#35 (May-June 2021)
Decolonial Ecologies
Welcome to the 35th issue of The Funambulist. Decolonial Ecologies envision decolonial ecologies at different scales. The interview with Martiniquean author of Une écologie décoloniale (2019) Malcom Ferdinand presents a productive framework associating the two concepts — “decolonial” and “ecologies” — especially when considered through the Caribbean geography. He is joined by an excerpt of Jessic Oublié‘s graphic novel on the murderous use of Chlordecone in Martinique and Guadeloupe. At the other end of the issue, members of The Red Nation talk to us about the historic treatise they offer to the people of Turtle Island (and beyond): the Red Deal. South to the settler colonial border, Meztli Yoalli Rodríguez Aguilera describes Indigenous and Afro Mexican relations to the lagoons of Oaxaca, threatened by environmental racism. Further south on the continent, Paulo Tavares describes the history of Indigenous “forest alliances” that counter the Brazilian state and multinational companies’ extractivist predation on the Amazon forest. His descriptions resonate with those of Sammy Baloji, on the other side of the Atlantic, where the mines of the Congo perpetuate the colonial spoliation at the heart of the African continent. CHamoru researcher Kiara Quichocho and Hawai’i-born geographer Laurel Mei-Singh both bring Oceanian geographies to these dialogues through describing the impact of the U.S. military occupation respectively on Guåhan (Guam) and O’ahu in Hawai’i, discussing as well the Indigenous stewardship of these lands. Finally, Céline Chuang celebrates the interconnections that exist and the solidarities to be built between the “diasporic descendents of the displaced” and the Indigenous struggle for sovereign stewardship of their lands.
In the issue’s “News From the Fronts,” Shamsher Singh provides a Sikh perspective on the massive farmer strike from Punjab to Delhi, Sara Salem reflects on the legacies of colonialism in the Netherlands, and Panashe Chigumadzi & Hopewell Chin’ono converse on the struggle against corruption and political incarceration in a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe.