Across Asia, Indigenous relations with multispecies kin have curated geospatial boundaries and nurtured abundance. Faced with polycrisis (settler colonialism, climate crisis, and carbon extractivism), how have Indigenous Asian communities refused settler and racial extractivism and pushed for re-centering Indigenous Science? By centering Indigenous struggles for land, livelihood, and multispecies abundance in Japan and India, this talk grapples with how Indigenous Science-rooted methods aim to carve out futures grounded in habitability.

Ann-Elise Lewallen is associate professor of Pacific & Asian studies at the University of Victoria, Canada, and her academic work focuses on Indigenous Asia/s, settler colonialisms, political ecology, and energy justice in Japan and India. Her 2016 monograph, The Fabric of Indigeneity: Ainu Identity, Gender and Settler Colonialism in Japan (SAR and UNM Press), considers Indigenous Ainu women’s use of heritage textiles to resist contemporary Japanese settler colonialism. In her current project, “Healing Forests: Indigenous Knowledges & Traditional Medicines in Northeast India,” she and her team partner with Indigenous Khasi medicinal healers in Meghalaya, India (funded by SSHRC, https://khasi.uvic.ca/). Her book-in-progress, The Banyan Ghost: Altered Ecologies and Indigenous Futures in Asia, focuses on energy transitions and multispecies abundance through collaborating with Indigenous and frontline communities in India and Japan.

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