The Western Genre and The Settler Society Narrative

Some readings about the latest Western the entertainment industry has to offer: Killers of The Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese.

The western genre convention usually depicts the 'unbounded freedom' of the individual, the 'Lone Cow-boy' trope on horseback set in a 'wide and open spaces' narrative. The 'hero' operates outside the law on Indigenous landscapes and in frontier towns.

"Unlike the visions of unbounded freedom found in traditional westerns, Martin Scorsese’s new film is a study of a West bounded by the vertical geometry of oil rigs and the violent conspiracies of powerful men.” (source)

It is an “epic about the bloody birth of modern America... An epic of creeping, existential horror about the birth of the American century, a macabre tale of quasi-genocidal serial killings" (source)

The film is “an epic story of greed and betrayal in its examination of Osage life in Oklahoma circa 1920, and the mass murders of the Indigenous community at the hands of their white neighbors.” (source)

Leonardo DiCaprio: “It's still happening...The more work that I've done, certainly in the environmental space, you realise the systematic persecution of Indigenous cultures all throughout the world...It's happening all over the world, in Australia. It's happening in Africa, it's happening in South America...And I keep saying this quote over and over again, those places that are most rich in resources are those that are often most drenched in blood." (source)

The BBC mentions that the zeitgeist how Indigenous peoples are treated might be changing in the 21^st Century: "The film is making a strong statement that it's no longer acceptable to extract valuable assets from Indigenous communities without our consent and input.” (source)

Interesting times when Hollywood actors and their products problematise past massacres of settler colonialism and present day injustices against Indigenous peoples.

As Patrick Wolfe said: Settler colonialism is a “structure not an event” (source)

Update:

Revealing reading regarding mineral and petroleum royalties: For the Osage Nation, the betrayal of the murders depicted in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ still lingers, Conservation

Hate Crimes Against Wombats

Ten wombats, including four feeding mothers were deliberately run over and killed by a SUV driver at Bendeela camping ground, Kangaroo Valley, abc 20.09.2015


On the Making of Biodiversity Guardians 

Updates:
Footage emerged of a driver appearing to deliberately swerve at a dingo on Fraser Island, World Heritage 02102015

Image:
John Gould, Vombatus ursinus,"Mammals of Australia", Vol. I Plate 55, 1863, via Wikimedia Commons

The Anthropocene Biosphere

Humans are transforming Earth in absolutely unprecedented ways.

A study shows how homo sapiens has radically changed their natural home, planet Earth and has "caused shifts in world ecosystems unprecedented in the last 500 million years." (source)

• Similar to the Great Oxygenation Events 2.3 billion years ago, human impact has produced a new kind of biosphere.
• Intervention in the diversity of life has been the greatest for the past half billion years.
• Our only home, planet Earth is entering a new kind of planetary state

Some of the key changes are:

•         "The homogenisation of species around the world through mass, human-instigated species invasions – nothing on this global scale has happened before

•         One species, Homo sapiens, is now in effect the top predator on land and in the sea, and has commandeered for its use over a quarter of global biological productivity.  There has never been a single species of such reach and power previously

There is growing direction of evolution of other species by Homo sapiens

•         There is growing interaction of the biosphere with the ‘technosphere’ – a concept pioneered by one of the team members, Professor Peter Haff of Duke University - the sum total of all human-made manufactured machines and objects, and the systems that control them" (source)

 M. Williams, J. Zalasiewicz, P. Haff, C. Schwagerl, A. D. Barnosky, E. C. Ellis. The Anthropocene biosphere. The Anthropocene Review, 2015; DOI: 10.1177/2053019615591020

Afterthoughts:
The global homogenisation of flora and fauna is obvious. People support a world full of poodles and horticultural weeds. They do not appreciate the endemic biodiversity of the place they dwell in. The eradication of bio-diversity is replaced with a monoculture.

Only one species (Homo sapiens) grabs 40% of net primary production

Burning fossil fuels and biomass seems an unstoppable addictive behaviour. We would rather burn to death, than modify our way of life.

Humans dictate the evolution of all other species, also having a go at their own imperfections.

We are constructing a gestell/ artifact that "could persist over geological timescales, an interaction of the biosphere with the technosphere (the global emergent system that includes humans, technological artefacts, and associated social and technological networks)." (source)

This noosphere (mind sphere) or a distributed agency seeks to expand the domination of space as well as planet Earth.

Spaceship Earth is fully in the hands and the code of the human helmsman. While vandalising the cradle of humanity and depriving the rest of life of a habitable planet, man steers for the goal of more and more.

Images:
The face of man, graffiti EU


Update:
Clive Hamilton, The Banality of Ethics in the Anthropocene, Part 1, Part 2,