Settler colonialism and racial capitalism in the US has resulted in dramatic forms of inequality through institutionalized, geopolitical, and environmental racism.
Indigenous, black and Latinx communities suffer the health consequences of living in the most polluted and toxic environments. Indigenous peoples across the Americas are also at the forefront of opposition to the extraction and transportation of fossil fuels. In this event, Professor Hazel Carby and Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity, Ruby Hembrom, discussed and showed the work of indigenous artists who are responding to environmental and ecological crises and degradation.
Among the artists discussed was Diné and trans-customary photographer Will Wilson, Chemehuevi photographer Cara Romero, and Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Lokata artist Cannupa Hanska Luger. These important works focus on urgent environmental issues, like the eradication of indigenous communities through damming and the ecological devastation of petroleum, coal and uranium extraction, while contextualizing them within the wider history of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. These artists also present new ways of thinking about our environment and imagining the future from indigenous perspectives.
Speaker
Professor Hazel V Carby
Hazel V Carby (@HazelCarby) is the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor Emeritus of African American Studies and Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Yale University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Honorary Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, and a Centennial Professor at LSE International Inequalities Institute. Her most recent book, Imperial Intimacies, A Tale of Two Islands was awarded the British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, in 2020.
Discussant
Ruby Hembrom
Ruby Hembrom is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and an Indigenous cultural practitioner, documentarian, writer and publisher. Her work addresses and challenges issues of non-representation, suppression, and appropriation of Indigenous cultures. She is the Founder of adivaani (the first voices), a non-profit platform for indigenous expression and assertion.
Chair
Dr Imaobong Umoren
Imaobong Umoren (@ImaobongUmoren3) is Associate Professor at the Department of International History at LSE and a Faculty Associate at the LSE International Inequalities Institute. Her research interests, publications, and teaching focus on histories of race, gender, activism and political thought in the Caribbean, Britain and the US focusing on the modern and contemporary period.
Banner Image: Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash
