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Our project has been conducted in so-called ‘Kelowna’ , located in ‘British Columbia’ , ‘Canada’. This land on which we live and work is the unceded, ancestral territory of the syilx Okanagan nation. Prior to European colonisation in the 19th century, the syilx people stewarded the land for thousands of years, guided by an ethos that sees the nonhuman world as an inheritance to be protected rather than owned and exploited. In spite of the violence of settler colonialism, syilx culture endures. A compelling example of the mobilisation of syilx knowledge systems and philosophies against environmental injustice is the restoration of kokanee and coho salmon to the Okanagan. Since the 1990s, the Okanagan Nation Alliance has led efforts to restore habitats, build fish passages over dams, and release fry. The salmon populations have rebounded from near extinction through a process guided by syilx environmental principles. While designing a class in place-based environmental humanities methods we have collaborated with syilx colleagues to integrate their philosophies and approaches to land-based learning. 

Image source 'Mission Creek in Kelowna', Daisy Pullman

Pullman, Daisy, Astrida Niemanis, Natalie Forssman and Haida Gaede. 2023.  "Place-based Learning on syilx Land." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

Nanjala Nyabola, a Kenyan journalist and author tweeted: 'There were two anti-police brutality protests in Nairobi today. The one featuring white people made it's way to the US embassy undisturbed. The one led by working class and poor folks ended in teargas and arbitrary arrests.'

On March 25, 2020 the Kenyan government imposed a curfew to limit movement in Nairobi to prevent the spreading of COVID-19. In the ensuing months, the police 'enforced' the curfew by killing as many people as COVID-19 in Nairobi. The police have had a long and bloody history in Nairobi. Missing Voices Kenya have documented the shocking number of people who have lots their lives to police brutality over the years. Although groups in poor neighbourhoods such as Mathare have long held protests against police violence, the recent murder of George Floyd in the US has lent momentum to this movement. Thus, these groups took to the street to walk to the apartment where Yasin Moyo, a 13 year old playing on his balcony was killed by police, to demand that Black lives mattered- everywhere. The protests ended in the police tear gassing protestors.

A separate group comprising of many white protestors marched to the US Embassy to protest extrajudicial killings in the US and Kenya. From reports I have been reading about the protests on Twitter, these groups were left unharmed by the police. It is thus important that we recognize the the situatedness of protests agains police violence in different parts of the world, and the specific histories and contexts that shape each one of them, while recognizing their common themes.

I think that if it is possible to reconcile both developments, since both are necessary for social development we should look for policies that help to live with both. If a sustainable use of the industry is made, it can offer favorable living conditions and at the same time not harm the environment.