Raven Evades the Anthropocene: Whiteness, Indigeneity, and Environmental Disaster

Abstract

Abstract: Despite its desire for a planetary scale, the framework of the Anthropocene fails to account for non-Western epistemologies, including those of Indigenous peoples. Whiteness is thus a pervasive framework in discussions of the Anthropocene. While Indigenous knowledge is sometimes extracted to benefit White futures, these futures have no place for actual Indigenous peoples. Similarly, the Anthropocene insists on a human-centered approach that leaves no room for other-than-human beings and relationality with them. Despite its desire to implicate and represent all of humanity, the Anthropocene perpetuates these problematic approaches and ultimately takes Whiteness as its representation of universal humanity. Many Western conceptions of apocalypse, like the Anthropocene, stem from Christianity. Such beliefs also shape cultural responses to disasters as portrayed in more recent popular literature and media. Indigenous oral history begets entirely different responses to catastrophe. This article specifically explores Lingít (Tlingit) Raven stories and their ability to undermine Anthropocene logics. These stories are not a response to such thinking, but they do illustrate long-standing Lingít means of dealing with catastrophe that are still valuable today. As such, the article argues that Indigenous stories exceed Anthropocene thinking and represent an entirely different, and ultimately more generative, framework for considering climate change.