This week on Let’s Talk…Social Justice, Kevin wraps up his deep dive into Indigenous climate justice movements and principles by stretching his gaze across the Pacific with the help of Darumbal and South Sea Islander scholar, educator, and community leader, Dr. Melinda Mann.
Kevin and Melinda talk through the recent To Hell With Drowning conference, and the specific ways that colonisation has functioned to deny climate justice to Indigenous peoples’ across the Pacific. Together, Melinda and Kevin reflect on the critical importance of centering Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination in any movements for climate justice, and the powerful and important sites of solidarity and shared struggle emerging across the Pacific.
Wrapping up this short series of shows, they emphasise that colonisation is at the heart of the climate catastrophes of the present moment, and thus that ending climate injustice must begin by challenging colonisation in all its forms.