Stories of Solastalgia

About this book

When the land is sick, we are sick.

For Indigenous peoples, climate change is one more catastrophic loss on top of decades of land abuses and intergenerational traumas. The exploitation of natural resources under colonialism has consistently marginalised and dispossessed communities around the world whose ways of life are based on the land. Environmental changes, often labelled as 'protection' or 'development' measures, have forcibly displaced many Indigenous people from their homelands. Extractive industries and neo-colonial green energy projects are altering delicate ecosystems, harming the health of both human and non-human beings that inhabit them.

This book examines where land, territories and the human body are sites of simultaneous trauma and the ways in which different forms of ecological degradation unmoor us. Starting from solastalgia, a form of mental distress caused by environmental change and one's feelings of inability to prevent or reverse land sickness, the Land Body Ecologies collective presents reflections from people living through environmental changes, and proposes cultural rights and practices as a mechanism for survival, revival and healing.

Customer Reviews

Biography

Land Body Ecologies is a global, transdisciplinary research group seeking to understand the mental health dimensions of minority, Indigenous and other land-dependent communities' relationship to ecologies in a changing environment. Since 2019, they have been working to understand and engage with the experiences of land trauma among communities in the Arctic, India, Kenya, Thailand and Uganda who are at the forefront of today's climate, ecosystem and land rights issues. Through long-form collaboration, they seek to understand the traumas endured when the land suffers.