Beyond Fires & Floods: Pt 5

MEDIA INDIGENA 370 // Synopsis

Part 5 of Beyond Fires and Floods (BFF) brings you the first half of ‘Storying Systems vs. Symptoms,’ the second session of the second day of climate conversations we co-convened with dozens of Indigenous scholars, journalists and experts last October at the University of British Columbia.

Moderated by long-time MEDIA INDIGENA roundtabler Candis Callison—a jointly-appointed Professor in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies at UBC—she was joined on the panel by Jeffrey Ansloos, Michelle Cyca, Tiara R Naputi, and Gina Starblanket, which was described as follows:

According to scholar Adam Hanieh, transforming our current climate trajectory means confronting ‘the multiple logics of a social system that has served to center oil throughout all aspects of our lives, and we cannot extricate ourselves from oil’s pervasiveness, certainly not at a pace necessary to halt runaway climate change, while remaining within this social system.’ Can seeing climate change as symptomatic of systems and structures shed greater light on the impacts of ongoing colonial policies and institutions?

In this session, we ask how we can move beyond event-centric journalistic practices to reflect underlying structural problems, system change, and long-term solutions. Relatedly, we also unpack what Candis Callison calls ‘crisis-talk,’ where the only allowable discourse is ‘what must be done now,’ foreclosing larger questions of how we got here or what led up to such crises.”

LISTEN > https://pod.fo/e/40d48e

To learn more about BFF: Beyond Fires & Floods, including our core sponsors, visit the BFF home page.