Java Minute Lecture Series: Rebecca Haboucha Planning for future generations: Indigenous Cultural Heritage in the Anthropocene

Wed 3 April 2019

Newnham College

Climate change has become one of the greatest threats to societies and ecosystems across the world in the 21st century. Rising temperatures, sea-level rise, desertification, and an increased number extreme weather events have begun to drastically impact food security, health, and the general physical well-being of humankind. However, our existential wellbeing is also being tested as, on the one hand, cultural heritage begins to be abandoned out of a necessity for communities to move away from their traditional lands or, on the other hand, built sites and cultural landscapes are destroyed by the threats climate change imposes. Moreover, the poorest nations and sociocultural groups, including Indigenous Peoples, will be the most impacted by climate change. This presentation will briefly explore a comparative study of the impacts of climate change on cultural heritage on the Dehcho First Nations in the Northwest Territories of Canada as well as the Quechua and Aymara Peoples in northern Chile. It will specifically bring light to the sociopolitical and historical conditions that have exacerbated the impacts of climate change on cultural heritage in both cases. The presentation will then go to demonstrate how these conditions persist in threatening the safeguarding of heritage for future generations.

Cost: Free