Episode 23: Anthropocene as Kleptocene: Colonial Theft, Ecological Destruction, Indigenous Activism

Posted Date: April 15, 2021

Episode Description: In this episode, LAC member Müge Gedik has a conversation with Kyle Keeler on the colonial roots of our current epoch, popularly referred to as “the Anthropocene.” Keeler highlights the history of centuries of violent colonialism that would set in motion the industrial production, chemicals, and bomb blasts that are argued to distinguish the Anthropocene from previous epochs. Focusing on violent colonial theft, Keeler changes the name of this epoch to the Kleptocene, to call attention to to the theft of land, lives (both human and nonhuman), and materials that colonialism broadly, but U.S. settler colonialism specifically, imposed and imposes on North America and its Indigenous inhabitants, as a way to understand global environmental catastrophes. This episode foregrounds indigenous resistance that has been ongoing in this process of theft and extraction. Keeler situates his research on the Kleptocene as a way to imagine, decolonize, and create a future free of colonial theft and ecological destruction on repatriated land.

Guest Biography:

Kyle Keeler is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Oregon in Environmental Sciences, Studies, and Policy (ESSP) and English Literature. His work is centered on the Environmental Humanities with a concentration on Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies, specifically focusing on how settler colonialism has caused and continues to cause, environmental degradation in large part responsible for the Epoch popularly known as the “Anthropocene.”

Contact: kkeeler@uoregon.edu
Personal Website: https://kbkeeler.wordpress.com/ Twitter (@EnviroMoose): https://twitter.com/enviromoose?lang=en 

Project Title: “Introducing the Kleptocene: Toward a More Honest Investigation of the Colonial Roots of Our Current Epoch”

Description:

In an age of ecological crisis, the stories that are told, and their titles, matter.

The prevailing story of contemporary ecological catastrophe is that of “The Anthropocene,” or “Human Epoch,” which implicates the whole of humanity for environmental catastrophe. Currently, twenty-nine members of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) cite the mid-1950’s as the Epoch’s start date, marked by increased industrial production, the use of agricultural chemicals, and Atomic bomb blasts.

However, this start date and these markers erase centuries of violent colonialism that would set in motion the industrial production, chemicals, and bomb blasts the AWG argues should mark the Epoch. For example, how does the Anthropocene account for industrial production and agricultural chemical use without stolen farmland on the American continent? How would the cited atomic bomb blasts have been possible without the stolen and colonized Marshall Islands, uranium extraction and bomb testing on Indigenous land in the American Southwest, and nuclear waste dumping on Indigenous land across the American continent? Indeed, even contemporary nuclear power advocates do not engage with the way that nuclear power has upheld and strengthened settler colonial processes and structures in the Americas.

A more honest story regarding the Earth’s current Epoch must center on such violent colonial theft, and the story’s title must be changed to reflect this content.

The Kleptocene is a title for this Epoch that calls attention to the theft of land, lives (both human and nonhuman), and materials that colonialism broadly, but U.S. settler colonialism specifically, imposed and imposes on North America and its Indigenous inhabitants

The Kleptocene allows for an expanded view of the current Epoch, a path toward honest discussion regarding past and present global environmental catastrophe—and a way to imagine and create a future free of colonial theft and ecological destruction on repatriated land.

 List of Recommended Readings/Materials

Original Kleptocene Article:

Keeler, Kyle. “Colonial Theft and Indigenous Resistance in the Kleptocene.” Edge Effects, Sept. 8, 2020. 

Websites and Videos:

Accompanying Materials:

Bacon, J. M. “Settler Colonialism as Eco-Social Structure and the Production of Colonial Ecological Violence.” Environmental Sociology, vol. 5, no. 1, Routledge, Jan. 2019, pp. 59–69. Taylor and Francis+NEJM, doi:10.1080/23251042.2018.1474725.

Brown, Kirby. Stoking the Fire: Nationhood in Cherokee Writing, 1907–1970. University of Oklahoma Press, 2019.

Davis, Heather, and Zoe Todd. “On the Importance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, vol. 16, no. 4, 4, Dec. 2017, pp. 761–80.

Demos, T. J., Emily Eliza Scott, and Subhankar Banerjee. The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change. Routledge, 2021.

Dimaline, Cherie. The Marrow Thieves. DCB, 2017.

Estes, Nick. Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. Verso Books, 2019.

Gilio-Whitaker, Dina. As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental  Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock. Beacon Press, 2019.

Guernsey, Paul. “The infrastructures of White settler perception: a political phenomenology of colonialism, genocide, ecocide, and emergency,” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. Feb. 2021, doi: 10.1177/2514848621996577.

Hediger, Ryan. Homesickness: Of Trauma and the Longing for Place in a Changing Environment. U of Minnesota Press, 2019.

Horton, Jessica L. “Indigenous Artists against the Anthropocene.” Art Journal, vol. 76, no. 2, Routledge, Apr. 2017, pp. 48–69. doi:10.1080/00043249.2017.1367192.

Justice, Daniel Heath. Why Indigenous Literatures Matter. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2018.

LeMenager, Stephanie. “Love and Theft; or, Provincializing the Anthropocene.” PMLA, vol. 136, no. 1, Jan. 2021, pp. 102–09.

Mark Carey, Holly Moulton, Jordan Barton, Dara Craig, Zac Provant, Casey Shoop, Jenna

Travers, Jeremy Trombley, and Adriana Uscanga, “Justicia glaciar en Los Andes y más allá,” Ambiente, Comportamiento y Sociedad 3, no. 2 (2020): 28-38.

Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. U of Minnesota Press, 2015.

Norgaard, Kari Marie. Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People: Colonialism, Nature, and Social Action. Rutgers University Press, 2019.

Ostler, Jeffrey. Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas. Yale University Press, 2019.

TallBear, Kim. “Beyond the Life/Not Life Binary: A Feminist-Indigenous Reading of Cryopreservation, Interspecies Thinking and the New Materialisms.” Cryopolitics: Frozen Life in a Melting World. Joanna Radin and Emma Kowal, eds., MIT Press, 2017, pp. 179–202.

Wald, Sarah D., et al. Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial. Temple University Press, 2019.

Watt-Cloutier, Sheila. The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Fight to Protect the Arctic and Save the Planet from Climate Change. U of Minnesota Press, 2018.

Whyte, Kyle. “Is It Colonial DéJà Vu? Indigenous Peoples and Climate Injustice.”  Humanities for the Environment: Integrating Knowledges, Forging New Constellations of Practice, edited by Joni Adamson et al., Social Science Research Network, 2016, pp. 88–104. papers.ssrn.com, doi:10.2139/ssrn.2925277.

—. “Justice Forward: Tribes, Climate Adaptation and Responsibility.” Climatic Change, vol. 120, no. 3, Jan. 2013, pp. 117–30.