Post #1683361

2025-12-17 03:15 UTC

I keep noticing settlers reaching for Indigenous knowledge as if we have already lived through an apocalypse and can therefore provide a reusable survival template for the one that’s coming. The story underneath is that colonialism was a kind of world-ending event, Indigenous people survived it, and therefore climate breakdown is just another rhyme in the same historical pattern. That framing quietly turns Indigenous survival into proof that “humanity survives” and even that things eventually come out morally right, with respect and recognition following endurance. It is a comforting narrative because it lets the future feel familiar and manageable, rather than genuinely new. From where I stand, that analogy is false at the level that actually matters. This is not about resilience or spirit or cultural continuity; it is about material conditions exiting historical ranges. I see ecological signals that settlers around me simply do not register as signals at all. When I lived in South Dakota, the limestone was literally falling apart from acid rain. That is not a hard time, a bad cycle, or a familiar stressor. That is the chemical dissolution of the ground itself under conditions that have never existed here before. Knowledge formed in relationship with stable rock, water, and seasons cannot simply be “applied” when those substrates are no longer behaving like themselves. What frustrates me is being asked, implicitly or explicitly, to translate “this is different” into a language that still assumes continuity. Often the turn toward Indigenous knowledge functions less as respect and more as reassurance: a way for settlers to believe they can face collapse without fundamentally changing how they perceive, inhabit, or take responsibility for place. But Indigenous survival under colonialism happened within a world that still operated inside Holocene norms, even as it was violently reorganized. Climate breakdown is pushing us beyond those norms entirely. Treating one as precedent for the other erases the very ecological perception Indigenous people are trying to point to: the moment when a place stops being able to carry the stories told about it.

Replies (3)

@emsenn@kolektiva.social 2025-12-17 21:54

RE: https://kolektiva.social/@emsenn/115732729999058690 I received a couple replies to this that basically asked, "Who the fuck is saying such a ridiculous thing as what you suggest?" The answer is, it is literally the stance of the United Nations, and thus the stance of the International Energy Agency and basically every other institution that is the source of climate science and plans for adaptation. https://unfccc.int/news/indigenous-worldviews-strengthening-climate-resilience?utm_source=chatgpt.com Like, it is *literally* the whole gameplan: poach from Indigenous people and hope for the best. Our technologies are openly framed as able to *thrive* under climate breakdown. That is... I don't know how to write words in a text box that convey how alarmingly incorrect that claim is. Like they're saying that these technologies are demonstrably succeeding... in conditions *which don't exist yet because **they're in the future.*** And again, this weird absolute impossible claim is used to justify everything from not funding renewable energy to funding petrol extraction... both of which, ironically, fund the displacement of Indigenous peoples. Please don't be smug about personally knowing better if you're still accepting the boundaries and conditions of systems that *don't*. Your personal beliefs are literally meaningless, in any way that matters, except how you use them to move the actions of the systems you're a part of. Responding to me or subposting me... does not really do that.

Open ##3376370
@violetmadder@kolektiva.social 2025-12-17 06:48

@emsenn@kolektiva.social I think it was 2013 or so when I stopped one day, looked up, shivered, and thought to myself: the sky is angry. As in, this weather is wrong. The patterns are broken. We are in totally uncharted territory and everything is spinning wildly out of control and the climate will never be "normal" again. The sheer scale of it, the terror... I was able to sense that signal because my parents took me outdoors a lot as I was growing up, and were able to teach me a lot about nature. I can only imagine how much louder it is for people who still have a deep connection to their land. The average city-raised person has no clue. I bet there's some part of their brain picking up the warnings as a subliminal form of stress, but they have no conscious awareness of it.

Open ##3376371
@TobiWanKenobi@kolektiva.social 2025-12-17 10:11

@emsenn@kolektiva.social Not sure why anyone would think these two events are similar. One is a human crime affecting other humans; the other is a human crime affecting the whole planet. Depending on the level of destruction this civilization will cause to the planet and its nature until shit starts to hit the fan for real, a geofront might become the only feasible survival option. Though that's nothing an individual could orchestrate either way.

Open ##3376372