Resisting the Global Land Grab

Description

Thursday, July 18, 2024    |    1:00–2:15pm EDT

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From carbon markets to the widely-touted 30×30 conservation campaign, so-called “nature-based solutions” to climate change and the biodiversity crisis risk further dispossessing the very communities best equipped to steward the land. This event draws lines between place-based struggles against “green colonialism” in Africa, South Asia, and North America, bringing together activists and organizers who are fighting to stave off the further dispossession of Indigenous and other colonized people in the name of conservation. 

Speakers will explore how histories of colonialism, apartheid and uneven development have set the terms for today’s “solutions” to ecological crisis, engaging not only the common conditions of oppression faced by Indigenous communities across the world, but also the solidarities they are forging in their shared struggle against neocolonial conservation—and for Land Back.

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SPEAKERS

Krystal Two Bulls (Lakota/Cheyenne)

 is the Executive Director of Honor the Earth. Hailing from Lame Deer, Montana, Krystal is Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne. With extensive experience as an organizer, she has worked on local, national, and transnational campaigns for social, racial, and environmental justice. Her identity as a Native American veteran deeply informs her organizing and storytelling. Krystal’s work focuses on the connections between collective wellness, environmental justice, Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, and anti-militarism. Through healing from her soldier experiences, she embodies a warrior’s commitment to the well-being of all Peoples and their relationship to the land.

Nnimmo Bassey is a Nigerian architect, environmental activist, author and poet. He is Director of the environmental think tank Health of Mother Earth Foundation, was chair of Friends of the Earth International from 2008 to 2012, and Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action for two decades. He was one of Time Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment (2009), Laureate of the Right Livelihood Award (2010), known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”, and was awarded the Rafto Human Rights Prize (2012). He received Nigeria’s national honor as Member of the Federal Republic (2014). An architect and author, his works include We Thought it was Oil, But it was Blood (2002), To Cook a Continent (2012), and Oil Politics (2016).

Ashley Dawson is a Distinguished Professor of postcolonial studies at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and the College of Staten Island. His recent books include Environmentalism from Below (2024), Decolonize Conservation (2023), People’s Power (2020), Extreme Cities (2017), and Extinction (2016). A member of the Social Text Collective, founder of the Public Power Observatory, and a Red Natural History Fellow, Dawson is a dedicated climate justice activist. His work focuses on global people’s movements and Indigenous self-determination, aiming to address environmental challenges through grassroots activism and scholarly research.

This event is organized by Ashley Dawson as part of Natural History for a World in Crisis, a programming series organized by the 2024-2025 cohort of Red Natural History Fellows with The Natural History Museum.