Outside: Extreme Environments and Creative Resistance

As global climate change pushes local climates to new extremes, a new and important question is being asked: What can we learn from today’s most extreme environments which can help us adapt to a rapidly changing climate? Answering it may produce valuable lessons for adapting to climate change, but it also begs new questions about how or even if we should be mining extreme environments for resilient design knowledge. As these unique and fragile environments more frequently become the subject of research and teaching, what are the implications for the people who call them home? Does increased trafficking in the resulting knowledge represent exploitation or cultural appropriation? Does discourse built on that knowledge exclude indigenous and aboriginal people? This paper explores the impacts of mining extreme environments for resilient design knowledge on the indigenous and aboriginal knowledge bearers. It seeks to identify relationships between agents in that knowledge exchange and the discourse it fuels. These agents include indigenous and aboriginal knowledge bearers as well as knowledge seekers and consumers in the majority culture. And it places these relationships within broader contexts of culture, environment, society, commerce and theory.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.106.18

Volume Editors
Amir Ameri & Rebecca O'Neal Dagg

ISBN
978-1-944214-15-9