Surviving the Unthinkable: Ecological Destruction and Indigenous Survivance in North America and the Nordic Countries, 1600-2022 (SUN)

The earth is facing a situation when the space for human existence is under threat, and biological diversity is crashing as species after species face extinction. For many alive today, this is a situation without precedence.

For the world’s Indigenous peoples, it is yet another crisis as they have already lived through destruction of their habitats and been forced to reinvent their communities.

In this historical project an international team compares experiences in Native North America and Nordic Sápmi to understand how Indigenous societies survive when faced with devastating changes caused by the twin forces of colonialism and environmental change.

The project identifies the imposition of borders, colonial education, and mapping practices as themes that reveal strategies of survivance, a concept coined by Anishinaabe Gerald Vizenor, to capture the agency involved in a conscious and active survival and revitalization of Indigenous communities.

The research focuses on the importance of cultural practices, art, and traditional knowledge as key reasons for Indigenous survivance.

The knowledge produced will be of relevance for understanding and identifying human responses to climate change and loss of biodiversity, through sharing of practices between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. It is hoped that it will also contribute to Indigenous claims for protecting fragile environments.