Indigenous masculinities in a changing climate

Abstract

Gender shapes Indigenous vulnerability and resilience due to the coupled social and ecological challenges of climate change in Indigenous communities in the United States (Maynard, 1998; Grossman and Parker, 2012; Bennett et al., 2014; Maldonado et al., 2014; Whyte, 2014). Despite its relevance, little research has analyzed the ways in which gender shapes climate change experiences. Even less research has focused on the impacts of climate change on Indigenous masculinity. With this backdrop, we foreground Indigenous men and masculinities with respect to climate change vulnerability and resilience. We open this chapter by briefly describing pre-contact Indigenous conceptions of gender in the US, followed by a discussion of how settlement has affected gender roles, relations and gendered traditional knowledge in Indigenous communities. We then describe some of the ways in which Indigeneity and masculinity are intersecting (or may intersect) with climate change in four key arenas: health, migration and displacement, economic and professional development, and culture. We follow this with a discussion of Indigenous men’s roles in political resistance and climate change resilience. We conclude by summarizing the key implications for Indigenous climate change initiatives and for the ongoing reconstruction and reassertion of Indigenous gender identities.