Tuesdays, 7:30–8:30/9 PM
Starting April 22

We were so energized by our first wonderfully thoughtful & engaging KTC series: Unpacking Indigenous Issues. In an effort to continue these difficult but informative discusions -- and in the current virtual context we find ourselves in -- we will be exploring a variety of topics over Zoom in the coming weeks.  

The purpose of our weekly gatherings will be to discuss a common theme. The most popular themes thrown out by the group orbit around the ideas of eco-justice and border justice. These are rich and open sites of conversation and intersect with many other significant ideas, beliefs, and frameworks (including Indigenous studies, so there's the possibility to continue those conversations). If you have reading/listening/viewing suggestions, please send them to Lydia and she'll be sure to include them!

These meetings will happen weekly, Tuesdays from 7:30-8:30/9 pm. Email Adrienne for more info & the Zoom link, OR fill out the form below. We hope you can join us!

SCHEDULE:

• 4/22: Community Check-in

  • 3 pieces included as possible prompts to frame our time:

    • article from The Red Nation called "The COVID-19 Pandemic: Capitalism in Crisis"

    • two short poems by Chamorro poet Craig Santos Perez: Distancing & Even on Maps

• 4/28: Values + Group Norms, Series Intro: What is Environmental Justice?

  • How do we move forward into a new discussion series well, via Zoom, with purpose, intention, and guidelines for community care? We discussed:

    • What do you need from community in crisis? What makes you feel safe?

  • We also asked:

    • What is the environment?

    • What is justice?

    • What is environmental justice? 

  • Our discussion summary found here!

  • Follow up resource: Environmental Justice definition video

• 5/5: Extractivism & Deep Reciprocity

  • We discussed Naomi Klein & Leanne Simpson interview, 2013

  • Follow up resource: a chapter from Leanne Simpson’s book, As We Have Always Done, in which she writes about her experience doing the interview with Naomi Klein

• 5/12: Temporal & Spacial Paradigms

  • We discussed an excerpt from Dina Gilio-Whitaker’s As Long As Grass Grows

  • We also drew our own *quarantine* conception of time

• 5/19

RESOURCES:

• White Allies, Let’s Be Honest About Decolonization, by Kyle Whyte -- Dr. Whyte provides perspective on the ways that settler activists often sustain colonial patterns when attempting to be allies. In the desire to avert or deny apocalypse or catastrophe, settler activists often downplay indigenous realities, silencing or marginalizing them in the service of "fantastic narratives of commonality and hope." 

• Indigenous Resistance Is Post-Apocalyptic, with Nick Estes -- Dr. Estes describes how settler history frames what happened to indigenous people as something that occurred in the past, disconnected from current realities facing the remnant populations of modern-day Native Americans. He describes how indigenous resistance, such as #NoDAPL and Standing Rock, are part of a 400-year unbroken thread of indigenous action against colonization and extraction, and how this has been in the face of catastrophic, apocalyptic changes in their environment. Estes explains how settler activists still struggle to take settler colonialism seriously, and the need to recognize that climate justice demands decolonization. 

For some additional background:

• Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'? -- Background on a report, funded by NASA, that describes how inequality and unrestrained resource extraction has caused rapid collapse of past civilization, and how it threatens to take down industrial civilization worldwide, in the near term. Like the indigenous perspectives from Drs. Whyte and Estes, settler activists working toward environmental justice must add a post-apocalyptic vision to their work. 

• The Deep Adaptation Agenda -- A wealth of resources, organized around the work of Jem Bendell, on how we can no longer afford to focus solely on avoiding climate catastrophe and societal collapse, but how we must adapt to it with "an acceptance that the current socioeconomic system, or industrial civilization, will likely fail."

• Learning to See in the Dark Amid Catastrophe: An Interview With Deep Ecologist Joanna Macy -- Joanna Macy, environmental activist, author, scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology, calls for us to be "fully present" in the reality of our situation, learning to confront the darkness while everything we came to rely upon unravels around us. In particular, this quote stands out for me: "But when I was asked that, the answer came right from my solar plexus: I’m doing this work so that when things fall apart, we will not turn on each other."