Indigenous realism and climate change

This chapter outlines an Indigenous realist method for understanding the connection between human societies and environmental change. Indigenous realism can be contrasted with one grounded instead in the language of a certain kind of empiricism. As Wildcat points out, “facts and figures” and “resource distribution” are very much emphasized in the portrayal of climate change in recent academic and media reports. Indigenous leaders and scholars have, for generations, focused on how the language used to identify environmental phenomena can be articulated to avoid taking responsibility for oppression. In formal international and academic settings, since at least the 1990s, Indigenous leaders, scholars, and journalists have been among those offering perspectives and philosophies that challenge this way of thinking about climate change. Indigenous realism situates today’s climate change “crisis” systematically among the different historic and contemporary factors that lead to what becomes labeled “climate” related harm and risk.