Thursday, July 18, 2024 | 1:00–2:15pm EDT
RSVP LINK TO COME
From carbon markets to the widely-touted 30×30 conservation campaign, so-called “nature-based solutions” to climate change and the biodiversity crisis risk further dispossessing the very communities best equipped to steward the land. As a postscript to the 2024 UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, where Indigenous groups came together to discuss their collective response to the climate emergency, this event draws lines between place-based struggles against “green colonialism” in Africa, South Asia, and North America, bringing together activists and organizers who are fighting to stave off the further dispossession of Indigenous and other colonized people in the name of conservation.
This Zoom webinar explores how histories of colonialism, apartheid and uneven development have set the terms for today’s “solutions” to ecological crisis, engaging not only the common conditions of oppression faced by Indigenous communities across the world, but also the solidarities they are forging in their shared struggle against neocolonial conservation—and for Land Back.
SPEAKERS
Krystal Two Bulls (Lakota/Cheyenne) is Executive Director of Honor the Earth. Krystal is Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne from Lame Deer, Montana. She has extensive experience as an organizer and on the frontlines with campaign development and management on local, national and transnational campaigns for social, racial and environmental justice. Krystal’s identity as a Native American veteran is central to her organizing and storytelling. At the heart of Krystal’s work are the connections between collective wellness, environmental justice, Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, and anti-militarism. In healing from her experience as a soldier, Krystal has dedicated herself to embodying what she views as the essential quality of a warrior: a commitment to the well-being of not only her People and their relationship to the land, but that of all Peoples.
Nnimmo Bassey is director of the ecological think-tank, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and member steering committee of Oilwatch International. He was chair of Friends of the Earth International (2008-2012) and Executive Director of Nigeria’s Environmental Rights Action (1993-2013). He was a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award also known as the “Alternative Noble Prize.” In 2012 he received the Rafto Human Rights Award. In 2014 he received Nigeria’s national honour as Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) in recognition of his environmental activism. Bassey is a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Architects and has authored books on the environment, architecture and poetry. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of York, United Kingdom in July 2019. His books include We Thought it Was Oil, But It was Blood –Poetry (Kraft Books, 2002), I will Not Dance to Your Beat – Poetry (Kraft Books, 2011), To Cook a Continent –Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa (Pambazuka Press, 2012) and Oil Politics – Echoes of Ecological War (Daraja Press, 2016).
Ashley Dawson is professor of postcolonial studies in the English department at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and the College of Staten Island. His latest books include Environmentalism from Below: How Global People’s Movements Are Leading the Fight for Our Planet (Haymarket, 2024), Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-Determination, Land, and a World in Common (Common Notions, 2023), People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons (O/R, 2020), Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso, 2017), and Extinction: A Radical History (O/R, 2016). A member of the Social Text Collective and the founder of the Public Power Observatory, he is a long-time climate justice activist.
This event is organized by Ashley Dawson as part of Natural History for a World in Crisis, a programming series organized by the 2024-2025 cohort of Red Natural History Fellows with The Natural History Museum.
SPONSORS
