Mediatic Empire | “Our Ocean is Not a Sacrifice Zone: Deepening Climate Justice Against Extraction” with Tiara Na’puti

This lecture is part of Mediatic Empire: Critical Inquiries into Environment, Technology, and Media Cultures, a five-part public lecture series organized by UBC’s Department of English Language & Literatures and Green College. View the full series schedule.

TALK ABSTRACT

This lecture centres Indigenous responses to climate change by focusing on a US proposal for deep-sea mining in an area bordering the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument and the entangled forms of economic and scientific thinking about the Mariana Trench as a site for extraction. It considers how Indigenous Pacific Islanders are mediating responses to mining and commercialization through exclusive economic zones. Examining their advocacy for climate justice from the world’s highest court to the deepest ocean on Earth, this work expands analyses of power through listening to the heroes of Micronesia and their collective protection for oceanic ancestors.

PRESENTER

Tiara R. Na’puti is an Associate Professor of Global & International Studies at University of California Irvine. Professor Na’puti is a first-generation college student who received a master’s and doctorate in Communication Studies and a certificate in Native American & Indigenous Studies (NAIS) from The University of Texas at Austin. She is a Chamoru scholar (Guåhan/Guam) who focuses on issues of Indigenous movements, colonialism, and militarism in the Mariana Islands archipelago and throughout Oceania. Na’puti works with organizations addressing immigration rights and issues facing Native and Indigenous Pacific Islander populations. Her research has been published in venues such as: American Quarterly, AmerAsia, Environmental Communication, Security Dialogue, The Contemporary Pacific, Micronesian Educator, and the Quarterly Journal of Speech.

She is one of six Principal Investigators on a 3-year project, “Archipelagos of Indigenous-led Resurgence for Planetary Health” that was funded by a $2.2 million grant from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR). She was the recipient of a 2021-2022 Mellon/ACLS Scholars and Society Fellowship, her project Sovereignty & Climate Change in Guåhan: Creating Sustainable Futures focused on the urgent challenges of climate change and democratic governance in relation to Guåhan’s political status. For this project she was in-residence working with Independent Guåhan, a community group committed to educating the public about the benefits of sovereignty for the island.

Na’puti is currently editing a book volume called Detours Guåhan: A Decolonial Guide, a project that uses the popular guidebook and visitor brochure format to explore and interrogate the dominant narratives that structure representations of the island as the “Tip of the Spear” and “Where America’s Day Begins.” The book crafts alternative itineraries and ways of “visiting” the island as well as concrete examples of how we can move from metaphors of decolonization to material practices and everyday acts of resistance that bring about real change in the lives of everyday people in Guåhan. She has additional experiences that bridge her research work with Pacific Islander communities, and she has worked with undergraduate and graduate students on research and community groups.

Moderator: Dr. Alice Te Punga Somerville, Professor, Department of English Language & Literatures, UBC