“Fixing” Settler Capitalism: Un/Sustainability in the Former Fort Ord

Abstract

California's former Fort Ord Army Base is located on the unceded Indigenous territory of the Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation. After seven decades as a training ground for foreign wars, the decommissioning of the base triggered an economic, demographic, and cultural crisis for greater Monterey. The solution to this crisis, the Fort Ord Base Reuse Plan, promised sustainable development in the form of local environmental protection, public higher education, and economic growth. We argue that the Fort Ord Base Reuse Plan illustrates a settler sustainability fix, which the state deploys to secure settler capitalist futurity on the Monterey Peninsula at the expense of Indigenous futurity. Ultimately, this research advances current understandings of settler capitalism by foregrounding the role of un/sustainability in defining its crisis-fix relation.