Hidden Wounds: White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and the Unsettling of America

• In Event: Pedagogies of Responsibility as Relationships of Healing: Wendell Berry, Eco-Justice, and Education

Abstract

A central analytic line in Ecojustice Education (EJE) traces the damaging effects of intersecting supremacy discourses in modern industrial. Both social and ecological crises are deeply rooted in interactive value hierarchies (Plumwood, 2002) structuring our institutions as well as our day to day interactions with each other and the land. Throughout his work, Berry begins from an analysis of the disastrous effects of these divisive hierarchies in particular their function in maintaining a rationalized and mechanized industrial system where work that connects our bodies to the earth is fundamentally degraded (Berry, 1977/1996/2017). This paper summarizes the ideas in two chapters examining Berry’s analysis of white supremacy and the ongoing legacies of slavery, settler colonialism, and the desecration of the Earth.

Author

• Rebecca A Martusewicz, Eastern Michigan University