Interweaving in/on the Air: A Scripted Synthesis of Indigenous and Settler Knowledges for Environmental Protection in Resource Development

The ever-rising threat of environmental catastrophe and the continuing displacement, dishonor, and attempted erasure of Indigenous Peoples and their traditional lands are linked by capitalism’s externalizing the costs of conquest, whether ecological or human. This work investigates efforts to address these intertwined issues of social, economic, and environmental justice through interweaving Indigenous and settler ways of knowing in resource-development projects in Canada. In seeking to dramatize the need for further informed and engaged public dialogue on how to redress the twin menaces of extractivism and colonization, this arts-based research unfolds as a script for a semi-satirical radio play or podcast. Here, our researcher seeks to explain research findings and advance environmental protection and decolonization on a radio talk show, only to be confronted by a skeptical host and a battery of opinionated guests reflecting real-world challenges to those two emancipatory goals. We close with a brief methodological reflection.

environmental protection, resource development, Indigenous relations, colonization, arts-based research