Unsettling Resilience: Colonial Ecological Violence, Indigenous Futurisms, and the Restoration of the Elwha River*

Abstract

This study challenges dominant, academic conceptualization of resilience in light of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe's (LEKT) experiences of ecosystem restoration. Resilience has gained traction in social science as a framework for a community's response to environmental, social, and political disturbances, the contours of which are not well understood in Indigenous contexts. Interviews with LEKT members on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State reveal that colonial ecological violence associated with the damming of the Elwha River in the early half of the 20th century continues to shape contemporary possibilities for Klallam resurgence, sovereignty, and self-determination. Cultural resurgence has been enhanced; but unanticipated burdens and heightened feelings of powerlessness and deprivation remain. Resilience-based approaches to ecosystem restoration support aspects of Indigenous survival and collective continuance, but they are unlikely to support significant revitalization and self-determined development unless the structural basis of ecological violence and Indigenous futurisms of resurgence, self-determination, and sovereignty are addressed.

Sustaining Tribal Fisheries: U.S. Economic Relief Policies during COVID-19

“…The practice of naming Tribes individually recognizes their inherent sovereignty, acknowledges the government-to-government relationship, and dismantles the fabrication of a Tribal monolith [114]. The absence of this Indigenous naming praxis furthers settler colonialism [11,115]. Emanuel and Wilkins (2020) argue that Indigenous "Exclusion from governance spaces has shackled the efforts of Native nations to manage many aspects of existence" inclusive of Tribal relationships to marine environments and the fishing knowledge embedded therein ([109], p. 5).…”

“…In essence, the discursive policy content embedded in state spend plans is not merely a rhetorical practice; it serves to further settler-colonial logics and the subjugation of oppressed peoples. In describing Bacon's [103] scholarship on settler colonialism, Mauer [11] captures that the settler colonialism process is an "eco-social structure that continues to undermine Indigenous eco-social relations through such processes such as dispossession, environmental degradation and contamination, disruptions to ecological knowledge, and the erasure of Indigenous place names" (p. 5). This description underscores how state discursive practices in fisheries relief can be emblematic of larger processes of marine dispossession, degradation, and disruption of Indigenous fishing knowledge, further colonizing Indigenous Peoples.…”

“…In addition to not mentioning Tribal Nations or citizens, these spend plans were also absent of any mention of Tribal rights or uses including subsistence and ceremonial fishing. This discursive theme of erasure is often present in settler rhetoric due to ongoing impacts of colonialism on Tribes and Tribal fisheries [11,120,126,127]. As Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribCrit) scholar Bryan Brayboy contends, natural resource management (inclusive of fisheries) remains a racialized space through which Tribal Nations and citizens continue to experience colonialism ( [57].…”

“…Indigenous Peoples' rights to manage and develop their own fisheries and to maintain their subsistence and ceremonial fishing activities are protected under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) Articles 5 and 20 [10]. Tribal Nations in what is currently known as the United States have managed extensive fisheries for thousands of years [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. The purpose of this study is to examine the ways individual economic relief spending plans of U.S. states granted a funding allocation under Sec.…”

Indigenous caretaking of beargrass and the social and ecological consequences of adaptations to maintain beargrass weaving practices

“…Understanding what makes Indigenous ecologies resilient is particularly important given that climate and other social-ecological changes will exacerbate many of the challenges of adapting Indigenous ecologies to degradation caused by settler colonialism (Whyte 2017). Moreover, although researchers have examined what enables resilience (e.g., Trosper 2002), less well known are the costs or burdens of adaptation that help maintain this resilience for Indigenous ecologies (Gallardo et al 2017, Whyte 2017, Mauer 2020. Given that adapting to climate and other social and ecological changes has been shown to confer resilience while simultaneously creating new vulnerabilities and risks (Veland et al 2013, Burnham and Ma 2018, Eriksen et al 2021, questions of what is changed, and for whom, through adaptive practices to maintain resilience of Indigenous ecologies, and what trade-offs these choices entail, become essential.…”