Keynote Address: Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Justice in a Pandemic-Prone World

Five hundred years of the colonial remaking of landscapes of most of the world’s continents have ravaged the planet in monumental ways. Empire-building has clearly benefitted people of Europe’s imperial projects while bringing catastrophic change to indigenous populations. The fallout of imperialism and all its attendant technologies has brought humankind to an existential crisis, with climate change and now pandemics as interlinked threats. This talk will bring together these issues, highlighting the wisdom contained in Indigenous knowledge systems as a way to imagine a sustainable human future.

Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) is a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos, and an independent educator in American Indian environmental policy and other issues. At CSUSM she teaches courses on environmentalism and American Indians, traditional ecological knowledge, religion and philosophy, Native women’s activism, American Indians and sports, and decolonization.

She also works within the field of critical sports studies, examining the intersections of indigeneity and the sport of surfing. As a public intellectual, Dina brings her scholarship into focus as an award-winning journalist as well, contributing to numerous online outlets including Indian Country Today, Los Angeles Times, High Country News and many more.

Dina is the author of two books; the most recent award-winning As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock. She is currently under contract with Beacon Press for a new book under the working title Illegitimate Nation: Privilege, Race, and Accountability in the U.S. Settler State.

This event is the keynote address to the webinar series, A Wakeup Call for Climate Justice? Indigenous Knowledges Respond to the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Co-sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, CAPPS Center, Department of Global Studies
Orfalea Center, and the Departments of Asian American Studies, Religious Studies, Chican@ Studies, Anthropology, Geography, and Black Studies