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Unsettling Resilience: Colonial Ecological Violence, Indigenous Futurisms, and the Restoration of the Elwha River*
Author(s) -
Mauer K. Whitney
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
rural sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.083
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1549-0831
pISSN - 0036-0112
DOI - 10.1111/ruso.12365
Subject(s) - indigenous , sovereignty , psychological resilience , restoration ecology , sociology , dam removal , environmental ethics , politics , geography , political science , ecology , psychology , social psychology , paleontology , philosophy , sediment , law , biology
This study challenges dominant, academic conceptualization of resilience in light of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe's (LEKT) experiences of ecosystem restoration. Resilience has gained traction in social science as a framework for a community's response to environmental, social, and political disturbances, the contours of which are not well understood in Indigenous contexts. Interviews with LEKT members on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State reveal that colonial ecological violence associated with the damming of the Elwha River in the early half of the 20th century continues to shape contemporary possibilities for Klallam resurgence, sovereignty, and self‐determination. Cultural resurgence has been enhanced; but unanticipated burdens and heightened feelings of powerlessness and deprivation remain. Resilience‐based approaches to ecosystem restoration support aspects of Indigenous survival and collective continuance, but they are unlikely to support significant revitalization and self‐determined development unless the structural basis of ecological violence and Indigenous futurisms of resurgence, self‐determination, and sovereignty are addressed.