Julie Sze
Lecture: Climate Justice in a World on Fire, or ICE will Melt
Drawing on an emerging archive of climate justice cultural production, I ask, what does non-naïve radical hope look like now in the face of interconnected environmental, political and social disasters? What does freedom look like in the face of environmental and state violence in its myriad forms- gentrification, surveillance, policing and deportation regimes? Culture and media, in abolitionist climate justice narratives, offer a partial answer. I argue that these narratives, grounded squarely within social movements, enact an imaginative reclamation and recognition in a brutalizing economic and political system that seeks to deny the rights of survival for vulnerable peoples and communities, animals and the ecosystems.
Susan Schuppli
Lecture: Cold Rights in a Warming World
This presentation builds upon a body of work that I have been developing over the past few years exploring the many different knowledge practices that are mediated by "ice" from scientific expertise to local knowledge and indigenous traditions. My first phase of research explored ice cores as a planetary archive comprised of “material witnesses” that are capable of recording the Earth’s complex atmospheric histories. Ice acts a natural storage medium for recording climatic events because of its unique ability to capture and store evidence of greenhouse gases over hundreds of thousands of years. The air bubbles trapped in ice are not simply data-proxies that scientists read in order to understand the past in the ways that they might decode trees to gain insight into historic temperature variations, rather, it is literally ancient air and thus provides unique and direct evidence of climate change. This research also resulted in a documentary film shot in the Canadian Ice Core Archive and at a US Geochemistry lab where I spent time with the scientists that undertake its complex gas analysis. It also entailed conversations with the labourers who manage these icy infrastructures such as the drillers who extract cores under conditions of extreme cold and the archivists whose role it is to preserve and catalogue these fragile frozen samples of the Earth’s history in national ice core repositories. More recently I've been filming in Svalbard Archipelago as part of inquiry into sea ice and the geopolitics of the Circumpolar North, whereas the next phase its focus to glaciers. Specifically the Hindu Kush Karakoram ranges of the Himalayas. This is an area of the world where the changing material conditions of glacial ice are not only impacting directly upon local communities but also weather systems globally. In developing these sequenced projects over a number of years, each with multiple outputs, my research aims to coalesce disparate—and oftentimes incommensurate—forms of knowledge across a wide range of spatial scales and contexts that, when taken together, create a more complex understanding of our current ecological condition.
Craig Santos Perez
Lecture: “Beyond The Tenth Horizon”: Sensing Ecological and Human Interconnections through Pacific Islander Eco-Poetry
In this hybrid talk and poetry reading, I will show how Pacific Islander literature makes visible the interconnections between diverse environmental and human scales, spectrums, and spaces. Launching from Epeli Hauʻofa’s concept of “the tenth horizon,” we will poetically navigate the catastrophes wrought in the Pacific by militarism, nuclearism, and ecological imperialism, as well as the solidarities woven by indigenous, racial, sovereignty, climate, and food justice movements. Throughout, I will argue that Pacific eco-poetry articulates indigenous ethics, critiques colonial exploitation, and imagines sustainable futures.
Kyle Whyte
Lecture: The Timing of Climate Justice
There’s a growing concern that renewable energy solutions to climate change can be harmful in their own right. Indigenous peoples are among the communities, countries, and peoples who have stated this concern. Why are some renewable energy solutions enacted irresponsibility? Part of the reason why has to do with how some proponents of these solutions narrate climate change through linear time. When narrated like a ticking clock, the sense that swift action is needed obscures responsibilities to others who risk being harmed by solutions. This presentation will then offer four different Indigenous approaches to narrating climate change, "depth time," "seasonal time," "kinship time," and "dystopian time," showing how each offers an account of responsibility. While philosophical, the Indigenous approaches have implications for climate governance, allyship, policy, and the media.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Public lecture
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, distinguished professor of Environmental Biology at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. As the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants, Kimmerer has earned wide acclaim. As a writer and a scientist, Kimmerer's interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land.
Featured presentation by Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, followed by a conversation with Dr. Clint Carroll, Associate Professor, CU Ethnic Studies and a general Q&A session. This special Zoom presentation is sponsored by the CU Museum of Natural History, NEST and the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Kathryn Yusoff
TUES, FEBRUARY 2, 2021 at Noon (MST)
Lecture: The (In)Humanities
Edgar Heap of Birds
MON, MARCH 1, 2021 at 1:00 PM (MST)
Lecture: "Spirit Citizen, Provocative Native American Public Art and Studio Practice"
More about Edgar Heap of Birds
Nicholas Mirzoeff
TUES, MARCH 9, 2021 at 5:00 PM (MST)
Lecture: "The Natural History of White Supremacy."
Abstract: This talk is part of my effort to think of white as a verb and whiteness as a practice. It looks at how nature is made into by whiteness by the practices of settler colonialism and named as "natural history." Beginning with plantation cultivation, I spend time with Audubon, his Birds of America, and the formation of US ornithology as a way of seeing in order to think about what has become known as the Central Park birdwatching incident, on the same day as the murder of George Floyd. Just yards from that place is the American Museum of Natural History, which institutionalized the relationship of nature and white supremacy. Its racializing statue of Theodore Roosevelt hunting has been protested by Indigenous people since 1971 and was finally set to be removed after the 2020 protests. Can this removal open the possibility to see "nature" other than as death?
Environmental Ethics for Creative Technologists
Thursday, April 1st at 5 PM MST
Description: Environmental sustainability and current technology design practices are inherently intertwined. We aim to open up a broad discussion about how creative technologists can promote environmental awareness in their design practice, or how the constraint of sustainability affects design thinking, the design process, and design outcomes. This panel will encourage attendees to discuss environmental issues and ethics in relation to science, society, technology, design, and art. We invite panelists across disciplines such as Human-computer interaction (HCI), Environmental studies, Sociology, Engineering, Philosophy, and Art practices to provide expertise in this discussion. Panelists will be asked a set of discussion questions from the moderators followed by a shorter Q&A from the attendees. The panel will take place on Zoom and will be open to the wide audience.
Panelists: Shaz Zamore (ATLAS Institute), Ben Hale (Environmental Studies and Ethics), and Erin Espelie (NEST and Cinema Studies)
Jennifer Peterson
MON, APRIL 5, 2021 at 1:00 PM (MST)
Lecture: "Forest Petroculture: A Cinematic History"
Cannupa Hanska Luger
Artist Talk
TUES., MARCH 8, 2022 at 6:30 PM
Cannupa Hanska Luger is a New Mexico-based multidisciplinary artist who uses social collaboration in response to timely and site-specific issues. Raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, he is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota descent. Luger produces multi-pronged projects that take many forms—through monumental installations that incorporate ceramics, video, sound, fiber, steel, new media, technology and repurposed materials, Luger interweaves performance and political action to communicate stories about 21st Century Indigeneity. This work provokes diverse audiences to engage with Indigenous peoples and values apart from the lens of colonial social structuring and often presents a call to action to protect land from capitalist exploits. He combines critical cultural analysis with dedication and respect for the diverse materials, environments, and communities he engages.