Green Dreamer: Seeding change towards collective healing, sustainability, regeneration 370) Christine Winter: Rethinking the philosophies underlying settler politics
Aug 31, 2022
Christine Winter, a senior lecturer in environmental and indigenous politics, dives deep into the philosophies underpinning settler politics. She argues that Western perspectives block solutions to environmental crises, advocating for a shift towards multispecies and intergenerational justice. Winter contrasts Māori concepts of relational respect with individualism and discusses the need for legal personhood for nature. She highlights the limits of anthropocentric justice and the call for a cultural shift, emphasizing that true change requires foundational reassessment in our political and scientific frameworks.
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Ontology Shapes Environmental Justice
- Western political philosophy's ontology (materialism, property, individualism, anthropocentrism, linear time) blocks meaningful environmental justice.
- Māori frameworks center relationality, collective wellbeing, and simultaneous past-present-future thinking which enable intergenerational care.
Place Has Its Own Purpose
- Māori view all things as relational and possessing mauri (life-force), so human use should enhance a place's being.
- This reframes stewardship: build paths or structures only if they respect and improve the mountain, river, or ecosystem.
Humans Are Of The World
- Humans are materially inseparable from the environment; bones chemically record place and diet.
- Presenting humans as separate from the world is hubris and ignores our embodied dependence.