Crushing Colonialism
In the face of climate collapse and accelerated extractive development, Indigenous relational worldviews—rooted in the understanding that people and environment are interdependent—are too often dismissed as symbolic or outdated rather than recognized as powerful, future-oriented practices of care, governance, and resistance. Yet across continents, Indigenous communities are showing that ecological care, resilience, and political resistance grow out of lived, land-based knowledge that rejects extractive ideas of disposability and ownership.
An atmospheric river is not a metaphor. It’s an actual river flowing through the sky. A corridor of moisture streaming off from the Pacific Ocean.
In November 2025, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) convened its 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) in Belém, in the Brazilian Amazon.
Mr. Seun Opadare, a Yoruba man living in Ibadan, transformed part of his compound into a small garden. Using only what he had at home, he learned how to grow food for himself and his neighbors, building the garden from the ground up. His garden is modest in size and wasn’t created through any program or external support. It is a daily practice that he maintains, guided by what he can cultivate with his own hands. I started documenting him to understand how a simple daily practice can become a form of care that is steady and rooted in place.
Heritage in Nigeria is both tangible and intangible, shaped by landscapes that sustain society through vital ecosystem services. This creates responsibility for those who inhabit the land, yet breakdowns lead to deforestation, polluted rivers, and threatened livelihoods. Such degradation exposes how ecological integrity and community well‑being are inseparable. International frameworks like UNESCO’s affirm sacred landscapes as cultural heritage, where nature and identity are jointly protected.
COP30 began long before its official opening on the 10th of November, 2025, in the Brazilian city of Belém. In the days before, Indigenous leaders, Afro-descendant communities, riverine and other water and land-based communities, and social movement activists traveled for days to reach Belém, the second-largest city in the Brazilian Amazon. Across the city, banners and chants repeated a clear message: “We are the solution.” The slogan emerged from a campaign initiated by Indigenous peoples of the Amazon and later taken up by Indigenous communities across Latin America in the lead-up to COP30.
In the Sarayaku territory of the Ecuadorian Amazon, the day does not begin with light—it begins with sound. At 4:30 a.m., howler monkeys call out, their roars carrying for miles through the forest. Tinamous follow, ground birds releasing low, pulsing whistles.
The recent explosion in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers has created a litany of environmental and cultural issues for Native people and Tribes across the so-called “United States.” This, in turn, has sparked intense debate and prompted conversations on tribal digital sovereignty and a call for regulation that controls the data, infrastructure, and networks.
The morning of February 13, 1960, began in stillness in Reggane, 900 miles southwest of Algiers, deep in the Algerian Sahara. Windless, indifferent, almost serene, the desert stretched flat and endless around the site. Then, at 7:04 a.m., the sky split open. A blinding flash tore through the horizon—a fireball swelling hundreds of meters wide, followed by a thunderclap that swallowed the desert’s silence. A shockwave raced outward, rippling across sand, stone, and human bodies.
“We don’t know what to eat anymore,” said Mr. Lifoli Fiacre, an elderly fisherman from Basoko, in the Tshopo province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, his voice trembling. For decades, the Aruwini River fed his family, irrigated their fields, and provided the fish that ensured their survival. Today, his nets come up empty. The water has changed color. The fish are disappearing, or when caught, they rot in just a few hours.
“When I say I didn’t catch fish,” said Fehintola Alebiosu, a 37-year-old fisherman from Ayetoro in the Ilaje community of Ondo State, in southwestern Nigeria, “the response is always the same: ‘didn’t catch fish? Beside the Atlantic Ocean? You must be joking.’ Then they look at me with doubt, believing I’m lying.”