Paper short abstract:

Proposal for a collaboration that investigates land-based ways of knowing that do not position colonial narratives as hierarchically dominant.

Paper long abstract:

I am not proposing a specific paper so much as multidisciplinary collaboration within the framework of "terrestrial vision-making". I believe it is vital to weave narratives that move outside of dominant frameworks of language and perception. The Indigenous term "two-eyed seeing" which refers to the idea that different worldviews can be superimposed without hierarchy to create new emergent narratives is central to my way of thinking. Attempting to deconstruct colonial narratives of place-making I am interested in land-based narratives that move away from an "us" versus "them" dichotomy. I am interested in how discussions of land are framed as human-centric and there is rarely a genuine investigation into the land as whole, self-determining, and self-regulating. Land in the colonial nation-state framework continues to be about property, wealth, extraction, and power and is abstracted away from the real on the ground reality of biodiversity. Land including mountains, bodies of water, and forests are not mere divisions on maps, resources to be sold or exploited, land is quite literally life itself. All living beings have intrinsic value that is not solely at the discretion of human whim. The constant fear of the crime of anthropomorphism is a symptom of the profound disconnect we experience from the natural world. Traditional worldviews that embrace an equality among all living beings are not anachronisms. We do not need to speak the same verbal language to understand that destroying habitats and ecosystems is violence without consent towards the residents of those spaces.