Abstract
<p>Resiliency and adaptation are increasingly prevalent in climate change policy as well as scholarship, yet scholars have brought forward several critiques of these concepts along analytical as well as political lines. Pressing questions include: who resiliency is for, what it takes to maintain it, and the scale at which it takes place. The concept of "perverse resilience", for example, proposes that resiliency for one sub-system may threaten the well-being of the overall system. In this article, I propose the related concept of "perverse adaptation", where one actor or institution's adaptation to climate change in fact produces aftershocks and secondary impacts upon other groups. Drawing on ethnographic and sociolinguistic research in northern Arizona regarding artificial snowmaking at a ski resort on a sacred mountain, I elucidate resort supporters' and others' attempts to frame snowmaking as a sustainable adaptation to drought (and, implicitly, climate change). I counterpoise these framings with narratives from local activists as well as Diné (Navajo) individuals regarding the significant impacts of snowmaking on water supply and quality, sacred lands and ceremony, public health, and, ironically, carbon emissions. In so doing, I argue that we must interrogate resilience policies for their unexpected "victims of adaptation."</p><p><strong>Key words: </strong>climate change policy, adaptation, perverse resilience, sacred sites, Diné (Navajo)</p>
Highlights
In Diné (Navajo) wedding baskets, a tan line transverses the curvilinear pattern of red and black
I open this article with an explanation of Diné wedding baskets to introduce this ethnographic case study of snowmaking and the sacred, climate and conflict because, like the circle-breaking line, climate change is a thread running through the entire narrative, sometimes bold, sometimes subtle, yet always indispensable
The San Francisco Peaks are a cluster of peaks in northern Arizona (USA) recognized as a sacred mountain by 13 indigenous nations
Summary
In Diné (Navajo) wedding baskets, a tan line transverses the curvilinear pattern of red and black. It is typically quite thin and, in some cases, almost imperceptible. Snowbowl has recently expanded operations and commenced artificial snowmaking, despite more than a decade of litigation and grassroots opposition This conflict revolves around a number of issues, including sacred land desecration, religious freedom, environmental health, public land uses, framing of Native Americans, and critiques of state-corporate collusion, themes addressed by myself as well as other scholars (Boggs 2017; Dunstan 2016, 2017; Glowacka et al 2009; Richland 2017; Sefiha and Lauderdale 2008; Tsosie 2006). I will argue that the considerable public infrastructure and investment bent towards maintaining a drought-beleaguered ski resort is an example of what has been called "perverse resilience" (Phelan et al 2013), or perhaps we might say "perverse adaptation." It is an illustration of how the secondary effects of climate adaptation policy – by corporate actors seeking to maintain or even improve the status quo via adaptation – can leave new victims and socio-ecological havoc in its wake
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