Brainstorm Week 9 - Elena Orlando

On Goodlife writing, which tends to the transcendence of possession, Ybarra writes that decolonizing requires breaking "down the dichotomy between humans and nature and [making] space for indigenous practices and narratives that have survived colonization and that preserve and adapt traditional environmental knowledge" (p.15). Breaking this dichotomy seems essential to the idea of buen vivir. The concept of buen vivir is deeply related to what Million calls "place-thought," where collective well-being is a holistic process in which the agency of all beings needs to be respected. If we think of all matter as "imbued with spirit," our responsibilities as humans become more clear and these responsibilities "involve the entire community, extending well beyond any one person's actions" (Million p.99). As a previous student of Million, I really appreciated the opportunity to read her work and learn more about the values and knowledge she put into practice as a professor. Thinking about every relationship coming with a set of responsibilities, spoke to me as a way to discuss the role of humans in addressing climate change. The agency that has been robbed of the Earth through extraction and settler colonialism is connected to the ways in which women have barred the brunt of colonialism and neoliberalism's violence. The ways in which the end collective life continues to be an aim of settler colonialism applies to all living beings.