120, no. 3 (2013).

v K. Norton-Smith et al., "Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples: A Synthesis of Current Impacts and Experiences,"

in General Technical Report (Portland, OR, USA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest
Research Station, 2016).
vi Zoltan Grossman and Alan Parker, Asserting Native Resilience: Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations Face the Climate

Crisis (Oregon State University Press, 2012); Randall S Abate and Elizabeth Ann Kronk, Climate Change and
Indigenous Peoples: The Search for Legal Remedies (Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013);
Christine Shearer, Kivalina: A Climate Change Story (Haymarket Books, 2011).
vii Daniel R. Wildcat, Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge (Golden, CO, USA: Fulcrum, 2009), 4.
viii Robin Kimmerer, "Climate Change and Indigenous Knowledge," in Center for Aboriginal Initiatives (University of

Toronto 2014).
ix Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Editions,

2013), 173.
x Tomaz Mastnak, Julia Elyachar, and Tom Boellstorff, "Botanical Decolonization: Rethinking Native Plants,"

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32, no. 2 (2014): 367.
xi Karletta Chief et al., "Indigenous Experiences in the Us with Climate Change and Environmental Stewardship in the

Anthropocene," in Forest Conservation and Management in the Anthropocene: Conference Proceedings, ed. V. Alaric
Sample and R. Patrick Bixler (Fort Collins, CO, USA: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. Rocky Mountain
Research Station, 2014).
8

xii Elizabeth Marino, “The Long History of Environmental Migration: Assessing Vulnerability Construction and
Obstacles to Successful Relocation in Shishmaref, Alaska,” Global Environmental Change 22 no. 2 (2012): 374.
xiii Maldonado et al. (2013).
xiv Kirsten Vinyeta, Kyle Powys Whyte, and Kathy Lynn, "Climate Change through an Intersectional Lens: Gendered

Vulnerability and Resilience in Indigenous Communities in the United States," Forest Service General Technical
Report PNW-GTR-923 (2015).
xv Victoria Sweet, "Rising Waters, Rising Threats: The Human Trafficking of Indigenous Women in the Circumpolar

Region of the United States and Canada," The Yearbook of Polar Law Online 6, no. 1 (2014).
xvi Sarah Deer, The Beginning and End of Rape (University of Minnesota Press, 2015).
xvii Goeman, Mishuana R, and Jennifer Nez Denetdale. "Native Feminisms: Legacies, Interventions, and Indigenous

Sovereignties." Wicazo Sa Review 24, no. 2 (2009).

xviii Emilie S Cameron, "Securing Indigenous Politics: A Critique of the Vulnerability and Adaptation Approach to the

Human Dimensions of Climate Change in the Canadian Arctic," Global Environmental Change 22, no. 1 (2012);
Andrew Stuhl, Unfreezing the Arctic: Science, Colonialism, and the Transformation of Inuit Lands (Chicago, IL, USA:
University of Chicago Press, 2016); Bethany Haalboom and David C. Natcher, "The Power and Peril of
“Vulnerability”: Approaching Community Labels with Caution in Climate Change Research," Arctic 65, no. 3 (2012).
xix Benedict J Colombi, "Salmon and the Adaptive Capacity of Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) Culture to Cope with Change,"

The American Indian Quarterly 36, no. 1 (2012). Samantha Chisholm Hatfield, "Traditional Ecological Knowledge of
Siletz Tribal Members" (Oregon State University, 2009); Paulette Blanchard, "Our Squirrels Will Have Elephant Ears:
Indigenous Perspectives on Climate Change in the South Central United States" (University of Oklahoma, 2015);
Nelson, Melissa. "The Hydromythology of the Anishinaabeg." In Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the
World through Stories, edited by Jill Doerfler, Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark,
213-33. East Lansing, MI, USA: MSU Press, 2013.
xx Chie Sakakibara, "‘No Whale, No Music’: Iñupiat Drumming and Global Warming," Polar Record 45, no. 04

(2009).
xxi Kari Norgaard, "Retaining Knowledge Sovereignty: Expanding the Application of Tribal Traditional Knowledge on

Forest Lands in the Face of Climate Change," Prepared for the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources
www.karuktribeclimatechangeprojects.files.wordpress.com (2014).
xxii St. Regis Mohawk Environmental Division, Climate Change Adaptation Plan for Akwesasne (Akwasasne, St. Regis

Mohawk Tribe2013).
xxiii Shannon M McNeeley and Martha D Shulski, "Anatomy of a Closing Window: Vulnerability to Changing

Seasonality in Interior Alaska," Global Environmental Change 21, no. 2 (2011); Shannon M McNeeley, "Examining
Barriers and Opportunities for Sustainable Adaptation to Climate Change in Interior Alaska," Climatic Change 111, no.
3-4 (2012).
xxiv Climate and Traditional Knowledges Workgroup, "The Ethics of Traditional Knowledge Exchange in Climate

Change Initiatives. Earthzine," Earthzine July 31 (2015).

xxv Terry Williams and Preston Hardison, "Culture, Law, Risk and Governance: Contexts of Traditional Knowledge in

Climate Change Adaptation," Climatic Change 120, no. 3 (2013).

xxvi See also, Schulz, Karsten. "Decolonising the Anthropocene: The Mytho-Politics of Human Mastery." Journal of

Political Ecology Forthcoming (2017).

xxvii Vanessa Watts, "Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency Amongst Humans and Non-Humans (First Woman and

Sky Woman Go on a European World Tour!)," Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 2, no. 1 (2013).
xxviii Heather Davis and Zoe Todd, personal correspondence on unpublished manuscript project.
xxix Audra Mitchell, "Decolonising the Anthropocene " https://worldlyir.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/decolonising-the-

anthropocene/ (2015).
xxx Lawrence W Gross, Anishinaabe Ways of Knowing and Being (Routledge, 2016), 33.
xxxi Kyle Whyte, Chris Caldwell, and Marie Schaefer. “Indigenous Insights about Sustainability: Are they only about

what works for “all humanity”? Paper under review (2017). Draft available at
https://michiganstate.academia.edu/KyleWhyte
xxxii Janet Fiskio, "Dancing at the End of the World: The Poetics of the Body in Indigenous Protest," in Ecocriticism

and Indigenous Studies: Conversations from Earth to Cosmos, ed. Salma Monani and Joni Adamson (Routledge,
2016).
xxxiii Jaskiran Dhillon and Nick Estes, "Standing Rock, #NoDAPL, and Mni Wiconi," Hot Spots, Cultural

Anthropology, December 22, 2016.

xxxiv Wildcat 2009; Kimmerer 2013.