Plants out of place: How appreciation of weeds unsettles nature in New Zealand

Indigenous worlds are and always have been sites of more‐than‐human (MTH) agency and relationship, despite their largely marginalised status within geographic scholarship to date. The return to cosmologically‐informed earth‐oriented Indigenous Lifeworlds holds transformative power for mobilising collective action toward life‐affirming MTH futures for all. In this commentary, we, as two Indigenous PhD students (Alice, Naxi Chinese and Georgia, Te Whakatōhea Māori), draw on our respective ancestral instructions of kinship to suggest that engaging in MTH geographies is less a ‘discovery’ of new epistemologies and more akin to a praxis of ‘recovery’, similar to showing up to a family reunion. Thinking‐with the metaphor of a reunion, we contend that planetary futurity is contingent on Indigenous futurity, and that epistemic freedom is contingent on epistemic justice.

Section: Securing Epistemic Justice: Staying At the Reunionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Finding our place at the table: A more‐than‐human family reunion

McSherry

McLellan

2023

“…Bodies of water 'contest, create and rework' (Samuelson et al, 2023), as insects 'work' and do 'labour' in bioeconomies (Yee & Sharp, 2023). As Virens (2023) shows, weeds are hated community members by some and are pulled into caring relationships by others. Indeed, not all members of a more-than-human community are likable nor favourable to a majority of community members.…”

Section: Conceptualising Communities Of More Than Just Humansmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Siimes invites the reader to reassess the killing of Brett as violence, suggesting that instead of eradicating Brett, wine lovers could learn tolerance. Likewise, Virens (2023) draws connections between colonialism and conceiving weeds as plants out of place, which should be eradicated. In her view, those who appreciate weeds perform an act of resistance to colonial mindsets and the politics of belonging; caring for weeds serves as an ethical response to an injustice.…”

Section: Conceptualising Communities Of More Than Just Humansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coloniality and Indigenous ways of knowing at the edges: Emplacing Earth kin in conservation communities

Weber

Barron

2023

Participation of Indigenous peoples and local communities is encouraged in calls for sustainable transitions and transformations. The term ‘community’ is widely used yet nebulously defined. Conservation that removes people from their communities of land invokes epistemological authority and displaced relationships. We relate our work to the articles in this special issue to rethink the relationship between humans and nature in conservation. We propose expanding the term ‘local communities’ to include more than just humans. By decentring the human subject, we rethink what it means to participate in community and place‐making, further unpacking the ethical motivations of emplacement.

“…The first paper starts the issue on a vegetal note. Virens (2023) composts the perceptions, place and philosophy of weeds as settlers and as the unsettled. The paper develops critical observations of weeds-as-settlers, and notes the colonial networks that support their spatial travels.…”

Section: Special Issue Papersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Antipodean more‐than‐human geographies: From the edges

Siimes,

Yee,

McSherry

et al. 2023

To be more‐than‐human is to be relational, to no longer see the human as a discrete individual and to recognise the multivalent agency and import of the non‐human in bio‐physical, socio‐economic and cultural worlds. This Special Issue galvanises an interest by Aotearoa New Zealand geographers in non‐human–human relations and delivers more‐than‐human research from the edges: of the discipline, from our geographic position antipodal to ‘the west’ and ‘the north’, from early career researchers and from cognate literatures at the periphery of geographic thought. The contributions here question understandings of ethics, politics, conservation and economy through papers that explore affect, care, agency, discourses and practices with a range of more‐than‐human subject‐objects: blackberries, wine yeasts, insects, PFAS and urban streams.