Running Head: Co-Colonizing

Co-Colonizing:

The Ecological Impacts of Settler Colonialism in the

American Supercontinent

Nicolás Cruz

Seattle University

March 2018

Biology Senior Synthesis

Advisor: Mark Jordan, Ph.D

Co-Colonizing 2

Abstract

Environmental historians and ecologists have long sought to document the

changes to the natural ecosystems of the Americas since colonization by Europeans
beginning in the 15th century. They have developed theories for understanding how
ecosystems have been altered, through introduction of nonnative species or human
intervention. This has led to the study of invasive species, the mechanics of invasion,
and the impacts of biotic homogenization. This paper seeks to contextualize the
ecological degradation within the coinciding structure and historical development
of settler colonialism as well as investigate the ways that the colonization of the
Americas has impacted its biomes and the Indigenous peoples that inhabit them as
well as begin to theorize a decolonial ethic by which to guide ecological study. It
draws from both the emerging fields of invasion ecology and conservation biology
as well as on the transdisciplinary work of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars
of settler colonial studies, anthropology, and history to envision an ecology of
invasion that considers the ecological and sociocultural aspects of colonization and
Indigenous sovereignty.
Co-Colonizing 3

Acknowledgements

This paper has been a veritable synthesis of the many concepts and

frameworks I have learned in my time as a student of both sociology and biology at

Seattle University. My appreciation goes to my senior research advisor, Mark Jordan,

for taking a big unwieldy idea and distilling it down to a more cohesive contribution

to ecology, and for having the unique challenge of letting sociology into the field of

biology. I would like to thank Sabina Neems, Jodi O’Brien, and Rachel Luft, who each

had a connected part in getting the most influential reading in my hands at a time

that I needed it most. A big thank you goes to Thomas Pool, for sparking the idea of

this project. I am unendingly grateful for Christina Roberts, who made connections

for me across the disciplines and for giving me hope in the work we each have to do.

I would also like to thank Monica Chan and my family for the emotional and editorial

support that kept this project going when it seemed too much to take on. And of

course, I thank all who will read this and all those friends and classmates who

listened to me explain this project as it was being written.

Co-Colonizing 4

“The people have a right to their land but the land also has a right to its people."
-Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz,
An Indigenous People’s History of the United States

Figure 1- Douglas fir-dominated forest overrun with English Ivy. From California Invasive Plant Council.

Introduction

The English ivy had overgrown its gardens, overflowed and drowned out the
understory of the forests of the Doo, the “Inside.” It’s lush green vines sprawled across
the damp soil, blocking out the light reaching the ground beneath the canopy of cedar,
maple, and fir. At their trunks, the ivy reached its relentless vines, gripping tightly to
the giants whose presence signified the incompleteness of their project: to reign above
the forest into which they had crawled. Below them grew the tiny saplings that stood
as testament of another project just beginning,

The continents today known as the Americas have undergone significant and

relatively sudden ecological change within the last 500 years. Specifically, these

changes have coincided with the political and cultural changes that accompanied

colonization of the North and South American continent by first Europeans and later

American settlers. Among historians and anthropologists, these changes have been

widely discussed as they relate to the effect on Indigenous communities and

Co-Colonizing 5

cultures across the continent. Within the scientific community, however, much of

the attention has been focused on habitat degradation, resource overexploitation,

and invasive species and their effect on native ecosystems into which European and

American settlers introduced them.

Environmental historians have traced the changes to both the biotic and

abiotic components of American ecosystems under different land use regimes,

particularly those employed by Indigenous communities and European settlers

(Cronon, 2003). They have documented the broad changes to ecosystems, from

disruption of forest succession through deforestation related to agricultural and

industrial development to the introduction of invasive species, both intentional and

unintentional (Cook et al., 2006)(Halverson, 2010)(Trigger, 2008). This historical

analysis has also provided some complicated insight into the constantly changing

nature of ecosystems and the ways that Indigenous communities did in fact alter

and interact with their natural environment (Cronon, 2003).

Many scholars of environmental history have argued against a simplistic and

nostalgic view of ecosystem stasis and pristine condition pre-contact with European

settlers (Cronon, 2003) (Fuller et al., 2016). Instead, they argue for a dynamic

understanding of how ecosystems constantly shift in their biotic and abiotic

components and how humans, like all species, have always interacted with their

environments in an intentional way. Cronon (2003) and others remind us that what

may be different is the ways in which human populations and cultures conceptualize

and choose to interact with the ecosystems to which they belong.

Co-Colonizing 6

Conservation biologists and ecologists meanwhile have developed their own

way of understanding one of the major components of post-contact changes to

native ecosystems with the rise of native species restoration and particularly the

field of invasion ecology. First described by Charles Elton in his 1958 The Ecology of

Invasions, invasion ecology sought to systematically study the process of invasion by

introduced species as well as document and indeed warn of their potential harms to

native ecosystems. Since his initial work, many ecologists have responded either to

his call to study invasive species or have disputed his claims. Some have argued that

judging introduced species to be “invasive” amounts to xenophobic nativism (Davis

et al., 2011) while others go further to argue that invasive species are beneficial to

the ecosystems they disrupt. Many ecologists reject both of these claims (Simberloff,

2011) (Alyokhin, 2011) (Lockwood et al., 2011) (Lerdau & Wickham, 2011).

Another major point of contention within the field of invasion ecology, along

with many other fields of natural science, is the politicization of the discipline, with

some authors arguing that invasion ecology has dissociated from mainstream

ecology with its distinction between native species and introduced colonizers

(Davis et al., 2001) or that ecology should not be politicized and applied to public

policy (Veda & Walters, 1999). In recent years, though, it has been generally

accepted and practiced by ecologists and conservation ecologists that ecological

considerations should be included in public policy.

The work of environmental historians and invasion ecologists has made clear

that there is a synchronic relationship between the colonization of the continent by

European and later American settlers and the introduction of invasive species. It is
Co-Colonizing 7

well established that many invasive species that threaten native ecosystems were

either intentionally introduced as part of the settler colonial project or accidentally

through various vectors such as ballast water, on humans, or on imported plants

and animals (Heise & Christensen, 2017)(Mann, 2007). This introduces what

Timothy Neale, a settler-scholar studying weed ecology in Australia, calls “a parallel

or companionship” between settlers and weeds (2017). Here, I refer to this process

of collaborative colonization of a native habitat by two or more invasive species

(including human populations of settlers), especially from the same biogeographical

region, as “co-colonizing.” This concept will be useful in understanding the invasion

of many distinct ecosystems by European settlers and the plant, animal, and

microbe species that accompany them in a holistic ecological and historical analysis.

Another informative concept that has emerged within ecology itself is what

researchers have termed biotic homogenization (Olden et al., 2005). It is described

as the replacement of native communities with “locally expanding and

cosmopolitan, non-native ones” (p. 1) and causes a local, regional, and global

homogenization of biological species pools as well as ecosystem types and

interactions. This theoretical framework is particularly important and indeed

unique in that ecologists explicitly draw the connection between biotic and

sociocultural homogenization that is described by social scientists. It brings to

attention at once the connection between social and biotic factors of invasion and

the impending harms of the reduction of biological and cultural diversity that we

observe in an increasingly globalized world. I will attempt here to integrate the

Co-Colonizing 8

ecological framework of homogenization with a critique of settler colonialism and

its homogenizing effects on the world.

The discourses surrounding and emerging from invasion ecology, and to a

lesser extent, the environmental history of the American continent, have to varying

degrees addressed or failed to address the settler colonial structures that cause and

inform the occurrence of invasive species and environmental degradation in the

particular context of the Americas post-contact. Namely, invasion ecology

illuminates the processes and structures of invasion by animal and plant species

while obfuscating the structure of settler colonialism that is the foundation of

European-American society. As will be discussed later, the study of invasive species

within the settler scientist community allows settlers to discuss invasion without

grappling, and more crucially, relinquishing their position as settlers on occupied

Indigenous land. The borrowed and shared terminology between settler colonial

studies and invasion ecology such as “colonizing,” “invasion,” or “native,” begs the

question of what is analogous between plant, animal, and human colonization of the

Americas, and what is nonanalogous. One thing that becomes clear in the literature

is that applying ecological theories and methodologies to complex human

sociopolitical interactions is fraught with ethical and theoretical problems.

There has already been significant study of the structures, processes, and

impacts of settler colonialism within the fields of Indigenous and settler colonial

studies. The interrogation of settler colonialism as a structure rather than an event

(Wolfe, 2006) provides theoretical frameworks and principles that are applicable to

a potential ecology of invasion that understands, critiques, and challenges settler

Co-Colonizing 9

colonialism rather than ignores or reinforces it. One work in particular that has

propelled forward an analysis of settler colonialism and decolonization, as a process

of repatriating Indigenous land, is Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s (2012)

“Decolonization is Not a Metaphor.” In it, the authors explain decolonization as the

project of undoing colonization via repatriation of land and restoration of

Indigenous sovereignty. They also discuss how decolonization is made a metaphor,

rendering it impotent and allowing settler colonialism to remain unchallenged.

“Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” contributes a number of useful

theoretical frameworks, including a broad understanding of land as consisting of all

biotic and abiotic components of the ecosystems inhabiting it (Tuck and Yang,

2012). This conceptualizing of land is actually not far removed from the

understanding of the scope of the field of ecology. Ecology textbooks like Ecology &

Field Ecology (Smith & Smith, 2001) and Ecology (Odum, 1966) define the scope of

ecology as the “total relationships of the animal both to its inorganic and organic

environment” and the biosphere, “the biologically inhabited soil, air, and water,”

respectively. It is interesting to note that most ecology textbooks recount the origin

and meaning of the term, from the Greek root “oikos”: the study of home. Tuck and

Yang state that settler colonialism is unique in that “settlers come with the intention

of making a new home on the land” (emphasis mine) and “insists on settler

sovereignty over all things in their new domain” (2012). Whose home is being

studied and how do populations claim a home? And how do they negate the claims

of others? It is necessary to problematize settler scientists’ conception of home in

this way, as it is based on settler occupation and ownership of Indigenous land.

Co-Colonizing 10

The centrality of land and its reframing as property in settler colonialism is

accompanied by a particular form of violence that severs Indigenous people, plants,

and animals from land. Both of these conceptions regarding land relate to the

ecology of invasion, with introduced species both competing for access to abiotic

and biotic resources of the ecosystem they enter as well as disrupting the native

species’ ability to survive in the environment in which they have evolved. Tuck and

Yang offer up a response to colonialism: decolonization, which, at its most basic, is a

process of undoing colonialism. The parallel within invasion ecology might be

eradication of invasive species and restoration of native species and their habitats

but it is important to acknowledge Tuck and Yang’s point that these are not

automatically the same thing, that eradication of invasive species does not equal an

undoing of settler colonialism. Both are contentious and as described later, fraught

with theoretical questions surrounding the state to which ecosystems/histories

should be “restored,” but for settlers (scientists included), the eradication of

invasive species requires much less personal and collective sacrifice on the part of

settler society.

This contention exists because the disentangling of what Tuck and Yang call

the settler set of relations requires a dismantling of settler claims to land as

property. This, predictably, is met with great resistance from settlers, much more

than the call for eradication of invasive species. Decolonization responds to this

difficulty by shifting the focus away from settler’s concerns with settler futurity; it is

not the responsibility of the project of decolonization and its adherents to ensure
Co-Colonizing 11

the future of settlers, but rather it is concerned with the futurity of Indigenous lands

and peoples, two categories that it views as co-constitutive and inseparable.1

Though discussion of the merit of or arguments for decolonization is beyond

the scope of this paper, it should be noted that the intent is to consider the

possibility of both incorporating ecological considerations into the project of

decolonization and, perhaps more importantly, developing a decolonial ethic of

studying the ecology of the geographically specific and historical world we inhabit.

Tuck and Yang argue that civil rights or social justice movements often contradict

decolonization and that there needs to be a reframing of their aims in order to be

accountable to the Indigenous people whose land they occupy. Likewise, invasion

ecology must take into account the settler colonial project that contextualizes the

invasion of species and settler scientists should strive to do their work in a way that

is accountable to Indigenous communities. Should we fail in this endeavor, it will be

a retrenchment of the very processes of settler colonial occupation that cause the

ecological and cultural harms that we lament.

1 “Indigenous peoples are those who have creation stories, not colonization stories, about how they
came to be in a particular place - indeed how they came to be a place. Their relationships to land
comprise their epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmologies” (“Decolonization is Not a Metaphor”, p.
6).

2 Cattelino (2017) points out that it is then unsurprising that most natural history
Co-Colonizing 12

Environmental History

One of the primary challenges in developing a decolonial framework of

ecology is determining both what existed before colonization, and what is possible

afterwards. There is limited information available to ecologists about the state of

America’s ecosystems prior to the arrival of European settlers. Indigenous peoples,

meanwhile, have produced and passed down multiple millennia of ecological

observation of their surrounding world. This knowledge, consisting of intricate

awareness of seasonal changes, biotic/abiotic interactions, migratory patterns as

well as management techniques relating to forestry, fish and game populations, and

agriculture, is contained within Indigenous cultural institutions and narrative.

Because of its inaccessibility to settler scholars, often times purposely guarded to

protect it from exploitation or misuse, environmental historians have had to rely

heavily on the accounts of early European settlers (Cronon, 2003).

Cronon’s (2003) Changes in the Land discusses the difficulty in piecing

together an accurate picture of the state of ecosystems prior to European

colonization both because of settler’s misconceptions about the “untouched” nature

of the forests and meadows that they encountered and because of their exaggeration

of abundance of plants and animals that later resulted in observers such as Thoreau

concluding that the previously pristine and abundant ecosystems that their

predecessors had described were by then degraded (Cronon, 2003). The former is

particularly important to understanding both the popular perception of the “new

world” they encountered and the ideological and political principles that guided and

justified colonization, particularly terra nullius. The early settler’s mistaken

Co-Colonizing 13

assumption that the land was terra nullis, or “unused” by the Indigenous people they

displaced, served as a major justification for the expropriation of Indigenous land.

Cronon (2003) goes on to explain that the landscape that the European

settlers encountered was in fact profoundly and intentionally altered and managed

by Indigenous communities. This included wide use of intentional forest fires, used

to clear understories and ensure open hunting and foraging grounds, management

of wild game populations and migration, and agriculture of various types. Not only

did European settlers remain unaware of these actions, they lamented the loss of the

wild pristineness of the very forests that they themselves were altering for their

own agricultural and timber needs. This is reminiscent of what Rosaldo (1989)

describes as “imperialist nostalgia,” where the people who studied the ecosystems

developed a nostalgic feeling towards some distant and more pure past while being

a part of the very structures that are causing their degradation.

Part of this process of degradation and change was due to the shifting

relations to land, from the conception of

usufruct land use held by many

Indigenous communities to the recasting

of land as private property by settlers

(Cronon 2003)(Tuck and Yang, 2012).

The ceding of land to settlers has been

shown to correspond with the loss of old

growth forests, as seen in figure 2. Settler Figure 2- Map showing the correlation between the expropriation
of Indigenous land and disappearance of old growth forests.
Co-Colonizing 14

conceptions of land were based both on the idea of property, with ownership of land

granting total sovereignty over it and its plant and animal inhabitants, and

permanence. Agricultural plots became delineated permanently, ensuring that

topsoil and nutrients would be depleted with intensive cash crop cultivation in stark

contrast to the cyclical process of clearing land and allowing it to lay fallow

practiced by Indigenous communities (Cronon, 2003).

It is important to note here that change in ecosystems, in both biotic and

abiotic components, is not inherently disruptive or degrading. Cronon acknowledges

that Indigenous hunting, agricultural, and forestry practices were not always stable

and sometimes overexploited natural resources. In fact, Changes in the Land stresses

the fact that all human communities alter and manipulate their environments and

that ecosystems are never static, which is an assertion increasingly supported by the

scientific ecological literature (Hobbs et al., 2009).

Ecologists and anthropologists alike have pointed out that the

conceptualization of static ecosystems and the privileging of equilibrium fails to

acknowledge the dynamic nature of ecosystems and cultures. Cattelino (2017)

reminds us that the static model arises from the same ideological tradition as

structural functionalism in anthropology, which has similarly framed change within

Indigenous cultures as resulting in “cultural loss, inauthenticity, and loss of

sovereignty” This is also problematic because it collapses Indigenous peoples and

nature, perpetuates what settler colonial scholars call the disappearing native trope

that is central to settler colonialism, and limits Indigenous peoples and cultures to a

static, bygone past (Cattelino, 2017)(Tuck and Yang, 2012).

Co-Colonizing 15

Still, it is undeniable that the landscape of the American continent has

changed dramatically and rapidly since the arrival of European settlers. Along with

the coinciding development of the Industrial Revolution, which was directly funded

by the extraction of resources and exploitation of land as well as chattel slave labor

(Drayton, 2005), the colonization of the continent has resulted in global shifts in

atmospheric temperature, deforestation, and the rapid extinction of many species.

Vitousek et al. (1997) estimate that carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere

has increased by almost 30% since the Industrial revolution (Figure 2 shows that

CO2 emissions nearly doubled), about 39-50% of Earth’s land has been transformed

or degraded by humanity, and that about a quarter of Earth’s bird species have been

pushed to extinction because of direct and indirect human action.

Figure 3- Chart showing the US CO2 emissions between 1750 and 2000. Data from ourworldindata.org.

Though these developments are not due solely to the colonization of the

Americas, the connection between settler colonialism and the Industrial Revolution

as well as the rise of global capitalism that has spread Western land use practices to
Co-Colonizing 16

a large portion of the world has been made clear through historical analysis

(Drayton, 2005). With interdisciplinary study of the links between European

colonization and global ecological changes, it can be concluded that there is a causal,

though complicated, relationship between the spread of European and then

American colonialism and ecological degradation.

Theorizing Collaborative Colonization

There is one example that appeared in multiple literatures discussing the

environmental history and invasion (human and otherwise) of the American

continent: the earthworm. The introduction of European earthworms serves as a

parable of sorts, offering insight into the ways that the introduction of invasive

species, the disruption or degradation of native ecosystems, and the European

colonization and domination of Indigenous lands and people are intimately

interrelated, In “America, Lost and Found,” Mann (2007) recounts how earthworms,

native species of which had largely gone extinct in the Americas during the glacial

periods that began some 200,000 years ago, were brought to the British colonies

either intentionally or unintentionally with the root balls of imported trees.

Gradually, earthworms became widespread across the continent as

Europeans and their agriculture spread. While earthworms and their consumption

of leaf detritus in forest systems in Europe and other parts where they existed

naturally serve a significant and positive ecological role, native ecosystems of the

Americas had developed without the presence of these organisms for thousands of

years (Roth, 2015). The disruption of normal cycles of accumulation of leaf litter
Co-Colonizing 17

caused both a leaching of nutrients essential to native tree species and a decrease in

moisture retained and available, especially for tree saplings (Roth et al., 2015), as

shown in Figure 4.

While presumably unintentional,

the introduction of earthworms and their

effect on both disrupting local biotic and

abiotic processes and preparing the soil

for settlers’ introduced crop and forest

species hints at what Neale (2017)

describes as a parallel or companionship

between settlers and the species they

bring, or what I call collaborative

colonization. Researchers like Roth et al.

(2015), who noted earthworms’

Figure 4- (Above) a deciduous forest unaffected by favorable influence on invasive hawthorn

earthworm introduction and (below) a forest
impacted by earthworm consumption of leaf
detritus. The effect on the understory and tree colonization, and Neale (2017) note that
saplings is particularly apparent. From
sciencenewsforstudents.org
species that originate from a shared

biogeographical region can sometimes work together to alter the ecosystems they

are invading in a mutually beneficial way. Though usually understood between

nonhuman animal and plant species, symbiosis of this sort can be framed in a way

that includes human use of introduced plants, animals (domestic or wild), and

microbes.
Co-Colonizing 18

In fact, human introduction of species is often intentionally or unintentionally

connected with the project of settler colonialism. Cook & Dias (2006), for example posit

that the Australian government intentionally introduced invasive species in efforts to

disrupt, alter, or control both the natural ecosystems and the Aboriginal peoples who

they were trying to exterminate. In the Americas, Mann (2007) offers the example of

settlers’ pigs that escaped and established large feral populations and ended up

overexploiting sources of wild edibles like tuckahoe, which North Eastern tribes relied

on when corn crops failed. In essence, the species of animals like pigs that were

introduced for settlers’ consumption and survival eventually began to not only do that,

but also disrupt and weaken Indigenous foodways. Some general relationships between

introduced and native species are shown in Figure 5 below:

Figure 5- Diagram illustrating some biotic interactions between native and nonnative species, with blue
double lines depicting collaborative colonization relationships, red lines depicting detrimental
relationships by invasive species/populations on native species, and green dotted lines depicting
species introduced by settlers.
Co-Colonizing 19

Similarly but arguably more devastatingly, introduced species directly and

indirectly served the settler colonial project of elimination of Indigenous peoples.

Microbes such as smallpox, measles, and the flu were spread both unintentionally

and intentionally, with historical examples of weaponized use of smallpox-infested

blankets delivered to Indigenous peoples in false peace offerings, which caused

massive reductions in the Indigenous populations whose lands Europeans were

attempting to seize (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014). This is a particularly severe example of

collaborative colonization. As European settlers worked to displace, remove, or

eliminate Indigenous people from the land they colonize, microbes with which they

had co-developed for several centuries were spread, allowing both species to

colonize new land and bodies.

While not directly related to the collaborative colonization of the Americas, it

is important to note here the role of intentional ecological destruction on the part of

settlers in their colonial pursuits. As described earlier, forest clearing for timber,

grazing, and farming, mostly of exportable and profitable crops grown by slave

labor, was a large part of both settler colonial project and the resultant disruption to

local ecosystems (Cronon, 2003). There were also examples of trophic disruptions

with the overhunting of native species like beavers, wolves, and bison and the

introduction of nonnative game species like lake and river trout (Neale, 2017). The

mass extermination of bison serves as a historical example of the ways that settlers

disrupt natural ecosystems and in turn, by design, disrupt Indigenous foodways and

especially cultural and spiritual practices (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014). Not only are bison a

central biotic component of the Great Plains prairie ecosystem and a major food
Co-Colonizing 20

source for Indigenous hunting tribes, but they are also a central figure in Indigenous

cosmological and cultural identity. The efforts to restore bison populations in the

North American Plains have been somewhat fraught, as will be discussed later.

There is a critical intervention that must be made here, provided by

anthropologists such as Cattelino (2017) in “Loving the Native: Invasive Species and

the cultural politics of flourishing.” In discussing the ways that ecosystems have

traditionally been framed as stable systems maintaining equilibrium, Cattelino

(2017) points out that change is often understood as disturbing and aberrational.

This view is parallel and arises from the same time period and intellectual tradition

as structural functionalism in anthropology, which holds that cultures, too, are static

and that change is caused by disruption (Cattelino, 2017). This connecting and

collapsing of biological and cultural equilibrium makes it so that 1) Indigenous

peoples are produced and conceptualized by settler society as “nature,”2 2)

perpetuates the disappearing native trope that Indigenous scholars have argued

serves to entrench and justify settler colonial domination of Indigenous land and

culture (Tuck and Yang, 2012)(Wolfe, 2006), and 3) marks Indigenous peoples and

cultures as static and of a bygone past, limiting them to preserve a mythical pure

past (much like Thoreau’s Golden Age) or inauthenticity that supposedly comes

with change, threatening Indigenous people’s claims to aboriginal rights to land.

These critiques of both anthropological and ecological equilibrium and the

association, even, of Indigenous culture and natural ecosystems is relevant to this

project of understanding the ecological impacts of colonization and the ways that

2Cattelino (2017) points out that it is then unsurprising that most natural history
museums contain exhibits on native peoples as species of natural world.
Co-Colonizing 21

settler colonialism interacts with, facilitates, and is benefitted by the ecological

degradation of native ecosystems via physical changes to the landscape, shifts in

land use, or introduction of nonnative species. As we proceed in discussing the ways

that invasive species and study of their interaction with native ecosystems and

fellow nonnative species fit into the historical development of settler colonialism, it

is important to remember Cattelino’s (2017) warning: that rather than relying on

the analogy of Indigenous people /native species and settler/invasive species, we

must critically examine the nonanalogous ways that nature, Indigeniety, and

belonging are co-produced in settler society. How is settler colonialism different

than the invasion of ecosystems by nonnative species, and how do society’s

responses to both differ? This can be partly understood by looking at how invasive

species are studied by settler scientists.

The Study of Invaders

While Indigenous scholars and communities have studied and reckoned with

both the process of colonization and settler society itself, as a matter of survival and

resistance, settler scholars have for the most part focused their scientific inquiry in

the symptoms of their occupation of the Americas. Within ecology and biology, this

took on the form of studying the patterns of ecosystems pre- and post-contact, as

described by Cronon (2003), describing the process of changing ecosystems by way

of succession, range expansion of introduced species (Hui & Richardson 2017), and

the concentrating on categorizing, managing, and evaluating invasive species. In

1958, Charles Elton published The Ecology of Invasions of Animals and Plants and
Co-Colonizing 22

kicked off the development of the field of Invasion Ecology. Since then, ecologists

have sought to address various questions about invasive species, what makes them

invasive, the factors that make certain ecosystems more or less prone to invasion

than others, and what value or detriment introduced species have.

One of the initial problems addressed by invasion ecology is the

categorization of species as either native, nonnative, or invasive. These categories

are sometimes difficult to distinguish due to various possible time and geographic

scales used to analyze a species’ nativeness or foreignness (Davis & Thompson,

2000). In “Eight Ways to Be a Colonizer, Two Ways to Be an Invader” Davis and

Thompson (2012) categorize species colonizing a novel ecosystem into eight types,

with two of them being invasive. Several others have also tried to consolidate

varying and redundant nomenclature and hypotheses into a single unified

theoretical framework (Catford, 2009). Part of this endeavor includes formation of

hypotheses that attempt to explain invasions through a mechanistic lens. Some

factors of invasion that have been identified and suggested are invasiveness

(genotypic/ phenotypic and behavioral qualities of species that successfully

colonize novel ecosystems) and invasibility (internal qualities of recipient

ecosystems that make them vulnerable to invasion) (Hui et al., 2016), range

expansion into adjacent ecosystems (Davis & Thompson, 2000), and succession-

related colonization, whether related to human or non-human disturbance (Davis &

Thompson, 2000).

It can be said that the concepts of invasiveness and invasibility have

analogues in settler discourses in the form of the purported inherent settler

Co-Colonizing 23

superiority or Indigenous inferiority, whether biological, racial, or cultural, that

have been used to justify colonialism and racial domination, while range expansion

and succession-related colonization can be seen as akin to the normalizing of settler

colonialism as natural human migration (range expansion) and the blameless role

that epidemics such as smallpox had in enabling the settler domination of

Indigenous populations. All of these factors of ecological invasion, if applied to

settler colonialism, can be viewed as normalizing or naturalizing of these structures

and sets of relations.

Within settler colonialism, this is done through a series of what Tuck and

Yang call settler moves to innocence which include settler nativism, settler adoption

fantasies, colonial equivocation, conscientization, representing Indigenous people as

either at risk of disappearing or as insignificant numerically, and re-occupation

(2012). These moves are ones that allow settlers to absolve ourselves of guilt or

responsibility for the harms of colonialism and, most importantly, to maintain

control over stolen land we occupy. It is my contention here, guided by the work of

Indigenous scholars of settler colonialism as well as authors like Cattelino (2017),

that the singular focus on invasive species, but not settler colonialism itself, is a

move to innocence made by settler scientists that deflects attention away from the

settler colonial structures that inform ecological degradation of colonized lands.

Some ecologists have argued that the category of invasive species is

problematic itself because it judges species on their foreignness rather than the

function they serve or the value/detriment they represent to the ecological

community they enter. In a Nature commentary signed by 19 ecologists, it was

Co-Colonizing 24

argued that calling nonnative species invasive represented a xenophobic and

nativist trend amongst ecologists (Davis et al, 2011). This line of thought, while

superficially progressive, is problematic for two reasons presented by Indigenous

and non-Indigenous scholars of settler colonial studies.

First, the framing of invasive species as victims of xenophobia parallels the

tendency for public discourse to frame all Americans as immigrants, whereas

scholars of Indigeneity, transnationalism, and settler colonialism point out that

immigrants are those who are accountable to the laws and customs of the

Indigenous communities they enter while settlers replace Indigenous people and

impose their own laws and customs (Tuck and Yang, 2012). In a similar way,

invasive species are those that drastically alter biotic interactions via resource

competition, predator/prey interactions (Terborgh & Estes, 2010), change abiotic

factors affecting other species (such as soil) (Simberloff, 2011), have no natural

enemies or relationships with other members of the biological community, or

decrease genotypic diversity via bottlenecks due to originating from small numbers

of initial colonizers (Alyokhin, 2011).

Scholars like Davis and Thompson (2000) attempt to argue that nonnative

species increase biodiversity and that their economic and ecological benefits should

be considered in decisions concerning their management. This parallels what is

discussed in the work of Indigenous historians and scholars as being the settler

narratives surrounding “improvement” of empty land (Tuck and Yang, 2012) and

the myth of a multicultural democratic society that obscures the settler colonial

reality of the United States, Canada, and other settler societies (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014).
 Co-Colonizing 25

The second challenge to the argument that invasive species management is

nativist and xenophobic is akin to the less common but sometimes heard

justification for settler colonialism: that decolonization and its call for an end to

settler domination and occupation of Indigenous land is xenophobic. Cattelino

(2017) pointedly notes the irony in the discourse surrounding invasive species

management and eradication: in its positioning of settler scientists as the stewards

or managers of native ecosystems and species, settlers root themselves to the land

they occupy and position themselves as native. Nativism on the part of settler

scientists and policy makers on behalf of native plants and animals not only negates

Indigenous people’s claim to land, but also suggests that settlers are better able to

“preserve” native ecosystems even though Indigenous knowledge and

methodologies have been acknowledged by ecologists as crucial to proper

management of ecosystems (Ween & Colombi, 2013).

Figure 6- Comics, logos, and posters warning against the dangers of invasive species, without reflection on
their settler colonial contexts. From californiachaparral.org, keywordsuggest.org, and
duesllc.wordpress.com, respectively.

Instead, Cattelino (2017) points out that settlers’ role in management of

native ecosystems is part of the process of maintaining patrimony over occupied

Co-Colonizing 26

Indigenous land and that invasive species and more broadly, ecological,

management must center Indigenous agency, governance, and scientific

participation. Tuck and Yang (2012) provide us with settler futurity, a useful

concept for understanding the driving intention behind this positioning of settlers.

In settler colonial societies such as the United States and Canada, it is settler futures

that are enshrined, protected by the state, and guaranteed by the material and

political economies that structure life. Both institutions and narrative settler moves

to innocence serve to ensure that settlers and their descendants will remain in a

dominant position within the colonial society.

Invasive species are generally not afforded this protection and guarantee of

futurity in the habitats in which they’ve invaded, and instead are often marked for

systematic and state-funded eradication (Davis, 2011) (Lockwood et al., 2011). The

discrepancy between settler society’s response to invasive species (demonstrated in

the images in Figure 6 above) and settler colonialism itself is precisely what must be

interrogated within a holistic ecology of invasion of this continent, with a constant

reflection on how we might be making moves to innocence within our study of

ecological systems in the land we occupy.

Cattelino (2017) also contests the use of invasive species as an ontological or

ecological category, not because it is nativist but because it is a shifting category

rather than a static one. Species that are invasive in one context might not be in

another (Cattelino, 2017), or may fulfill a new ecological niche in one ecological

community (such as introduced earthworms) but dominate and replace a native

Co-Colonizing 27

species in another.3 The challenge of generalizing the invasiveness of a species due

to varying impacts of introduced and range-expanding species (Davis & Thompson,

2000) makes it difficult to rely on invasive species as a category. As Cattelino puts

succinctly, “categories do things and sustain structures” (2017, p. 133). Animal and

plant species, like humans, navigate and defy categories which themselves are ever

shifting.

Homogenization of a Colonized World

With the contentious and nebulous nature of ecological invasions and settler

colonialisms, how has colonization of one human populations’ land by another

affected the global biosphere? It is undeniable that ecological changes have occurred

across all time and space on Earth, especially following the emergence of biological

life and the complex ecological communities they form. And if all life, from the

smallest microbes to the swiftest animals and grandest plants, has always been

expanding its habitat range, inhabiting new spaces and roles, then what is the

biological and political issue presented by colonization of new ecosystems and the

arguably more complicated structure of settler colonialism?

This question is impossible to answer with biology alone. Still, within the

framework of conservation biogeography the concept of biotic homogenization is a

valuable way of understanding the processes of invasion of many types and what is

at stake with the current historical and ecological development of the world. Having

3 Grosholz (2005) offers a historical example of co-colonizing with a nonnative clam species
that was not invasive nor destructive to native clam species until the introduction of an
invasive species of green crab that disrupted the native clam species via predation and
allowed the nonnative clam species to competitively exclude native species.
Co-Colonizing 28

its roots in Darwin’s investigations of speciation and Wallace’s separation of biomes,

biotic homogenization is defined by Lockwood & McKinney (2001) as “the

replacement of local biotas with non-indigenous species” which “often replaces

unique endemic species with already widespread species.”

At a global scale, biotic homogenization involves the increasing similarity

between biotas across time and space resulting in many ecosystems across the

world consisting of the same common species and ecological relationships (Olden,

2006). In essence, the overall diversity of biological communities is decreased as

certain dominant species and biotas become widespread around the world. Olden

(2006) breaks biotic homogenization into three types: genetic homogenization, in

which genetic similarity of gene pools increases with hybridization or extinction;

taxonomic homogenization,

in which cosmopolitan

species replace endemic

species; and functional

homogenization, in which

ecological roles served by

species become

increasingly similar. Figure 7- Map of Brown trout (Salmo trutta) native habitat (dark
gray) and introduced range (light grey). From esapubs.org.
Several studies have

used now-widespread species of rainbow and brown trout as informative cases of

the three types of biotic homogenization (Olden, 2006)(Neale, 2017). The stocking

of lakes and rivers in regions colonized by Europeans with genetically similar

Co-Colonizing 29

populations of trout, the extirpation of native endemic species, and the alteration of

native ecosystem predation patterns all served to homogenize the genetic and

taxonomic diversity of these freshwater biotas and, interestingly, the predation

pressure on native plankton species was found to increase the rate of invasion of

these ecosystems (Olden, 2006). Neale (2017) focuses on the introduction of brown

trout to New Zealand’s waterways by European

settlers and its role in disrupting Indigenous food

and water sources and serving settler desires

and needs, but both studies of trout introduction

Figure 8- Brown trout (Salmo trutta), an point to some of the issues of homogenization: it
introduced species now found in many
lake systems around the world. From
hatchmag.com. disrupts Indigenous people’s lives and

connection to land in service of the project of settler colonialism (Neale, 2017) and it

makes native ecosystems more vulnerable to invasion (Olden, 2006).

In the “Human Dimensions of Biotic Homogenization,” Olden, Douglas, and

Douglas (2005) turn to both the ways that biotic homogenization affects human

social and cultural practices and the “parallels and linkages” between biotic and

cultural homogenization described in the social sciences (p. 1). They make

important contributions to the discussion of biotic homogenization and its effect on

local Indigenous communities as well as counter the argument that introduction of

species (invasive or otherwise) increases species richness and local diversity (α-

diversity) by noting that biotic homogenization is accompanied by loss of overall γ-

and β-diversity (Olden et al., 2005). Their conclusion that decreased biodiversity

and the extinction of native species affect specific biogeographical relationships

Co-Colonizing 30

between Indigenous communities and the species that they cohabitate with relates

directly back to the notion of the introduction of nonnative species and eradication

of native species being tools of settler colonialism.

Olden et al. (2005) go further in their analysis between the analogous aspects

of biotic and cultural homogenization, arguing that the spread of both introduced

species and socioeconomic structures (via settler colonialism, imperial domination,

or assimilation) decreases the overall diversity of human cultures. This parallels

what others have said about European colonialism’s effect on the global economic

and ecological relations that structure the lives of a large portion of the human

population, with global capitalism, resource extraction, and Western governance

expanding throughout the world. The parallels and linkages between cultural and

biotic homogenization are indeed important and provide insight into the

interrelatedness between nature and culture. With the current situation and

discourse surrounding global climate change, caused by a combination of European

industrialization, extraction and consumption of fossil fuels, proliferation of

European agricultural practices, and deforestation, it’s important to point out the

direct relation to the colonization of the rest of the world by Europe and its settler

colonial progeny.

There is some caution to be taken with comparing biotic and

cultural/sociopolitical homogenization, particularly when discussing their impact

on Indigenous communities. Cattelino (2017) again reminds us of the three major

ways that this equivocal discourse can follow and retrench historical ideologies of

settler colonialism. Namely, settler society co-produces nature and Indigenous

Co-Colonizing 31

people, rendering them both as lacking agency as well as limiting their ability to

change/adapt without losing authenticity (always defined by settler society) or

claim to land (Cattelino, 2017). The alarmist warnings of loss of native species and

native peoples or their cultures also constructs Indigenous people within the settler

popular, scientific, and political narrative as at risk of disappearing or already

disappeared (Tuck and Yang, 2012) (Cattelino, 2017).

These critiques of collapsing biotic and cultural homogenization into the

same process are important interventions in the conservation biology and ecological

discourse surrounding ecological degradation. Rather than focusing on preserving

biotic diversity for its own sake, regardless of its well-acknowledged benefits and

ecological implications (Alyokhin, 2011), a decolonial ethic of ecological

degradation, invasive species, and homogenization must center the knowledge and

collective agency of Indigenous peoples (Cattelino, 2017). To prioritize cultural

diversity and preservation, often with a static view of Indigenous cultures, over

Indigenous sovereignty and collective agency would further a pattern within

American discourse that renders Indigenous peoples and cultures as static,

unchanging and of the past. What homogenization, biotic and cultural, does provide

is a biological and ethical impetus for studying, managing, and preventing/undoing

ecological degradation related to settler colonialism and, perhaps more importantly,

supporting politically the sovereignty of the Indigenous nations whose land we

occupy.
Co-Colonizing 32

Towards a Decolonial Ecology:

Two Case Studies in Restoration Ecology

As has been said throughout this paper, conservation and ecological

restoration in a settler-colonial context raises certain historical and political

tensions. This is because the Indigenous land we live on is both the site of the

ongoing settler colonial disruption of occupation and its main subject of concern.

Similarly, this disruption is enacted upon both the environment and all of its

inhabitants. The collaborative colonization of the Americas is by necessity tied to

the collaborative degradation of native ecological communities (including human

populations). Therefore, the possibility of a decolonial ecology, rather than one that

retrenches settler colonial occupation, is dependent on its ability to support the

assertion of Indigenous sovereignty and increase tribal communities’ control over

their land. To examine the tensions and complicated relationship between settler

colonialism and ecological restoration, this section will look at the restoration of

American bison in the Great Plains of North America and the restoration of Pacific

Salmon in the Pacific Northwest.

Though pre-contact bison population estimates vary widely, it is believed

that North America was once home to between 25 and 75 million bison (McDonald,

2001). This number was reduced to less than 1000 by 1890, following the rapid

expansion of European-American settlement (McDonald, 2001). Historians like

Dunbar-Ortiz have explained that much of the rapid decline of bison populations can

be attributed to the intentional outcomes of American Federal government and

military policies of colonial warfare during the Indian Wars, cutting Indigenous

tribes’ access to food and other materials through mass extermination (2015). This
Co-Colonizing 33

violence is downplayed or ignored in the land management and ecological literature,

which attributes bison populations’ decline to “both Indian and Euro-American

actions” and drought, habitat degradation, competition from nonnative species, and

introduced disease (White, 1991).

McDonald (2001) focuses on a relevant cause of bison herds’ “dwindling”:

hunting and habitat destruction for domestic cattle ranching. Like brown trout,

cattle are an introduced species that has become nearly ubiquitous around the

world, following the settler colonies that relied on the domesticated bovids for food,

materials, and agricultural labor. Domesticated animals tend to only become

classified as invasive species when they become feral and establish significant

populations that impact the native habitats they invade (for example, feral pigs in

the American south and southwest). However, the replacement of bison herds by

cattle and other settler-introduced livestock can be understood as a homogenizing

process, with the replacement of an ecologically and culturally important native

species with a common one.

Figure 9- Reintroduced bison on the Wind River Reservation in Iowa. From

wayoflife.com.
Co-Colonizing 34

Reintroduction and conservation efforts have been relatively successful in

terms of population numbers. By 1999, there were more than 300,000 bison

worldwide (McDonald, 2001). However, McDonald notes that the majority of these

were on private ranches while a very small portion lived on public or tribal lands. Of

these, a very small portion is managed as wild animal herds, with the majority

treated as industrial animals on their way to domestication. This has led to a change

in behavior and physiology through evolution and reduction of genetic diversity via

bottleneck effects. McDonald also makes an important point that the raising of bison

as a livestock animal, replete with feedlots and artificial selection, essentially

negates the benefits and purpose of restoring an ecologically important grazing

species in the Great Plains grassland ecosystems (2001).

These ecological considerations of bison restoration also interact with

political and economic ones of the Great Plains. A confluence of private, state,

federal, and Tribal interests and claim to land along with differeing management

practices creates a complicated setting for ecological conservation. Indigenous

tribes have stressed the spiritual, cultural, and ecological importance of bison and

the need to respect them and their position in the Great Plains community

(McDonald, 2001). Meanwhile, private settler ranchers have argued against the

reintroduction of bison because of their grazing competition with cattle and

interference with lucrative mining and oil extraction operations. Federal and state

governments and their constituents have intervened with the intention of

conserving public lands “for all Americans” and managing bison herds as well as

predators like wolves through culling or reintroduction (McDonald, 2001).

Co-Colonizing 35

The politics of bison herd restoration are also tied up in an American West

imaginary that romanticizes settlement, the frontier, and the cowboy aesthetic and

history of the region. Like the land that they inhabit, bison (along with Indigenous

communities and cultures) become entangled within that imagery of the American

West, positioning them as part of a shared American identity. This, Tuck, Yang, and

other Indigenous scholars inform us, is the settler inheritance that maintains settler

colonial claims to sovereignty over the land. Rather than restoring bison for their

own ecological and spiritual purpose, settlers conserve them as part of the cultural

and biological wealth that they have claimed.

The alternative to this motive has been proposed by Indigenous communities

in the Great Plains region, with McDonald (2001) noting tribal bison herd

management’s emphasis on interdependence and spiritual relationship between

human, bison, and their shared environment. Tribes have implemented these with

tribal-owned enterprises like the InterTribal Bison Cooperative (McDonald, 2001).

Many scientists and environmental conservationists have concurred, calling for the

restoration of wild populations of bison rather than in commercial and industrial

ranching settings. However, the question of land is ever present. One of the putative

solutions to bison restoration in the Great Plains is the Million Acre Project, a project

based on the notion (introduced by biologists) that the Great Plains ecosystem

needs one million acres of protected land for a “safe zone” where wild animals can

take refuge, closing the land off to grazing and hunting, including that of Indigenous

communities (McDonald, 2001). Meanwhile, McDonald (2001) observes that the

Co-Colonizing 36

InterTribal Bison Cooperative has had great success with educational and cultural

initiatives, but has been unable to secure land for tribal-led bison restoration.

Other tribal communities have employed a different strategy for combining

ecological restoration and tribal sovereignty efforts with the assertion of treaty

rights. Here in the Indigenous territories known as the Pacific Northwest of the

United States, tribes have sought to protect one of the most important ecological and

spiritual community members: salmon. Members of the Oncorhynchus genus are

native to the region’s lake, river, and ocean systems and have co-evolved with

Indigenous people of the region for thousands of years (Ween and Colombi, 2013).

In their comparison of land management regimes of river systems with significant

Indigenous populations and threatened salmon populations in Norway and Oregon,

Ween and Colombi (2013) provide a discussion of how Indigenous knowledge and

sovereignty informs ecological management projects and their success.

Before European and American colonization, it is estimated that the

Columbia River sustained a population of around 700,000 Indigenous people

speaking 11 different languages (Ween and Colombi, 2013). The cultural and

spiritual relationship and importance of this relationship cannot be understated for

tribes like the Nez Pearce. The violence of the disruption of salmon is equally

important to consider. Starting in 1850 with the first European-American settlers’

arrival in the area, the populations of salmon in the region’s river systems

significantly declined. Settlers fished commercially, built hydroelectric damns,

logged forests crucial to maintaining ecosystem cycling, and released toxic mining

waste, reducing the salmon population (Ween and Colombi, 2013). Other actions
Co-Colonizing 37

like overexploitation of beavers for pelts (whose dams serve as an important habitat

component for juvenile salmon) and conversion of marshlands into farmlands also

had a detrimental effect on salmon in the region.

One important development in the relationship between the Pacific

Northwest tribes and the settler society that dominates their land is the

establishment of treaties. Though the more than 500 treaties entered between

Indigenous tribes and the United States government have nearly all been broken by

the United States (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2015), treaties still ensure tribes access to certain

lands, benefits, and activities. This includes hunting and fishing, with many treaties

including a stipulation that Indigenous signatories retain their long-held right to fish

certain rivers and other bodies of water. The Columbia, Duwamish, Elwha and other

important rivers in the region are included in the treaties signed by Pacific

Northwest tribes. However, there is more than one way to break a treaty. Tribes

have pointed out that treaties promising fishing rights are of little use if the fish

populations and the ecosystems that support them are degraded via dam

construction, industrial pollution, or settler overfishing. In this case, ecological

restoration and conservation becomes necessary for asserting treaty rights.

In response to the need to restore treaty-protected natural environments,

the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission was formed in 1974 following the US

Supreme Court victory that reaffirmed treaty-protected fishing rights

(nwtreatytribes.org, n.d.). Before that, Washington State broke treaties by

preventing Indigenous people from fishing on their traditional lands and arrested

those who defied the state law as part of a civil disobedience campaign. The
Co-Colonizing 38

Northwest Treaty Tribes is an effort by the Commission to support tribes in

asserting their treaty rights, establish and manage hatcheries to ensure salmon

population robustness, and restore river ecosystems. Recently, the Northwest

Treaty Tribes has been a central part of the effort to protect Pacific salmon

populations from threats,

including from pollution

and the introduction of

commercially grown

Atlantic salmon (as shown

to the left in figure 9), a

nonnative species that has

Figure 10- Northwest Treaty Tribes crew members from the Lummi been found to predate
tribe removing spilled Atlantic salmon and returning native Pacific
salmon to the Puget Sound. From crosscut.com.
juvenile fish and introduce

genetic deformities into the native populations.

Protecting native salmon populations and restoring their heavily polluted

and transformed ecosystems has involved a combination of legal advocacy,

education and awareness raising, hatchery enterprise management, and ecological

research. The 20 member tribes collaborate in these various projects as well as

consult with state and private scientists. This is not unique to the Pacific Northwest

tribes, as many Indigenous nations and tribes collaborate with settler scientists for

conservation of tribal lands and natural resources. However, it is the explicit

purpose of asserting treaty rights and restoring of tribal sovereignty that makes

room for a decolonial ethic of ecology. Here the contributions and methodologies of
Co-Colonizing 39

ecology can be repurposed not for the study of settlers’ new domain (Tuck and

Yang, 2012) but for the holistic study and, more importantly, interaction with the

natural environment and all of its inhabitants.

There are still some considerations and concerns to be addressed in this

example. The employment of treaty rights for protection and restoration of natural

environments does not automatically translate to repatriation of land. In fact, the

United States settler state has expressly claimed total sovereignty over the lands

within its territory, holding in trust the land it “reserves” for Indigenous tribes. It

has also unilaterally ended tribes’ ability to enter and negotiate treaties

(law.cornell.edu, n.d.). In addition, many tribes are not even recognized by the US

settler state and either do not have an existing treaty or have one that has been

broken and therefore do not have a land base, like the Duwamish tribe of the lands

today known as Seattle.

And while the collaboration between Indigenous tribes and government

scientists is commendable and speaks to the potential usefulness of ecology and

conservation ecology in decolonial projects, it is important not to reproduce the

patterns discussed earlier. Settlers must not position themselves as either superior

caretakers or managers of the land nor work to ensure our own settler futurity

(Tuck and Yang, 2012). We also must remember that Indigenous peoples have

managed and cohabitated in these lands since time immemorial with their own

epistemologies, sciences, and methodologies, and that Western ecology is not

necessarily indispensible in the proper management of these lands. These two

assertions are likely to be uneasily received by the scientific community, but they
Co-Colonizing 40

are critical to centering decolonization and Indigenous sovereignty rather than

settler desires and futurity. When settler colonialism is understood as one of the

contexts of the ecological degradation that we observe in the world around us, it

follows that the solution is not ecological restoration for its own sake, but for

addressing and undoing the harms of colonization.

Conclusion

Though not a complete or exhaustive survey of the environmental history of

the American continents pre- and post-colonization, it is hoped that by now it is

clear that the colonization of the last 526 years has had profound ecological as well

as sociocultural impacts. Whether that be from mass extinction of native species due

to overexploitation, or introduction of now-ubiquitous species that change the very

structure of the soil, settler colonialism has radically altered and disrupted the

ecological relationships of this continent much like it has with Indigenous

communities’. The study of this relationship between settler colonialism and the

ecological degradation that enabled and results from it is complicated both

theoretically and ethically, with ecological discourse falling within hegemonic

narratives of settler colonialism and the sheer complexity of the ecological systems

that it seeks to understand.

In attempting to describe, explain, and respond to the ecological alteration of

this land, conservation scientists and ecologists have put forth theories of invasion,

homogenization, and ecological equilibrium and adaption. Some focus heavily on the

plant and animal species that have come to invade, reshape, and replace native
Co-Colonizing 41

species’ communities. This focus, too, is complicated and made problematic by the

ways that settlers position themselves as native to the land they have colonized,

even with their discourses of prevention, management, and eradication of invasive

species. Others have noted that settlers utilize plant, animal, and microbe species in

their project of settler colonialism, in a way similar to how species collaborate to

invade a novel ecosystem when they have developed in a shared bioregion and

within shared ecological relationships or functions. Some of these have been

intentional introductions and mass extinctions; others have been facilitated by co-

evolutionary or cultural traits such as disease-resistance or agricultural practices.

What should be clear is that settler colonialism and its resultant spread of

both cosmopolitan species and cultural practices/ideologies cause profound

changes on the world. The homogenization of cultures and biotas threatens not only

the cultural and biological diversity that makes specific bioregions unique but also

the world’s ability to respond to disturbances such as climate change or epidemic.

(Olden, 2006)(Olden et al., 2005). In order to address the complex linkages, the

analogous and nonanalogous aspects between settler colonialism and biological

invasion, we must turn to the work and leadership of Indigenous and non-

Indigenous scholars who have sought to study, challenge, and undo settler

colonialism. Will invasion ecologists and conservation biologists be able to prioritize

Indigenous communities’ and nations’ epistemologies, methodologies, and indeed

desires, even if those don’t directly align with the accepted practices and goals

within settler ecology?

Co-Colonizing 42

The field of ecology, along with its scientists, technologies, and

methodologies, has much to offer to projects of ecological restoration and

preservation in service of decolonization. What is crucial, though, is a willingness on

the part of settler scientists to critically examine not only the ecological effects of

their occupation of Indigenous land, but also their own positionality as settlers on

this land. And in developing a decolonial ethic to guide our study of the ecology of

this land, we must consistently and critically examine the ways that our approach to

solving the problem roots us to this land, retrenching the settler colonial structures

that shape our existence here. Much like natural ecosystems, there is no going back

to a more pure or idyllic past. We must, however, embrace the chaotic and uncertain

nature of decolonization on its own terms, and grasp the ivy at its root and allow the

forest to grow anew. But even this is to make a metaphor of decolonization. So

instead, I invite you to engage deeply first with the actual desires of decolonization,

as a project for deep justice, and reflect on what it requires of us ecologically as well

as socially.
Co-Colonizing 43

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