Paper short abstract:

This paper turns to weedy landscapes to explore conditions of livability for humans and more-than-humans alike, asking how invasive species in late nineteenth century Alberta, Canada, played a role in the formation of settler colonial space through the destruction of multispecies entanglements.

Paper long abstract:

In the context of extensive habitat destruction and multispecies extinctions, this paper turns to weedy landscapes in Alberta, Canada, to explore conditions of livability in the Anthropocene for humans and more-than-humans alike. Narrating the stories of native plants that have become endangered and the invasive species that threaten to replace them, I try to highlight both the encounters with human infrastructures and technologies that enabled invasion in the first place, as well as alternative collaborations for multispecies survival in this region. More specifically I ask how the introduction and extermination of invasive species in Alberta in the late nineteenth century played a role in the formation of settler colonial space. When settlers invaded North America, they brought with them a host of organisms which drastically changed the landscapes they encountered, replacing native flora, fauna and Indigenous people (Crosby 2004). Drawing from fieldwork with environmental volunteers as well as archival data of the 1880s until early 1900s, I ask how these ‘creatures of empire’ (Anderson 2006), initially facilitated the invasion of Alberta and later the formation of agricultural settlements in the region, through the destruction and control of Indigenous peoples and their ecologies. In addition I ask how human scientific and technological responses to these unwanted weeds became incorporated in human programs of ‘invasion, empire or capital’ (Tsing et al. 2020), further killing possibilities for multispecies entanglements to thrive.