Decolonizing landscape

Abstract

If decolonization truly begins with land, then it can be said that landscape studies—as a field concerned with the study, design, and ordering of land—has at least some stake in on going processes of decolonization. Repeated contestations for Indigenous land rights in North America suggest that settler-colonial contexts present a distinct and pressing concern for decolonization. The landscapes of colonialism are also deeply racialized, converging on extractive capitalism and environmental racism. Historically, landscape has been used as a disciplinary tool to facilitate the control of land and to naturalise colonial hegemonies, including the cultural framing of landscape through art and architecture. Current approaches to the built environment (including development, conservation, and management) also routinely perpetuate colonizing logics. For landscape studies, the prospect of decolonization (and of a decolonizing landscape praxis) demands the critical reconciliation of underlying coloniality within the field and a complete reorientation towards anti-colonial subjectivities.