Indigenous Societies and Disasters

Colonization can be interpreted as a disaster with a fixed beginning but an indeterminate end, whose very purpose was to dispossess, disarm and, if necessary, destroy Indigenous Peoples. Disasters therefore continue to fall disproportionately on disempowered Indigenous communities, families, and individuals—and Indigenous vulnerability is the corollary to settler colonial, capitalist, and neoliberal resiliency. Although Indigenous Knowledges can and do contribute to better disaster risk reduction (DRR), it is not obvious that the ongoing deployment of Indigenous Knowledges will prevent or even mitigate disasters for Indigenous communities. Positioning Indigenous Peoples as inherently resilient risks reifying the status quo of vulnerability and diverts attention from a key sociological component of resilience to disasters, namely sovereignty.