Indigenous Immobilities as Coloniality: Indigenous Struggles in the Artic and the Representations of Climate Change Displacement in State and Federal Policies in The United States

Abstract

In the face of a warming Arctic climate, Indigenous communities in the state of Alaska have been faced with a difficult choice: to remain in place or to relocate. Remaining in place means villages will have to withstand more frequent and destructive storms, ground erosion (including permafrost melt), and disrupted hunting patterns among other impacts. Choosing to relocate presents challenges to cultural continuity, community cohesion, and bears a legacy of colonial relocations. However, where communities have chosen to pursue relocation, they have faced tremendous roadblocks from state and federal government agencies and largely remain immobile. The Indigenous communities of Kivalina, Newtok, and Shishmaref have elected to relocate, and all find themselves in different phases of the process. This study evaluates government policy and reports published in response to these three communities’ desire to relocate, while also foregrounding the communities’ resistance and challenges to such documentation. To achieve this aim, this study has employed Carol Bacchi’s poststructural policy analysis, otherwise referred to as “what’s the problem represented to be?” A theoretical framework supported by critical, decolonial, and poststructural theories, including Foucault’s theory of governmentality and derivative works of ecogovernmentality, Quijano’s Coloniality of Power, and Wolfe’s Logic of Elimination will be used to interrogate the systems of power in which these policies reside. Based on an analysis of 19 state and federal documents, this study unveils how the United States government has constructed climate displacement and relocation as problems of funding and categorization; decision-making and data; and vulnerability. In problematizing the conditions of the selected communities this way, I argue that the state has reasserted its sovereignty and hegemony at the expense of the Indigenous communities’ autonomy. In a sincere belief that change is possible, I offer perspectives of Indigenous resurgence and climate justice as pathways to transgressing the power of the state and bringing justice to the affected communities.

Keywords: Displacement, Self-Determination, Immobility, Governmentality, Coloniality