18 - Literary Responses to Indigenous Climate Justice and the Canadian Settler-State

Summary

Within a context of cultural- and land-based Indigenous resurgence, contemporary Indigenous writers, artists, theorists, and activists have made the settler-state and extraction economy of Canada a flashpoint of the global climate emergency. Indigenous peoples often exist on the front lines of climate change, finding their lives and livelihoods threatened by the effects of rising temperatures even as they have been excluded from many of the benefits afforded by carbon-intensive economies. This chapter examines how Indigenous writers place climate change within a long, ongoing history of colonial resource appropriations, ecological loss, and violent suppression of Indigenous bodies and cultures in Canada. The chapter also addresses the diverse ways they respond to its challenges, including: crafting texts and practices of political dissent, solidarity-building, and land reoccupation; grounding present experiences in enduring stories of Indigenous response to environmental and political change; and refashioning genres such as science fiction, horror, or post-apocalyptic imaginaries to explore Indigenous futurisms in a climate-altered world. Above all, Indigenous writers make clear that climate change cannot be extricated from decolonisation and matters of sovereignty. The restoration of Indigenous lands and land-based ways of knowing is the starting point for the pursuit of climate justice.