Tobias Thejl Ploug Skiveren

Project title

Environmental Colonialism in Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland: Tracing the Cultural Transformations of Indigenous Ecologies in Literature, Film, and Art

What is your project about?

Over the years, many scholars have argued that our current environmental crisis arise from a Western conception of “Nature” as an open resource, freely available for human extraction and exploitation. My project builds on the idea that this conception of nature was consolidated by colonial narratives that distorted the ecological dimensions of indigenous People’s non-western alternatives. To explore this idea, the project looks specifically at conceptions of nature in Kalaallit Inuit’s cultural narratives and charts their transformation, as they traveled into Western contexts through Danish and US literature, film, and art (1721-). The project aims not only to recognize and advance relegated conceptions of nature, but also to develop a theoretical understanding of the narrative mechanisms that marginalize worldviews that does not align with Western extractivism.

How did you become interested in your particular field of research?

My academic identity evolved at a time when literary studies expanded its horizon, from primarily dealing with questions of form and aesthetics to also engage with a wide set of urgent societal problems. As a student, I experienced this shift as both important and productive, and so, over the years, I’ve specialized not only in literary engagements with environmental issues (from global warming to biodiversity), but also in its relation to various types of cultural marginalization (concerning gender, sexuality, ethnicity, etc.). This Sapere Aude-project combines both agendas.

What are the scientific challenges and perspectives in your project?

The project is packed with challenges, not least those relating to research ethics. There’s a special risk, for instance, of reproducing stereotypes and more generally enforce a new kind of colonialism, where the old colonizers’ current scholars appropriate already exploited communities. For that reason, it’s particularly important that the project builds on a close, mutual, and co-creative collaboration with the marginalized voices around which it all revolves. And yet, if these pitfalls are avoided, the project could lead to notable scholarly contributions. By reinterpreting Scandinavian colonialism as an environmental issue, the project not only brings important new insights into fields like ecocriticism, environmental humanities as well as decolonial and arctic studies. It might just also correct some the effects of Danish colonial histories.

What is your estimate of the impact, which your project may have to society in the long term?

EU’s latest climate report (IPCC) stressed that we already hold well-tested tools to mitigate global warming. And yet, their use, the report noted, is currently inhibited by socio-cultural factors – that is, by feelings, habits, imaginaries and not least dominant conceptions of nature. Facing this challenge, my project advances intellectual sources to help alter such conceptions. It does so, first of all, by raising non-Western perspectives and cosmologies, as they materialize in traditional Kalaallit folklore as well as contemporary Kalaallit art, film, and literature. The project, moreover, also develops new analytical concepts to help ‘us’ identify the marginalization of worldviews that doesn’t align with Western extractivism. The project will disseminate such findings by developing new teaching material and in-service training targeting educators in upper-secondary schools specifically.

Which impact do you expect the Sapere Aude programme will have on your career as a researcher?

Above all, I hope that the project will advance a group of junior scholars interested in environmental issues as well as Kalaallit Nunaat’s colonial histories. At the same time, the project will also help me to develop ideas and insights for a monograph that I believe will appeal to scholars beyond the Scandinavian context. And in more general terms, the grant will of course promote decolonial and ecocritical scholarship as significant research agendas at my own institution as well as in Danish academia at large.

Background and personal life

I grew up in Klokkerholm, a small, safe town in the northern part of Jutland. After high-school, I spent a lot of years, as both student and faculty, at Aalborg University and Aarhus University before finally moving to the capital city due to my new position at the University of Copenhagen. Here I spend most of my free time on the city playgrounds, and when my kids are asleep, I sometimes play basketball with the local old boys-team. Like most academics, I also use a lot of time reading books and pdfs.