Pollution Is Colonialism

There are exceedingly few texts like this that ask from an Indigenous perspective: how might we consider relations between science and land and water and still practice good science? Pollution Is Colonialism is at the leading edge of a significant turn in science and technology studies toward thinking with settler colonialism as a structure and terrain, and by bringing Indigenous studies into conversations with pollution, plastics, and lab sciences, this book makes a major contribution. -- Candis Callison, author of * How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts * One of the most original and compelling books Ive read in a long time, Pollution Is Colonialism is a truly exciting intellectual achievement. It argues for, and most importantly models, a decolonial scientific practice. A must-read book for anyone concerned about land relations. -- Joseph Masco, author of * The Future of Fallout, and Other Episodes in Radioactive World-Making * This important book challenges the very sense of what pollution is, demonstrating its deep entanglements with settler colonialism, and then generously offers us anticolonial feminist methods that might better take up pollution's colonial form. This book is a model of what engaged feminist anticolonial STS research looks like. -- Michelle Murphy, author of * The Economization of Life * "To read Liboiron is to constantly be surprised, reeducated, alarmed, and moved to practice anticolonial methodologies and interrogate everything we know.... Liboiron has written a text for the ages." -- Kerri Arsenault * Orion * If you seek a methodologically creative, provocative and politically engaged book that confronts you with your own scholarly practice, you should certainly pick up this volume.... Liboiron offers a model that exemplifies what engaged anticolonial feminist research practice should look like. -- Ccilie Kramer * Ethnos * Pollution Is Colonialism provides desperately needed analytic clarity on this settler colonial present.... This book invites readers first and foremost to look at knowledge practices and forms of knowledge creation, to think about their land relations, and to recognize colonial land relations in their familiar, seemingly benign practices and techniques. -- Anna Stanley * Antipode * [Pollution Is Colonialism] should be required reading for researchers who are working in any type of laboratory setting.... I also believe that a more general audience will find this work interesting and thought provoking. -- Jacqueline Stagner * International Journal of Environmental Studies * "Max Liboiron demonstrates how science can and should be informed by Indigenous ethics and ways of understanding relations. The result is a beautifully written text that is both a handbook on method and a call to rethink how we live our lives on occupied land." -- Joshua Bell * Smithsonian Magazine * "Although the book focuses on plastic pollution, it is relevant to all areas of science, because it illustrates the ways that colonialism can show up in the sciences. . . . I predict that it will inspire pragmatic yet profoundly ethical action during a time of dire news and institutional soul-searching. Untangling and resisting the Gordian knot of justifications, manipulations, and traditions that enable colonialism takes hard work and humility. I am grateful that Liboiron has written a primer to get us all started. It is rare that I read a book that so fundamentally shakes up my thinking." -- Katie L. Burke * American Scientist * "An emotive, immersed commentary of the state of knowledge, research, and ethics that concern us all as social scientists, whether or not we study plastics, or indeed, pollution." -- Vasudha Chhotray * Contributions to Indian Sociology * "Liboirons creative, lively, and passionate text refuses theories of pollution that make Indigenous land available for settler and

Max Liboiron is Associate Professor of Geography at Memorial University.

Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. Land, Nature, Resource, Property 39 2. Scale, Harm, Violence, Land 81 3. An Anticolonial Pollution Science 113 Bibliography 157 Index 187