MUSE Conference keynote: Addressing historic and predicted impacts of relocation upon Indigenous kinship
The sixth annual Michigan University-wide Sustainability & Environment (MUSE) Conference, which was organized and presented by students, took place February 2-4. It featured Dr. Kyle Whyte, the George Willis Pack Professor at the U-M School for the Environment and Sustainability, who gave a keynote speech on the historic and predicted impacts of relocation upon Indigenous kinship.
Within the United States, and many other colonized countries, the forced relocation of Indigenous groups was practiced in order to protect the colonizer’s financial and political interests. Whyte detailed how Potawatomi and Anishinaabe people were forced from their homelands in the Great Lakes area along the Trail of Death from the 1840s-1860s to regions in current Iowa and Kansas that had not received statehood at the time.
As these regions claimed statehood, Indigenous populations were offered land in the Oklahoma territory with which they could do as they saw fit. Many Indigenous families, impoverished by forced state relocation and systemic harm, could ironically not afford to move to Oklahoma, which left them in Iowa and Kansas with no infrastructural support and without their own land tenure. This systematic trend of continuous forced relocation led to a series of crises, according to Whyte.
“Communities were stripped of their ability to negotiate or practice sovereignty, which led to further crises of diminished social and physical infrastructure, violence and insecurity, and extraction and imposed environmental change,” said Whyte. “Indigenous communities are living in a post-catastrophe situation. Reframing the abuses that Indigenous groups have been through allows us to fully see that the core crisis of colonialism and its impact on the earth has not been addressed. There have been no assurances from governments to reduce damages done to Indigenous groups in order to ensure their future successes.”
Indigenous groups and people have been at the forefront of protesting and speaking out against slow actions from governments about climate change and disrupting prevailing capitalistic narratives about climate change solutions. Some of this action stems from their cultural beliefs, but this impassioned action also erupts from an acknowledgement that “during the worsening conditions of climate change, Indigenous communities are at the highest risk of needing to permanently relocate their communities,” said Whyte, citing a report from the National Climate Assessment, as well as other Indigenous-centered climate organizations and reports.
He added: “The United States’ federal and local governments put up barriers for these Indigenous communities to build infrastructure in order for them to be resilient in the face of climate change. The Indigenous Peoples’ Climate Initiatives and Plans are working, amidst others, to fight back against this federal divestment that has explicitly excluded Indigenous communities.”
This level of intended governmental relocation has “disrupted kinship relations to the land, people, and nature. Kinship is a forged relationship between humans and all other creatures that was destroyed and disrupted through a foreign power or settler force. These relationships take a long time to establish, but can help form levels of coordination and resilience to help Indigenous people deal with the hazards and harm” from climate change. These kinship relations have been obstructed by colonialism “denying Indigenous people the access to the resilience warning systems that a long history of kinship provides.”
In order to bolster the important efforts of Indigenous groups, Whyte noted, further action must be taken to support their communities, voices, and infrastructure. Systemic harm has not only impacted and killed the ancestors of current Indigenous communities, but also has greatly impacted their capacities to adapt to climate change. In order to avoid further harm from permanent climate change relocation, efforts, funds, and attention must be allocated in order to prevent further systemic damage, Whyte said.