“Unsettled Ecologies: Alienated Species, Indigenous Restoration, and U.S. Empire in a Time of Climate Chaos”

Lisa Fink, PhD candidate, Environmental Studies, and 2021–22 OHC Dissertation Fellow.

This project  investigates  the relationship between environmental conservation discourses of species  invasion and the racialization of immigrants in the  U.S. In  doing so, it traces environmental thinking about invasive species from  Western/colonial, Indigenous, and anti-imperialist perspectives within  the  context of settler colonialism, immigration, and climate change   I examine how racial and settler colonial logics undergird Western/colonial  approaches, echoing anti-immigrant sentiment. Dialectically, I explore responses  emerging out of Indigenous and non-European settler communities  that do  important culture-shifting work around human-nature interaction and notions of belonging.