Environmental colonialism, digital indigeneity, and the politicization of resilience

Abstract

While there is wide scholarly agreement that anthropogenic climate change has serious global implications, more debate exists around whether discourses of adaptation and resilience are effective at inspiring the necessary politics for addressing those implications. Resilience-based policies have been criticized for being overly techno-bureaucratic in nature, while leaving intact the deeper colonial and neoliberal logics that produce ecological destruction in the first place. This paper examines the Internet as a tool that Indigenous peoples are using to intervene in discourses of resilience, to mitigate the colonial impact that resilience and adaptation policies have on their communities. It does this through an exploration of how Inuit in Canada are leveraging digital technologies to engage in discussions about hunting and climate change in the Arctic. The paper argues that Inuit are engaging in digital forms of politics to re-scale their vulnerability beyond the local, to highlight dimensions of Arctic resilience beyond the “traditional,” and to intervene in the colonial relationships that produce environmental vulnerability in the first place.