Alien Landscapes: Border Security Voids and Astro Settlements on Indigenous Land

• In Event: All-Too-Human Borders / More-Than-Human Planet (HYBRID)

Abstract

This talk considers how astronomical scientific discoveries perpetuate settler colonial occupation and ecological damage on the Indigenous borderlands and far beyond. As border regions, such as the Tohono O’odham land that spans the U.S. and Mexico, are increasingly surveilled from outer space, how might we rethink how borders are visualized far from human land, even as space satellites contribute to ecological clutter in outer space and on earth, while brightening the sky that is a critical aspect of land relations? Through an investigation of the collapsed “sightings” of border surveillance and scientific discoveries in outer space, how might Indigenous land persist as an alien space at the limit of conceptions of human/alien, earth/outer space, and subsequent notions of time and space? At the same time, how do Indigenous relational cosmologies remembered through origin stories, everyday life, and sci-fi films preserve an ancestral science that refuses the violence of borders, militarism, and environmental devastation that is rapidly expanding into outer space?

Author

• Felicity Amaya Amaya Schaeffer, University of California-Santa Cruz