The SUN project will be holding a roundtable discussion panel at NAISA 2024!

Panel Title: Indigenous Survivance: Rethinking Environmental Crisis and Global Colonialism--Overview

Today, climate change and biodiversity loss are remaking the Earth in ways that are threatening human existence. For many, the situation seems unprecedented. For the world’s Indigenous peoples, however, it is yet another crisis. They have already lived through several centuries of colonialism, through shockwaves that have changed the face of our planet, carried tremendous human and environmental consequences, subjected the land to excessive use, and altered climates. Indigenous peoples have become veterans in struggles against intertwined political, ecological, and spiritual crises: loss of homelands, assaults against sovereignty, destruction of habitats, epidemics, and genocidal wars. Yet, against all odds, they have survived, suggesting complex stories of resilience and survivance that need to be told and learned from.

This roundtable seeks to understand Indigenous resilience in the face of the twin forces of colonialism and environmental crisis. In particular, it focuses upon Indigenous strategies of survivance. Survivance, a fusion of survival and resistance, is a concept coined by Anishinaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor to emphasize Indigenous agency involved in the conscious and active process of surviving and resisting colonialism. The discussion accordingly invites participants to consider, side by side, the creative Indigenous strategies that have fuelled Indigenous resilience and resurgence and the harrowing impacts of colonialism and environmental crises that continue to shape Indigenous lives, communities, and cultures around the globe. Likewise, we encourage participants to explore the importance of such critical issues as Indigenous ontologies, art, ritual and traditional ecological knowledge for understanding Indigenous survivance both past and present.

Roundtable discussants: Brenda Child, Mikal Eckstrom, Lindsay Doran, Britt Kramvig, Katarina Pirak Sikku

Chair: Gunlög Fur
Moderators/Commentators: Janne Lahti, Sami Lakomäki