Radical Ecopsychology: Relationships with Land in Settler Colonial Society

This course engages the field of radical ecopsychology by asking the question of how we can better understand relationships with land developed within capitalist and settler colonial social-ecological contexts. In looking at how the processes of extraction, dispossession, and “development” situate human consciousness and being separate from nature, the course focuses on ways to reconnect human consciousness and being with nature without reproducing settler colonial relations with land. Along with learning the theoretical offerings of radical ecopsychology, the course also has a strong praxis component as we seek to learn and experiment with methods for reconnecting and re-defining our relationships to land and the more than human world in general. Throughout the quarter we engage in field-based learning in the Outback Farm, Arboretum, and other local sites to practice ecotherapy and terrapsychology methods.     

Central questions the course takes up include: what does settler responsibility to land look like? How can radical ecopsychology provide tools and ways of being that support indigenous resurgence projects? What kinds of silences have we learned from our ancestral stories connected to land we currently live on and have come from? Finally, how can the land and the more than human world help teach us alternative ways of being and knowing to those promoted in extractive capitalist and settler colonial societies?

Readings from the course include work by: Andy Fisher, J. Phoenix Smith, Louise Dunlap, Jeanine M. Canty, Patty Krawec, Joanna Macy, and Vanessa Machado de Oliveira.