The Paralysis of Intergenerational Justice: decolonising entangled futures

Abstract

The lives of Indigenous Peoples, their compatriots, future generations, nonhuman, and physical environments are inextricably entangled. Intergenerational environmental justice (IEJ) examines aspects of that entanglement. Specifically, it focuses on obligations and duties to provide future generations with environments in which to flourish. I argue there are three fundamental, interrelated weaknesses in existing theories of IEJ. First, theories take insufficient regard of power relations in settler states. Not only are political and judicial systems framed within Western traditions, but so too are justice theories. Theorists, therefore, appear to endorse and perpetuate the assimilationist project. Second, these theories do not account for entanglements of human cultures, human-nonhuman, past, present and future generations in an adequately inclusive manner. These theoretical oversights exclude aspects of Indigenous people’s philosophies and extant lifeways within their frameworks. The theories are unable to accommodate the multiple temporal, spatial and interspecies entanglements that define aspects of Indigenous identity and being. Third, bound by specific ontological parameters, IEJ becomes paralysed in a web of seemingly intractable problems for human and nonhuman within the settler states. To make these arguments, I draw on IEJ theories, critical and decolonial scholarship, and Aotearoa Māori and Australian Aboriginal philosophic perspectives. Case study examples demonstrate that in at least two settler states existing theories of IEJ become unworkable at the intersection with Indigenous communities drawing from different philosophical foundations. Māori and Aboriginal philosophic approaches to IEJ highlight two things. First, Western IEJ limits the agency of Indigenous communities to fulfil obligations and duties to past and future generations—human and nonhuman—and the environment. And second, by decolonising theory it is feasible to ensure Indigenous and non-Indigenous members of the settler states are embraced by theory, addressing the iniquity of assimilationist practice. Decolonised IEJ embraces multiple entanglements—Indigenous-settler, human-nonhuman, past-present-future—freeing it from a paralyses caused by Western ontological framings.