Max Liboiron - Pollution Is Colonialism

Pollution Is Colonialism

MAX LIBOIRON

Duke University Press Durham and London 2021

2021 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Project Editor: Lisl Hampton

Designed by Courtney Leigh Richardson

Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro and Scala Sans Pro by Copperline Book Services

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Liboiron, Max, [date] author.

Title: Pollution is colonialism / Max Liboiron.

Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020037439 (print)

LCCN 2020037440 (ebook)

ISBN 9781478013228 (hardcover)

ISBN 9781478014133 (paperback)

ISBN 9781478021445 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH : EnvironmentalismPolitical aspects. | ImperialismEnvironmental aspects. | PollutionPolitical aspects. | PollutionSocial aspects. | ResearchEnvironmental aspects. | ResearchPolitical aspects. | Traditional ecological knowledge. | Environmental justice.

Classification: LCC JA 75.8. L 54 2021 (print) | LCC JA 75.8 (ebook) | DDC 304.2/8dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037439

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037440

Cover art: From the series Dinner Plates (Northern Fulmar) , 2015. Photo by Max Liboiron. Courtesy the artist.

Contents

The territory in which this text was written is the ancestral homeland of the Beothuk. The island of Newfoundland is the ancestral homelands of the Mikmaq and Beothuk. I would also like to recognize the Inuit of Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut and the Innu of Nitassinan, and their ancestors, as the original people of Labrador. We strive for respectful relationships with all the peoples of this province as we search for collective healing and true reconciliation and honour this beautiful land together.

Taanishi. Max Liboiron dishinihkaashoon. Lac la Biche, Treaty siz, dooshchiin. Mtis naasyoon, niiya ni: nutr faamii Woodman, Turner, pi Umperville awa. Ni papaa (kii ootinikaatew) Jerome Liboiron, pi ni mamaa (kii ootinikaatew) Lori Thompson. Ma paaraan et Richard Chavolla (Kumeyaay). Im from Lac la Biche, Treaty 6 territory in northern Alberta, Canada. The parents who raised me are Jerome Liboiron and Lori Thompson. I am connecting with Mtis family through a lineage of Woodman, Turner, and Umperville that leads back to Red River. Rick Chavolla of Kumeyaay Nation is my godfather. These are my guiding relations.

In his first year, PhD student Edward Allen came into my office, sat down in a small wooden chair that was certainly not built for him, and asked if his name had to be on his dissertation. He argued that because his dissertation would be a product of many peoples knowledge, putting his name on the front page would be a misrepresentation of authorship. I am fortunate to keep such company. His point is a good one: no intellectual work is authored alone. Many people built this book. Many are acknowledged here and throughout the text in footnotes so readers can see whose shoulders I stand on. I see these footnotes enacting an ethic of gratitude, acknowledgement, and reciprocity for their work. They make it harder to imagine these words are just mine, an uninterrupted monologue. They are not stashed at the end, but physically interrupt the text to support it and show my relationships. Here, footnotes build a world full of thinkers whom I respect. By putting footnotes on the page, I aim to account for how citations are screening techniques : how certain bodies take up spaces by screening out the existence of others, as well as reproductive technolog[ies], a way of reproducing the world around certain bodies. Citing the knowledges of Black, Indigenous, POC , women, LGBTQAI+ , two-spirit, and young thinkers is one small part of an anticolonial methodology that refuses to reproduce the myth that knowledge, and particularly science, is the domain of pale, male, and stale gatekeepers.

Building a book reminds me of what Alex Wilson (Cree) calls coming in, or coming to better understand our relationship to and place and value in [our] own family, community, culture, history, and present-day world. Wilson is talking about coming in as a two-spirit process of place-based relationality, in juxtaposition to various LGBTQAI + ways of coming out as a declaration of self. Writing a book queerly, two-spiritly, is (I think and feel) an act of coming in, circling back to belonging, sharing-in, and the accountabilities that come with that, much of which is done in the footnotes.

TL ; DR : My goal is to do science differently. Part of that is happening in the footnotes.

I suspect that the first person I should acknowledge is the one I text in the middle of the day because Ive come to an irreconcilable tension in the books argument, and who gives up her time to talk me through it, not as charity or even friendship (though that, too), but as part of a lesson in good relations and familyhood. Emily Simmonds, I hope you see how your teaching by example is reflected in every aspect of the book. Thank you, and Constance, for the place youve given me in yourourfamily. Maarsi.

Likewise, Rick Chavolla has been teaching me about relations, ethics, and bold statements for years. He was teaching me back when he was just a baby Elder. Thank you, Rick, for supporting me so I could choose not to drop out of my PhD and for adopting me into your family as a goddaughter. Youve taught me about prayer and how important core muscles are for running away from the police. Same lesson. Part of me always lives on your couch. Thank you, Rick Chavolla and Anna Ortega-Chavolla. I hope you understand how this book is the way it is because of you, both in its detail and in the broad strokes. This is what your love can do.

This book is about relations, and no one has taught me more about good relations through everyday lessons than Grandmother and Kookum. Almost every word of this book has been written within ten feet of Grandmother, which is a blessing all on its own.

I cannot thank and acknowledge Michelle Murphy enough. Michelle, your intellectual, emotional, familial, and pedagogical labours have influenced my thinking and the way I relate to others as a scholar. You are part of my ability to flourish in academia. From the first time we met on a panel at 4S and you cautioned me about fetishizing molecules (I totally was), to emergency Skype calls during my first year as a professor when I wanted to either burn academia down or quit for good, to reminding me to be more kind and less hard-edged, to your presence at the birth of this book, you are and have been my academic auntie. Thank you, so much. Love is an insufficient term to characterize your mentorship and friendship.

Reaching all the way back to the people who taught me early lessons about relations and who gave me (and continue to give me) support to go to that mythical place called university and do that stuff called academia (though we didnt know the term at the time), thank you, Lori, Jerome, Joel, Curtis, and Melissa, as well as Mila. I have been adopted into several families in the last decade, but you are my first and forever family. You are the ground I stand on. Without you, I could not take the risks I can because I know I can only fall so far.

Lessons in relations are done in place. Gratitude to Lac la Biche, Edmonton, New York City, and Newfoundland and Labrador for sharing lessons and correcting my ignorance and hubris regularly. Maarsi.

In different but overlapping ways, Alisa Craig and Nicole Power made it possible for me to stay on, work in, and learn from the island of Newfoundland. I cant imagine what it would be like to be an academic here without you. I would likely not be here, and certainly I would not be as smart, funny, content, or successful as I am (or think I am) without you. Thank you, both. Thank you especially to Nicole for blending our families and supporting the logistics of family that fills out my life to something fuller than I could have imagined before. Likewise, thank you to Neil Bose and the VPR team for enabling a way of working and doing good in the province and university that I could never have done alone, and certainly do not want to do alone. When someone has your back the way you have mine, things become possible that were unimaginable before. Thank you.