What does Decolonization Day Have to do with Climate Action?
This weekend we gathered together in our new organizing home with friends from Native Movement and Fairbanks Queer Collective to honor Fairbanks’ liberation history, and to offer more of the story being left out during the Golden Days celebration. We wanted to take a moment now to reflect on the relationship between climate action and decolonization and the importance of acknowledging our whole history in order to build a beautiful collective future.
Golden Days is a long standing annual celebration of Fairbanks’ gold rush history. On its face, this celebration might seem like a harmless way to recognize our local history. However, the history celebrated through this event only tells a small part of the story, and ignores the harms brought about by that history. Although of course most people participating in Golden Days are not intending to do so as a celebration of colonialism, we wanted to use this event as an opportunity to reflect on the true history being celebrated and to shine a light on what’s being left out of that story.
Alaska’s pioneering history left in its wake vast destruction to life and culture of Alaskan Indigenous people. From the gold rush through today, that destruction has been compounded by our state’s economic reliance on extraction, which continues to harm the same communities’ lives and livelihoods. Resource extraction in every form in this state has always brought with it an increase in violence against Indigenous communities, in addition to irreparable damage to ecosystems.
If we are serious about fighting climate change, we need to let go of the fallacy that we can divorce the fight for a livable climate from the fight for a livable world in every sense of the word. To create a livable world, we need to address the ways that colonialism (including Alaska’s gold rush history) has made the world unlivable for Indigenous people throughout Alaska’s history - through direct violence, destruction of culture, as well as destruction of ecosystems critical for subsistence and cultural preservation. We also need to address the ways those same systems of un-livability are applied to the natural world. Systems of thought, action, and belief that lean on domination and destruction (like colonialism) inevitably lead to a world that’s unlivable, for all people, as well as for the rest of our ecosystem.
At FCAC, we investigate those systems through required decolonization trainings for staff, bi-monthly discussions and readings on decolonization topics, and by building in accountability mechanisms to our campaigns, through partnerships with and leadership from Indigenous leaders in our community. These small actions support our larger mission of radically changing the colonial structures and systems that continue to breed destruction, of both people and planet. We believe it’s important to regularly look at the interconnections of colonialism and climate destruction, to ensure the work we’re doing is addressing the root causes of both, and not simply applying band-aid solutions to structural problems.
We can find strength for that work in celebrating the Indigenous people who have been fighting back against systems of destruction since the moment those systems were imposed, who have been protecting the species affected by those systems, and who continue to stand up for justice in the face of machines of destruction that can at times seem inescapable. In Alaska, Indigenous communities have been fighting against the root causes of climate change since before the term “climate change” existed. This is why we believe the fight for a livable climate is impossible to win without Indigenous leadership. We honor all those who have carried on this living legacy of struggle for life, and we invite our community along in taking an honest look at our shared local history so that our collective work in Fairbanks is grounded in integrity and mutuality. In so doing, we hope to paint a new vision of what “golden heart” truly means.
