Postcolonial Indigenous Ecocritism and Environmental Protest

Postcolonial Indigenous Ecocriticism explores the ways in which contemporary indigenous environmental protests are rooted in the folklore, music, dance, art, language, and mythology of the precolonial. Colonized countries and regions, having endured the suppression of indigenous languages as well as the oral traditions conveyed through them, are often inclined to respond similarly to neocolonial incursions on land and resources.

Paul Devereau’s Spirit Roads explores sacred roads and pathways around the world, noting that historians are poor at studying “invisible mental structures” of this kind. While Ranajit Guha’s Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, which analyses over 100 cases of peasant rebellions in British India between 1783 and 1900, observes that these protests depend on such “invisible mental structures.” Guha demonstrates that indigenous protests are usually organized “along the axes of kinship, religion, and caste, and involve gods, spirits, and supernatural agents as actors alongside humans.”This book uses the concept of “invisible mental structures” to examine contemporary environmental activism from a global perspective. The collection includes chapters on India, Ireland, Australia, the United States, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Botswana, and Peru, amongst others. It considers the relationship between literary texts and different forms of climate change activism across a wide range of contexts and cultures.

This edited book will appeal to students, researchers, and academics interested in postcolonial literature and history, environmental humanities and ecocriticism, and environmental justice.