The United States has built 2.4 million miles of pipeline, more than any other country in the world. Pipeline construction is one of the many ways in which the United States continues to terraform the land to support ongoing settler colonialism. For far too long, environmentalism has focused on specific cases of environmental injustice as isolated instances separate from our country’s history, rather than viewing them within the context of colonization. On this episode of For The Wild, we are joined by Kyle Whyte to discuss this very issue in connection to the vast extractive energy network that surrounds the Great Lakes area.

Kyle Whyte is Professor and Timnick Chair in the Humanities in the departments of Philosophy and Community Sustainability at Michigan State University. His research addresses moral and political issues concerning climate policy and Indigenous peoples, the ethics of cooperative relationships between Indigenous peoples and science organizations, and problems of Indigenous justice in public and academic discussions of food sovereignty, environmental justice, and the anthropocene. He is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. 

Kyle is involved in a number of projects and organizations that advance Indigenous research methodologies, including the Climate and Traditional Knowledges Workgroup, Sustainable Development Institute of the College of Menominee Nation, Tribal Climate Camp, and Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence. He has served as an author on the U.S. National Climate Assessment and is a former member of the U.S. Federal Advisory Committee on Climate Change and Natural Resource Science and the Michigan Environmental Justice Work Group. 

Kyle’s publications appear in journals such as Climatic Change, Weather, Climate & Society, WIREs Climate Change, Environment & Planning E, Daedalus, and Synthese. He is a recipient of the Bunyan Bryant Award for Academic Excellence from Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice.This expansive dialogue begins by exploring the ways in which the Lakehead System and its crude oil transportation threatens the Great Lakes, which contain 21 percent of the world’s freshwater supply and 84 percent of the freshwater in North America.

Taking this very real example, Ayana and Kyle go on to discuss Kyle’s body of work on dystopia and fantasy in climate justice, the reproduction of settler structures, Indigenous science, vulnerability discourses, and “decolonizing allyship.” Kyle concludes with the ever present reminder that our work must be rooted in consent, reciprocity, and trust.  

♫ Music by Cary Morin & Bonnie "Prince" Billy

References & Recommendations

Our History Is the Future by Nick Estes 

Invasive Species, Indigenous Stewards, and Vulnerability Discourse by Nicholas J. Reo, Kyle Whyte, Darren Raneo, et al.

White Allies, Let’s Be Honest About Decolonization by Kyle Whyte

Mother Earth Water Walk and Water Warrior Grandmother

Megan Bang

Anne Spice

Anishinaabek Caucus Lauds Nessel Honoring Campaign Promise, Urges Michigan Gov. Whitmer To Follow Suit: “Shut Down Line 6”

Learn about the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority, the main treaty organization that has opposed Line 5