Category: Life on the Frontier

Commentary: The Environmental Anthropology of Settler Colonialism, Part II

May 16, 2017

*A commentary on Part II of our Engagement thematic series, Life on the Frontier. By Clint Carroll, University of Colorado Boulder § Settler colonial studies offers a set of analytical tools that can help make sense of environmental practices and politics—and their resulting effects on people, other-than-human animals, and landscapes. Understanding the environmental impacts of settler colonialism, … More Commentary: The Environmental Anthropology of Settler Colonialism, Part II

Commentary: The Environmental Anthropology of Settler Colonialism, Part I

April 11, 2017

*A commentary on Part I of our Engagement thematic series, Life on the Frontier. By Zoe Todd, Carleton University § If we take seriously the work of Indigenous scholars on the Indigenous legal-governance systems of territories across what is now Canada, and if we pay close attention to the ways that Indigenous legal orders and traditions … More Commentary: The Environmental Anthropology of Settler Colonialism, Part I

Wildlife Conservation and Settler Colonialism in the North American West

March 28, 2017

By Paul Berne Burow, Yale University § On May 3, 1933, a common brown buffalo cow gave birth to a snow-white bison calf on the National Bison Range near Moiese, Montana. A ranger noticed it during his morning rounds, and news spread rapidly. A sense of hope swept through communities of the Flathead Nation in western Montana. … More Wildlife Conservation and Settler Colonialism in the North American West

Reclaiming Nature? Indigenous Homeland and Oil Sands Territory

March 7, 2017

By Tara Joly, University of Aberdeen § Settler colonial relations construct the Athabasca region as extractive oil sands territory, yet the region remains homeland for Indigenous peoples, including Métis individuals. In my doctoral research, I argue that oil sands reclamation – the process of cleaning up extractive spaces by returning the land to a “productive” or … More Reclaiming Nature? Indigenous Homeland and Oil Sands Territory

Building Out the Rat: Animal Intimacies and Prophylactic Settlement in 1920s South Africa

February 7, 2017

By Branwyn Polykett, University of Cambridge § In the years between the two world wars another global war was declared, the war on the rat. The rat was a stray organic glitch in the logistics of imperial modernity, insinuating itself onto ships, transmitting infectious disease along trade routes, displacing local rodents, disrupting local ecologies and destroying crops … More Building Out the Rat: Animal Intimacies and Prophylactic Settlement in 1920s South Africa

Living with the Environmental and Social Legacy of U.S. Land Policy in the American West

January 24, 2017

By Julie Brugger, University of Arizona § Looking out across the arid, mesquite- and saguaro-studded landscape of the Tonto Basin District of the Tonto National Forest (TNF) in central Arizona, it is not apparent to the untrained eye that there is anything for cattle to eat or drink. The landscape stretches to the horizon without any … More Living with the Environmental and Social Legacy of U.S. Land Policy in the American West

The Limits of Environmentalism at Earth’s End: Reindeer Eradication and the Heritage of Hunting in the Sub-Antarctic

December 20, 2016

By James J. A. Blair, Brooklyn College, City University of New York (CUNY) § In the Arctic Circle, a Russian public health plan to cull hundreds of thousands of reindeer—in order to cleanse the landscape of anthrax-carrying bacteria—has triggered tense debate among policymakers, scientists and indigenous Nenet reindeer herders. The Nenets are refusing to allow the … More The Limits of Environmentalism at Earth’s End: Reindeer Eradication and the Heritage of Hunting in the Sub-Antarctic