This is a revised version of a talk delivered at the symposium “Palestine and the Historian” at Harvard University on a panel titled “Borders, Apartheid, Carcerality.” My comrade Mary Jirmanus Saba—a filmmaker, geographer, and media studies scholar—recently participated in a … Continue reading “What Is Our Responsibility as Intellectuals to Palestine?”
On Friday, November 10th, the recently formed NYU Faculty for Justice in Palestine held a teach-in on campus on the theme of Palestine and the University. I share my remarks from that evening here. My name is Lou Cornum. I am … Continue reading “Palestine and the Project of Native Studies”
I. On October 14, 2023, Australia voted in a referendum on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, an attempt to enshrine consultation with Indigenous peoples in the Australian constitution. The proposal originated in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, adopted by … Continue reading “Yes/No: Referenda and Mandates”
With every superstorm, flood, drought, or heatwave, the uneven effects of climate change are made clear. Coastal communities in the poorer nations are displaced from their homelands while wealthy nations move to tighten border restrictions. Private fire services are hired to … Continue reading “Red Natural History: An Introduction”
Nitawahsin was a large empire or nation-state of the Amskapi Piikani and their sister-states, located almost near the center of North America. Its borders were the Saskatchewan River to the north, Yellowstone River to the south, the Rocky Mountains to … Continue reading “The Slow Violence of Natural History”
Indigenous is a misnomer. We are family members, clans, nations, and relatives. We know each other by relation to one another. We have stories about ourselves and the animals and the creatures that no longer live on the planet. This … Continue reading “Dinosaurs, Eugenics, and Collapse: Indigenous Erasure in Natural History”
The academic field of Ethnic Studies is an activist discipline. It was founded through student and community activism, with the purpose of intentionally and explicitly supporting empowerment for marginalized communities and peoples. While it originates most directly from US-based activism … Continue reading “Already Presumed Dead”
Let us hope that the coronavirus pandemic, as the plague in Ancient Greece before it, results in a paradigmatic historic event such that human conscience becomes attuned to life’s intelligence; such that the Aristotelian syllogism, “all men are mortals,” is … Continue reading “Re-encountering Mother Earth: The Urgent Task of Building Buen Vivir”
The ways we tell big stories of social change are born of the perspectives gained by hindsight, and this story exemplifies such hindsight. The Paradigm Shift that occurred during the twenty-first century emerged from relentless struggles for justice conjoined with … Continue reading “A Possible Decolonized, Indigenized Future”
My people used to roam all over the place. -Homer, The Exiles As soon as he walked into the bar, I knew he was Native. He knew or knew that I knew and in no time, he was standing next … Continue reading “Reverse Manifest Destiny (Or, The Exiles and Me)”
In a recent presentation at Pratt Institute, Jasbir Puar noted that she often works with shadow terms, or third terms that hides behind two oppositional and binarized concepts. Puar went on to explain that she borrowed the idea of a … Continue reading “Debility’s Shadow in Extractive Zones”
In her 2010 Sydney Peace Prize acceptance speech, Vandana Shiva asserted that the “bigger war”—bigger than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—was “the war against the planet.” With the slogan to make the United States “energy dominant,” the Trump administration, … Continue reading “Resisting the War on Alaska’s Arctic with Multispecies Justice”
Entropy (noun) 1. a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder 2. chaos, disorganization, randomness There is a scarcity of platforms that make space for Indigenous youth to represent themselves and speak back to the stories … Continue reading “Indigenous Youth, Standing Rock, and the Rise of Anti-Colonial Entropy”
I began to investigate the El Quimbo hydroelectric power project on the Magdalena River after reading the following headline in March 2012: “The River Refuses to Shift its Course.” El Quimbo is a dam built on the Yuma River–the Indigenous … Continue reading “Hunger as a Teacher”
