Facing Planetary Ecocide, Transforming Human-Earth Relations

Abstract

This article presents a rarely undertaken transcultural literary study, comparing the non-Indigenous novel Blå by Norwegian author Maja Lunde with the Indigenous novel The Back of the Turtle by Cherokee (US-American and Canadian) author Thomas King. By exploring the co-evolutionary relationships among art, literature, culture, ecosystems, and the environment, this study positions itself within the framework of eco-cosmopolitanism. It examines human-Earth relations and possibilities for action in the face of the climate and environmental crises portrayed in the novels. The analysis engages equally with Eurowestern approaches—ecophenomenology, ecophilosophy, ecopsychology, and ecocriticism—to address themes related to ecological elegies, ecological grief, the ethics of mourning, and symbiocenic critiques of the Anthropocene, and with Indigenous concepts of all-relatedness, particularly Anishinaabeg epistemologies and the cosmogonic story of Skywoman. By juxtaposing an Indigenous narrative's capacity to convey storied resilience and survivance in the midst of extreme crises with a non-Indigenous narrative's reliance on didactic warnings, negotiations, and techno-managerialism, this article underscores the importance of Indigenous perspectives in transcultural, eco-cosmopolitan approaches.