Link for Attending Online:
https://ubc.zoom.us/j/69323168033
Meeting ID: 693 2316 8033
Passcode: 670928
TALK ABSTRACT:
Across Asia, Indigenous relationships with ancestral land are shaped by environmental racism and neoliberal globalization. Yet, Indigenous communities in Japan and India refuse to accept these statesponsored energy development on their land. Indigenous Ainu (Japan) and Indigenous Khasi (India) engage ancestral land relations to challenge these development projects as “sustainable” or “clean.” In this talk I highlight how settler colonialism and environmental racism operate in each context and then turn to localized responses. While Ainu in Japan enact Indigenous foodways and ecotourism to subvert a nuclear waste dump, Northeast India’s Khasi draw from counter-mapping and Indigenous medicines to resist deforestation from coal and other energy projects.
Presenter Bio:
Dr. lewallen’s research focuses on transnational civil society, environmental justice, embodiment, and critical Indigeneity in Asia. Her 2016 book, The Fabric of Indigeneity: Contemporary Ainu Identity and Gender in Settler Colonial Japan, considers Ainu women’s revival of ancestral cloth as a mouthpiece to resist Japan’s settler colonialism in Hokkaido. Currently, in Sovereign Bodies: Indigenous Cartographies and Defying the State in India and Japan, she investigates Japan’s technological diplomacy in India’s energy sector as it intersects with Indigenous land defense. She adopts decolonial mapping techniques to expose power relations and resist eco-cultural degradation of Indigenous Knowledges, land, and water.
