Climate Forum IV – Readings

Inside the dodo bird is a forest, Inside the forest
a peach analog, Inside the peach analog a woman, Inside
the woman a lake of funerals, disappointed male lovers,
scientists, Inside the lake a volcano of whale songs, Inside
the volcano a language of naming, Inside the language an
algorithm for de-extinction, Inside the algorithm blued
dynamite to dissolve the colony’s Sun, twinkle twinkle,
I didn’t mean to fall in love with failure, its molting
rapture, I didn’t mean to name myself from a necklace
of silent vowels, I didn’t go looking for the bird, I entered
through the empty cage, hips first

Bird Prelude, Zaina Alsous11.Zaina Alsous, A Theory of Birds, Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2019.

The following questions, marked below in italics, are situated in the complexities and contradictions of indigeneity, with the motivation to support, with readings, those who ‘run alongside disasters and stay with the trouble', who witness ecocides, urbicides, genocides, those who think on violence and displacement, as well as the practices and pedagogies of endurance, inhabitation, and survival, today, at the end of many worlds.

This photo is from the 70s of Deep Bay, the fishing village, Lau Fau Shan, whose livelihood depends on oyster aquaculture. Villagers used to collect oysters from the bodies of mangroves, otherwise using stakes or lattice trays of bamboo. Oysters were cleaned on the shore, villagers then made building material from oyster shells, mixing it with glutenous rice, and egg white. Historians point to similar techniques that had been used in the City Walls of Nanjing, and the Tiger Hill Pagoda in Suzhou, centuries ago.

How and why do skills, techniques of living move from place to place along with their human and nonhuman communities? What and who is changed, displaced, disappeared, erased in this process across different times?

Indigeneity is a complex and contradictory topic in Hong Kong, that touches on the logic of contemporary capitalist development, its history as a British Colony, and those of the dynasties in China. Michael Leung articulates its different dimensions in relation to autonomy and conviviality, in his novel Three Villages. This review offers an insight into the novel and the condition that Leung mines.

JN, ‘Autonomy, Conviviality, Indigeneity’, Lausan, 2024

In 2018, I was in Tbilisi for a series of workshops on landscape and pedagogy. Whilst there, I visited a village in Pankisi valley where Chechen women (away from their homelands) perform Sufi Dhikr ceremony: A ritual asking for peace, for their people and the land. This women’s ceremony and community has survived centuries of oppression between Soviet modernity and patriarchal Islam. On ritual and resistance, Noor Abed asserts that 'Movement is a basic tool of resistance in Palestine. Improvisation is a necessity, not a choice'.

How do humans survive in relation to their rituals and homelands?

Emily Jisso Bowles, ‘Resistance as Ritual. Interview with Noor Abed’, Talking Shorts, 2025

In ‘Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation’, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson claims that 'a resurgence of Indigenous political cultures, governances and nation-building requires generations of Indigenous peoples to grow up intimately and strongly connected to our homelands, immersed in our languages and spiritualities, and embodying our traditions of agency, leadership, decision-making and diplomacy'.

Can humans survive in English?

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, ‘Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2014, pp. 1-25

‘In Hong Kong, Kulagu Tu Buvongan’s work was presented at the rooftop of Para Site gallery, with the sound weaving in and out of the staircase and the open space. Few people actually realize that Para Site exists in the building it occupies, most people know it by its tenant who occupies the first floor more prominently: a funeral service. The names of martyred indigenous activists during the Duterte presidency are streamed on an LED. As you look at the names on the LED, you also see yourself amidst the backdrop of Hong Kong development, some of whose capital have links to exploitative practices in the Philippines and Philippine migrant labour.’

How to protect those who dedicate their lives to inform others about the ethical communication of indigenous livelihood?

For the inhabitants in the region, the predicament of having to endure disaster after disaster - be it at the hands of authoritarian regimes, the COVID pandemic, war and displacement, fires and floods as a result of climate breakdown, and now the earthquakes between Turkey and Syria - is an experience tantamount to further extinction, of their cultures, and histories under the continuation of colonialisms operating in the region.

Could thinking with indigeneity help to reimagine life after disaster?

Further reading related to the session:

Ola Hassanain
Ola Hassanain & Egbert Alejandro Martina, ‘Architectures of the (Un)inhabitable’, disembodieterritories.com
Ola Hassanain, ‘These Walls: The State and Humanly Workable Geographies’, PARSE, ‘On the Question of Exhibition’, vol. 3, 2021.

Robel Temesgen Bizuayehu
Alexis Paulin Gumbs, ‘Undrowned. Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals’, Chico: AK Press, 2020

Nkule Mabaso
May-Britt Öhman, ‘Settler Colonialism in Ungreen, Climate-Unfriendly Disguise and As a Tool for Genocide’ in Hiuwai Chu (et al, eds), Climate: Our Right to Breathe, Berlin: L’Internationale Online and K. Verlag, 2022.

Kulagu Tu Buvongan
Kulagu Tu Buvongan, ‘For every name, a forest’, 2025
Manobo, ‘Mgo ngaran, puwason’ | Filipino: Sa bawat ngalan, kagubatan |
Sugbuanon, ‘Sa kada ngalan, lasang’