Abstract Detail

Tackling coloniality in plant sciences: Legacies and paths forward

Freeland, Dr. Mark [1].

Anishinaabek Flourishing: A Radical Act of Remembering.

For the purpose of tackling colonialism, it is important to remember that in North America we are dealing with settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is best defined as a system of political and economic exploitation, not a historical event. As a serttler system, it works to reproduce itself in successive generations. This system has radically altered the landscape in Indigenous North America to the extent that without a substantive education it would be easy to fall into the colonial trap of naturalizing the current depleted state of ecosystems here as normal. The concept of flourishing, borrowed from both economics and disability studies, provides a theoretical lens with which to think through the ethical problems associated with our contemporary dysfunctional relationships with our plant relatives. This session will look at the concept of flourishing in Anishinaabe Akiing (The Northern Great Lakes region) as a radical act of remembering our relationships to all of our relatives with which we share this place. First, I will outline flourishing as an interdisciplinary theory to conceptualize Anishinaabek relationships to life. Flourishing can then be seen as a system of thought which can promote the regeneration of life systems that have been lost. Second, I will further develop a methodology of flourishing in describing the ethics of kinship as an ideological strategy to achieve flourishing. While flourishing provides a theoretical lens, it is the ethics of kinship as practiced in the everyday which demonstrate the methodology. That is, kinship is not just a conceptualization, but a set of ethical actions that facilitate flourishing. Finally, I engage in the radical act of remembering how our conceptualizations of life have achieved flourishing with examples of eyewitness accounts of flourishing in the historical record. This discussion will demonstrate the intimate connections between Anishinaabek conceptualizations and the flourishing of life that existed prior to colonization. This radical act of remembering can offer all of us a path of regenerating these places of flourishing with humans as an intimate part of those systems.

1 - University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Electa Quinney Institute, Bolton Hall 187, Milwaukee , WI, 53211, USA

Keywords:
Indigenous worldview
flourishing
kinship.

Presentation Type: Symposium Presentation
Number: S5004
Abstract ID:933
Candidate for Awards:None