The Age of Humans, or the Age of Forgetting?
The Anthropocene marks a proposed new chapter in Earth’s history, one where human activity has become the planet’s dominant geological force (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000). The term comes from anthropocentrism, the belief that humans stand at the centre of existence, seen as “superior to nature and…animals, plants…resources that may justifiably be exploited for the benefit of humankind.” (Boslaugh, 2019)
Although the Anthropocene is a useful generalised tool to highlight humanity’s influence, it is insufficient in addressing the climate crisis through the lens of climate justice. Climate justice refers to the ethical and political principle that all people deserve fair treatment and meaningful participation in decisions about climate change, recognising that those least responsible for emissions often bear its worst effects (Schlosberg & Collins, 2014). It seeks to hold those affecting the environment disproportionately accountable while providing equitable protection and resources to communities, often marginalised, and the solutions they require. In this way, the framing of the Anthropocene obscures the large contributions colonialism, capitalism, and racial injustice have on the environment. Through engaging specifically with First Nations people of Australia and their cultural-environmental practices towards the land, this essay aims to underline the limitations of the Anthropocene concept. While also
showcasing the need for decolonisation and Indigenisation within the climate discourse and how the role of First Nations’ epistemologies, art, and praxis offers an alternative to our current Eurocentric geological frameworks.
Learning from Country: 65,000 Years of Sustainability
First Nations peoples of Australia have lived on this Earth for more than 65,000 years, cultivating a deep and continuous relationship with Country; land, water, sky and all living things. Guided by their spiritual and ecological knowledge, they developed sophisticated land management systems long before British colonisation in 1788. Historian Bill Gammage notes how they transformed vast landscapes into thriving grasslands, carefully maintaining plants, freshwater, and animal habitats.
However, since colonisation, Australia’s biodiversity has drastically declined, with over 100 Australian species or subspecies officially extinct and more than 2000 on the brink of extinction. (Biodiversity Council, 2024) The primary cause of Australia’s environmental degradation is land clearing, which has removed native vegetation critical for protecting habitats and sustaining ecosystems. Urbanisation, agriculture, mining, and large-scale infrastructure have all contributed to this loss, disrupting soil systems, water flows and global carbon cycles(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010). This forces us to confront colonialism’s role in Australia’s climate crisis, a reality the Anthropocene narrative too often obscures.
The idea of the Anthropocene has sparked debates across geology, history, and philosophy.
To grasp its limits, we must trace its origins.
The term was introduced by American diatom researcher Eugene F. Stoermer and Dutch nobelist and atmospheric chemist Paul. J Crutzen in Earth Sciences as the suggested label for this new geological epoch. They presented it as a departure from the Holocene, which is the post-glacial epoch, emphasising how the growing influence humanity has on the environment does not align with the Holocene. (Crutzen, 2002)
Earlier thinkers foreshadowed this view. In 1873, Italian scholar Antonio Stoppani described humanity as a “new telluric force,” equal to Earth’s natural forces. (Stoppani, 1873; as cited in Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000) Comparatively Indian historian Dipesh Chakrabarty views the Anthropocene as a subversion towards the conventional split between natural and human history, insisting that, “humans have become geological agents, changing the most basic physical processes of the earth,” (Chakrabarty, 2009, p.206) He underlined modernity’s paradox: the same progress that fuels civilisation also drives planetary instability.
Scholars continued to debate when this ‘human epoch’ began, the so-called golden spike of geological time. Some point to 1610 and the Columbian Exchange, while
others to the Industrial Revolution around 1800, or the Great Acceleration of the 1950s. Yet each timeline centres Western milestones, obscuring how colonial violence and global extraction were intertwined with these same transformations.
The Problem with “the Human Epoch”
British Geographer Kathryn Yusoff argues that colonialism itself is a geological force, one that shaped the Anthropocene to serve Western power. She describes geology as a discipline moulded by colonialism, capitalism, and racial prejudice, a “racialized optic raxed on the earth.” (Yusoff, 2018, p.23) Additionally, Yusoff retitles geology as ‘white geology,’ a practice that is rooted in anthropocentric tendencies of prioritising Western civilisation’s doctrines, while also rendering natural resources into exploitable capital.
This aligns with the concept of climate colonialism, which refers to the intrinsic historical effects colonialism has in causing climate change and its disproportionate effect on Black, Brown, and Indigenous bodies around the world. (Bassey, 2021) This framework erases Black and Indigenous perspectives, failing to acknowledge the colonial violence of extraction, dispossession, and environmental racism. As a result, these communities disproportionately bear the costs of resource and labour exploitation for capitalist gains. The Anthropocene, derived from white geology, also presents itself as a universal belief while masking its inherent exclusionary dogmas. This universalism reinforces existing power imbalances, functioning as a “foil of the humanist trickster”(Yusoff and Thomas, 2018; as cited in Yusoff, 2018, p.14) that appears to be critically engaging with the
climate crisis but neglects the effect of colonial activity and continues to perpetuate Western ideologies of geology.
Beyond Anthropocentrism: Indigenous Worldviews and
Posthumanism
To address the climate crisis in a way that aligns with climate justice, we must decolonise Western geological frameworks that are informed by Eurocentrism and anthropocentrism, while also engaging critically with posthumanist thought. Rather than championing dominant Western stewardship, we should amplify and learn from Indigenous knowledge. Posthumanism, broadly defined as an intellectual movement that challenges the Enlightenment idea of the autonomous, rational human as the centre of the universe (Braidotti, 2013), emerges within Western academia, yet many posthumanist thinkers actively critique universal humanism. Geographer Juanita Sundberg (2013) criticises posthumanism’s tendency to reproduce this division, stating that it “continuous- ly refers to a foundational ontological split between nature and culture as if it is universal” (Sundberg, 2013, p.35). The enforced binary only encapsulates Eurocentric ideologies and disregards Indigenous epistemologies that view nature and humans as one entity.
Indigenous voices are frequently excluded from academic and artistic spaces, which Métis anthropologist Zoe Todd identifies as ‘white public space,’ where Indigenous ideas or experiences are appropriated, obscured, or rejected by non-Indigenous practitioners. She emphasises that these spaces that supposedly respond to the climate crisis often discriminate both physically and procedurally against people of colour while denying or
minimising their experiences. Mexican/Chicano performance artist and activist Guillermo Gómez-Peña states, “We want understanding, not publicity.’ We want to be considered intellectuals, not entertainers; partners, not clients; collaborators, not competitors; holders of strong spiritual vision, not emerging voices; and, above all, full citizens, not exotic minorities” (Gómez-Peña, 1994; as cited in Todd, 2015, p.251). This proclamation highlights the need for Indigenous communities to be intellectual equals and for genuine partnerships, where both Indigenous voices and academic spaces can mutually benefit from knowledge exchange.
While some posthumanist theories engage with ecology, many overlook the significance of land in their ontological frameworks, whereas the non-anthropocentric worldview of Indigenous beliefs positions land as a core factor in their meaning-making praxis. As Zoe Todd explains, Indigenous Place-Thought is rooted in the perception that land is alive and sentient, a viewpoint that resonates with the First Nations’ philosophy of The Dreaming. Papaschase Cree scholar Dwayne Donald introduces two concepts that challenge Western ideologies and reshape our comprehension of the Anthropocene. He proposes the idea of ethical relationality, which calls for respecting and understanding the connections between all living things, recognising “how our different histories and experiences position us in relation to each other.” Donald emphasises that our “varied place-based cultures and knowledge systems” (Donald, 2010) shape how we perceive the Earth. He frames this through the lens of ecological imagination, which envisions humans as part of a web of reciprocal relationships with land, beings, and each other.
To authentically engage with Indigenous knowledge, the utilisation of ethical relationality is crucial to avoid appropriating or colonising Indigenous practices and theory, rather, we should formulate meaningful appreciation. By centring non-anthropocentric Indigenous epistemologies, we challenge the extractive views the Western world has of Earth and its resources. This reciprocal relationship can be seen in First Nations peoples’ spiritual connection to Country, where humans, animals, and land are equal. Furthermore, the ‘Black Anthropocene,’ a term articulated by Kathryn Yusoff (2018, p. 10), illustrates how Blackness operates as a ‘material vector,’ a concept in which Blackness is not just a social identity but a material force or direction that creates geographies and temporalities. Black and Indigenous bodies are often at the forefront of colonial and capitalist exploitation, such as plantations and mining, thus their bodies share a close relationship with the Earth both physically and spiritually. Indeed, it is crucial to recognise these perspectives as climate justice cannot be achieved without addressing the historical and ongoing violence inflicted on Indigenous and Black communities. Through integrating Indigenous and Black epistemologies, we can reframe the Anthropocene to reflect a diverse range of communities’ interaction with the environment and highlight the forgotten contributions of those who have been historically marginalized or silenced. As such, by decolonising Eurocentric geographical dogmas, society can progress into a more encompassing space for climate justice.
Art as Decolonial Praxis
Through First Nations praxis and art, which inherently subvert the extractive colonial notions towards the environment embedded in the Anthropocene framework, these
practices function as a decolonial praxis to address the climate crisis and fill in the gaps where the Anthropocene lacks. Canadian filmmaker Loretta Todd elucidates the transcendental quality of art and how it goes beyond academic discourse, saying how, “art is supposedly well within the digital age of fusion, beyond boundaries and anthropology.” (Todd, 2011; as cited in Todd, 2015, p. 241) This ethos is embodied by artist Lorraine Connelly-Northey, of Waradgery heritage, and Rosalie Gascoigne, who was born in Aotearoa but lived and worked on Ngunnawal land, both prioritise Country and portrays colonial impact on their environment through the materiality in their works. In their practice, they collect discarded found objects like rusted fences, industrial scraps, and weathered wood, symbols and remnants of colonial structures, which are transformed into artworks that celebrate First Nations people’s culture and practices.
In Kooliman (2002), Connelly-Northey manipulates the wire vessels and repurposes the material that historically was used to trap her ancestors into sculptural works that mimic traditional vessels used in First Nations communities to gather bush foods. Gascoigne’s Clouds III (1992) incorporates weathered wooden planks that reflect the tumultuous yetharmonious relationship between nature and time. Their use of found materials is a relinquishment of creative control; instead of meticulously creating the aesthetics of their works, they allow nature to dictate the outcome. This procedure juxtaposes the Western mode of consumption and the capitalist notion of mass production, the desire to create new products rather than using things that are already available. Connelly-Northey explains, “We Aboriginal people only take what we need when we need it…The beauty is that I always work from leftovers and if I don’t use a material, I take it
back”(Connelly-Northey, 2022; as cited in Guo, 2022). Her methodology pays homage to First Nations people’s sustainability and respect to the land. First Nations people have formulated a complex system of traditional land management over the centuries to maintain the environment.
Fire as Teacher: Restoring Balance
Their main ally is fire, which is used to prevent excessive vegetative growth, as this causes catastrophic bushfires if not maintained properly. However, unlike colonial fire suppression policies that are not mindful of animal habitats or plant cycles, the First Nations people’s lay out specific fire patterns that do not disrupt the flow of the ecosystem. (Korff, 2019) Unfortunately, due to colonial agriculture and infrastructure, these techniques cannot be practiced, as such Australia’s ecosystem suffers from a denser and more flammable forest that has resulted in deadly bushfires. Thus, it is crucial to implement more of First Nations people’s practices within Australia. An example of this initiative is the rangers program specifically for First Nations people, where modern technology is conflated with their knowledge of the land. While First Nations fire praxis offers climate resilience and care towards Country, Connelly-Northey and Gascoigne’s art reclaims colonial debris, advocating for restoration and ecological reciprocity. Through their work, they demonstrate how Indigenous art functions as decolonial praxis by embracing sustainability and deep spiritual connections to the planet, directly contesting the extractive logic embedded in the Anthropocene framework.
The Anthropocene, while acknowledging humanity’s global impact, fails to sufficiently address the disparity in contributions that forces like colonialism, capitalism, and racial injustice play in causing the climate crisis. As such, this universalising framing does not align with climate justice and requires revising through decolonising the climate discourse and centering Indigenous knowledge through uplifting Indigenous voices in Eurocentric spaces. First Nation people of Australia’s praxis and artistic expression enables us to move towards a future that prioritises rehabilitation, maintaining spiritual connections to the land, and sustainability.
