Lo—TEK: Infrastructures of an Ancestral Future by Julia Watson

Lo—TEK, Infrastructures of an Ancestral Future, by Julia Watson, moderated by Max de Ploeg
Saturday 19 October, 16:00-17:00
Lecture in English

DDW invited Julia Watson because of her longstanding career working on / with indigenous knowledge systems. These are built on a deeply relational understanding of the world—an intricate web of interconnections where survival depends on cooperation, reciprocity, and respect for all living beings. While Western science often isolates knowledge into distinct categories, Indigenous communities have long known that everything is in conversation, with life woven into vast networks of exchange.

In a talk on the opening Saturday of DDW24, Julia Watson spoke in a sold-out Van Abbemuseum auditorium combining examples from her first and her forthcoming book. Early in her speech she commemorated the 1998 oilspill, killing lots of birds and even killing the water. She followed by illustrating her point with several examples from the book, where humans and non-humans lived in symbiosis.  

Wrapping up, she gave a forceful plea for getting on board with her, by, for example, help develop the smart oath, 9-part oral contract she has developed with various communities. The lore creates a framework for indigenous communities to be rewarded (in any way they would want to) for sharing the land knowledge / climate mitigation policies they have developed over centuries.