this creative interruption project (a final assignment for Dr. Fikile Nxumalo’s ‘Decolonial & Anti-Racist Approaches to Environmental Education’ seminar) responded to dominant framings of invasive species and refused the innocence of the garden (Nxumalo 2019) by highlighting the following points:
- settler colonialism required the settling of plants and animals as well as people (Mastnak et. al. 2014)
- seeds and other nonhuman organisms move and have agency (Keeve 2020) and their movement has been drastically shaped by conquest and industry (Feral Atlas 2021)
- notions of ecological belonging and national belonging are often entangled and fraught, especially in settler-colonial places (Head & Muir 2004; Trigger et. al. 2008)
- positions on invasive species reveal important dimensions about relations between folks and natures in settler-colonial, neoliberalized, anti-black places
gabi doiron 