Settler violence and dispossession are ecological harms when measured by relational resilience
Evidence
Vicious sedimentation and insidious loops are patterns of environmental injustice that are characteristic of settler colonial domination when considering the ecological dimension of settlement. At the surface level, environmental violence manifests as the imposition of environmental destruction and pollution. At another level, it is possible to look at environmental violence as undermining the qualities of relationships that are constitutive of any society’s social resilience or collective continuance. Hence, settler sedimentation (i.e., “settlerscapes,” “settler grammars of place”), settler “innocence,” and gender and sexual violence are ecological issues. But I do not mean so in the sense that they are subsumable under some conception of the environment. Nor do I mean that the examples I gave of vicious sedimentation and insidious loops are ecological simply because they somehow implicate the environment. Rather, I am relating violence to ecology to highlight the ways they are very much related to systems concepts such as resilience, adaptive capacity, and sustainability—what I have described through centering concepts of collective continuance and Indigenous ecologies. — Kyle Whyte, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and…, 97
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the book’s core theoretical move: framing settler colonialism itself as ecological violence through relational concepts like collective continuance — the very mechanism bridging land theft and ecological harm the reader is reading for.
- XREF: Connects directly to the polyad’s thread linking Environmental Injustice and settler-colonial critique with land-use history — this is the theoretical pivot where land dispossession IS ecological damage, central to Eco-Justice Education. — connects to: Settler colonialism is ecological domination that rebuilds Indigenous homelands into settler ecologies. — Kyle Whyte, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and…, 65; A society’s resilience lies in self-determined capacity to adapt to change — Kyle Whyte, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and…, 41; Ecological relationships can remain continuous through constant change — Kyle Whyte, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and…, 30 (+6 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: The reframing of ‘ecological issues’ away from mere environmental implication toward relational/adaptivity concepts is a paradigm-shifting definition worth sitting with.
Related
- Settler violation of reciprocal land ethics caused cascading ecological and cultural loss (similarity 0.86)
- Settler colonialism is ecological domination that rebuilds Indigenous homelands into settler ecologies. (similarity 0.85)
- Kyle Whyte — Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and Environmental Injustice (similarity 0.84)
- Settlers share the grief of lost ecological reciprocity with Indigenous peoples (similarity 0.82)
- Ecological relationships can remain continuous through constant change (similarity 0.81)
- Sweetgrass recolonizing disrupted land teaches that brokenness lies in human-land relationship (similarity 0.80)
Broader Connections
- Settler violation of reciprocal land ethics caused cascading ecological and cultural loss
#corroborates(0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 763 - Sweetgrass recolonizing disrupted land teaches that brokenness lies in human-land relationship
#exemplifies(0.75) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 1232 - Resilience and stability are distinct ecological concepts describing different recovery properties
#expands(0.75) — S. T. A. Pickett and P. S. White, eds., The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and…, 1907 - Settlers share the grief of lost ecological reciprocity with Indigenous peoples
#corroborates(0.72) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 765