River Healing Justice Pedagogies: From Rio Atrato to Whanganui River

• In Event: Environment, Infrastructure and Geopolitics

Abstract

Colonial legacies and current practices of extraction by multinational corporations along with the ongoing violent fight for control of land among armed actors, and other forms of violence has resulted in the land and river themselves being survivors of state violence. The river is suffering from trauma due to the ongoing violence and thus is also in need of healing. Through this lens, I incorporate a healing and justice river pedagogies based on the teachings of Indigenous and African Indigenous River communities of the Rio Atrato and Rio Cauca in Colombia, the Whanganui River in Aotearoa, and the Klamath River in California. All of these rivers have received legal recognition either through nation-states or tribal governments as living entities with similar rights as people that extend the rights of nature. My research seeks to weave together the traditional teachings and relational ontologies river communities hold in their caretaking of the rivers.

Author

• Jenny Escobar, Pacifica Graduate Institute: Community, Liberation, Indigenous / Eco-psychologies