hilding neilson

space is part of the land:

reconsidering the relationships between astronomy research outer space exploration & colonialism

introduction

Indigenous peoples have lived on the lands that, today, people call North America since time immemorial. It is only one part of the lands inhabited by Indigenous peoples across the world. But Settler cultures, like that of Canada, traditionally refer to land as something inanimate that can be owned, bought, sold, and is a commodity, whereas for many Indigenous peoples land is really Land with a capital L. This is because Land doesn’t belong to people but is alive itself. The Land supports people, animals, rocks, plants, etc., and we are part of the Land. The Land cannot be a commodity.

Just as the Land is alive, this perspective includes the air and water as part of the Land. The Land is not only the soil but is the ecosystem around us. In this work, I will show that space and the night sky are also part of that ecosystem and as such we, as a society, need to reconsider how we engage with the night sky and space activities and how our actions are expanding our colonial present and past to these realms in a new colonial future. I will also discuss how in Canada, and globally, the state is violating treaties and Indigenous rights by not consulting First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples in how the state will operate in outer space.

However, the first thing to do in this essay is for me to situate myself. I am Mi’kmaq and of Settler heritage from Ktaqmkuk, or the island of Newfoundland. I am a son, a brother, and an uncle. I am an academic astronomer. Being from Newfoundland means living on the lands of the Mi’kmaw and the Beothuk peoples. While the Mi’kmaq continue to live on this land and across northeastern North America, the Beothuk peoples are considered extinct today, some of the first victims of colonial genocide. This work is based on a talk given in the city of Calgary on Treaty 7 lands that are the home of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Tsúūt’inà First Nation, the Stoney Nakoda, and the Métis peoples.

My perspective as a Mi’kmaw person and an astronomer impacts how I view the night sky. A primary example is the constellation of Ursa Majoris. This is one of the eighty-eight constellations in the night sky codified by the International Astronomical Union in a report in 1930 (Delporte 1930). The constellation has been traced in European writings as far back as Ptolemy (second century CE), in his Almagest, and in the earliest views of Western astronomy. However, there are many other stories related to that constellation, such as Muin and the Seven Bird Hunters (e.g., Harris et al. 2017).

The story of Muin and the Seven Bird Hunters is told throughout the year at about the same time in the early morning and starts in the spring when Muin wakes from hibernation and emerges from her den. Muin is hungry and begins searching for food when she is spotted by Jipjawej or Robin. Jipjawej knows that meat and grease will feed and support his community for some time. Jipjawej picks up his bow and arrow and calls for the other hunters to join the hunt. Chickadee picks up a pot and joins in, followed by Blue Jay, Passenger Pigeon, Gray Jay, Barn Owl, and Saw-Whet Owl. As spring turns into summer, Muin is evading the hunters, but they are keeping up. As fall begins to set in, some of the hunters have fallen away from the hunt. In the night sky those hunters are below the horizon, but Jipjawej and Chickadee and some of the others have kept pace. Muin, however, is tired and frustrated. In response, Muin confronts the hunters, standing on her hind legs growling. Jipjawej sees his chance and fires his arrow, striking Muin in the chest. Blood goes everywhere, covering Jipjawej. Jipjawej flies into the trees and shakes off the blood, staining the leaves red, but a spot on his breast remains stained. Muin passes and Chickadee catches up with the pot ready to cook the meat. The other birds join and begin to celebrate. They gather around the fire dancing and telling stories and sharing the meat and grease throughout the winter as Muin lays on her back in the night sky waiting to re-emerge from her den in the spring.

This story contains significant information about the night sky, include the behaviours of circumpolar stars. These are stars that are above the horizon for the entirety of the year. The story tells us about binary stars: Chickadee is one star, the pot is the companion star. The story is related to the seasons and motions of the stars in the night and throughout the year. The story also highlights the relationships between the land and the sky. The story tells us that bears are only to be hunted in the fall, and not in the spring or summer. The story connects us to the animals of the land, including the extinct passenger pigeon. The story tells us about community and sharing. There are many lessons in this story, as there are in all Indigenous stories and constellations.

What this story illustrates is an understanding of nature and science that, historically, has not been acknowledged. In fact, the story of Muin and the Seven Bird Hunters has been used by anthropologists as evidence that Norse peoples had visited northeastern North America centuries before the British and the French (Speck 1922). That argument erases Indigenous knowledges and methodologies. That erasure continues in our science and astronomy textbooks. Many astronomy textbooks dedicate about one or two pages to Indigenous astronomies, usually comments about Pacific wayfinding or solar observatories for measuring time. The same textbooks will dedicate a whole chapter to Isaac Newton or Galileo. While those scientists made great achievements, such practices illustrate the persistent myth that science was born in Europe.

This is just one example of colonization in astronomy. In this work I illustrate that colonization has been pervasive in astronomy since the first use of the telescope. It is not a coincidence that the explosion of colonization in the Americas mirrors the advances of science during the so-called Enlightenment. I will also discuss the modern relationship between astronomy and colonization and how the discourse over the placement of current and future large observatories connects to the development and placement of satellites in outer space. This discourse impacts and relates to the view of space as the next frontier for exploration. From here, I will discuss how Canada as a nation-state is obligated to consult and engage with Indigenous peoples regarding its actions in outer space, along with its international responsibilities to be inclusive of all Indigenous voices and methods in humanity’s next steps into outer space.

a history of astronomy & colonization

What we call North America today was first visited by Europeans about five hundred years ago—that is, if we do not count the stories of the Norse who came and, according to evidence, were chased off by Indigenous peoples. The Europeans who came five hundred years ago (e.g., Columbus, Cabot, Champlain, Cartier) came in ships guided by techniques of navigation using the stars. As transatlantic voyages became more and more common, it became more important to be able to measure the distances and longitudes along the Earth. By more precisely measuring these longitudes, and hence distances from ports in Europe to colonies in the Caribbean and the Americas, explorers and merchants were better able to exploit peoples on both sides of the ocean. These studies helped support the great scientists of the Enlightenment.

One particular example is Haiti. When Haiti was a French colony (and called Saint-Domingue by the French), at the colony’s height about three-quarters of slaves bound for the Americas passed through it. McClellan III and Regourd (2000) have discussed the interactions of scientific development and colonization on that island. More specifically with regard to physics and astronomy, Isaac Newton studied the physics of tides using data taken from slave ports in Martinque (Kean 2019), and in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the eminent French astronomer Jean-Dominique Cassini, of planetary science fame, sent astronomers to French Guinea and Saint-Dominique to study the Earth and the solar system. The intersection of astronomy and colonialism was a family affair as Cassini’s son later travelled to Martinique to observe the moons of Jupiter (McClellan III and Regourd 2000, 37). The scientific work done in the Caribbean contributed to the efficiency of the slave trade through better and more precise measurements of longitude and latitude (Domingues da Silva 2019).

Similarly, northeastern North America was extensively mapped by British, French, and Portuguese sailors. Of particular interest is the work of Captain James Cook, who charted a considerable portion of the coast of the island of Newfoundland in 1762. Much of that land is the ancestral home of the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaw people, and they had named the rivers and coves and other features of the landscape (Lennox 2017). But today a number of regions and communities are named for James Cook because of his cartography, and he is celebrated by monuments. At the same time, Cook observed and took measurements of the solar eclipse of 1766 off the southwestern coast that contributed to the measurement of longitude and thereby supported the British navy and British shipping in the Atlantic. Because of that work, he was selected to lead the expedition to the Pacific to observe the Transit of Venus. That observation is important as it provided an absolute measurement of the distance between the Earth and Venus in miles, and hence absolute measurements of the size of the solar system. Along with the orders to observe the Transit of Venus, Cook sailed with sealed orders to discover Australia.

Astronomy and colonization have, therefore, been intertwined since the arrival of Columbus in 1492, as Western astronomy served and supported the movement of peoples from colonizing nations and peoples stolen from other nations. It was also during the era of colonization that the telescope was first used by Galileo to explore the solar system. As bigger and bigger telescopes were being built to explore the night sky, scientists began viewing North America as a potential site for exploration.

indigenous rights versus telescope fetishes

The modern relationship between astronomy and colonization is beset by many contentious issues, but potentially the most important is the placement of large telescopes, be they radio or optical/infrared telescopes. The first known telescope in what would become Canada was brought from France to Fort Louisbourg in 1750 by the Marquis de Chabert. He spent one year in the fort, which is situated on the Mi’kmaw island of Unama’ki, today called Cape Breton. It is not clear that the officer was content because he returned to France the following year.

Telescopes, however, became part of the colonization of land as well as part of the settling of Canada. The first national telescope was built in Ottawa in 1905.¹ One of the goals of the Dominion Observatory was to chart the locations of stars in aid of mapping Canada and of providing precise timing measurements. These measurements helped determine the reference times for time zones across Canada and allowed for measuring spatial coordinates for mapping the land. This was a tool for the colonization of the land.

It was also in the twentieth century that telescopes become larger and were employed more and more for the sake of astronomy. Internationally, large telescopes were built in the United States and Europe. Researchers in Canada wanted to compete and so built telescopes for research. The first two big telescopes in Canada were the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, built outside of Victoria, BC, in 1918, and the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill, Ontario, built in 1935.

The David Dunlap Observatory was built thanks to an endowment from the Dunlap family to the University of Toronto that allowed that institution to build what was briefly the largest telescope in the world.² The observatory was built on a large tract of land north of the city acquired from a farmer, land that had been taken earlier from the Mississaugas as part of the Toronto Purchase in 1805. The Dunlap family earned their wealth from mining operations in northern Ontario in the traditional lands of the Cree and Anishinaabeg peoples. This telescope was an important part of the research of the University of Toronto in the twentieth century, enabling contributions to the understanding of stellar physics and to the discovery of the first-known black hole, Cygnus X-1, in 1972 by the astronomer Professor Tom Bolton. In the twenty-first century the Dunlap Observatory and associated lands were sold to a real estate company for development, while the observatory buildings were given by the company to the City of Richmond Hill. The profit from the sale was used to develop the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. This institute continues to fund numerous research projects,³ and also builds instruments that will be used on telescopes around the world.

For most research in astronomy, however, the traditional sites in Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia are considered less than ideal for research. This is because of the inadequate number of clear nights, the altitudes of the observatories and potential sites, and the relatively poor atmosphere for viewing due to water in the air. To solve this, Canadian astronomers proposed building a telescope on top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.⁴ This process included joining an agreement with France and Hawaii to build Canada’s first four-metre-class facility in 1979. While this was not the first telescope built on the top of Mauna Kea, there has been no clear documentation demonstrating that Canada worked to gain consent from Native Hawaiians; there is only an agreement to use the mountain by sharing the facility with the University of Hawai’i. Since then, Canada has joined the larger Gemini Collaboration of multiple nations sharing ten-meter class telescopes in both Hawaii and Chile. Canada is not the only country to build telescopes in Hawaii and Chile and much discussion has been written previously (de los Reyes 2019).

Most large telescopes in the world today are built on Indigenous land, be it in Chile, Australia, Hawaii, or the southern United States. Swanner (2013) presented an analysis of the development of astronomy on Kitt Peak, southwest of Tucson, Arizona, on Tohono O’odham territory, and how the National Science Foundation and astronomy representatives achieved what they referred to as “consent.” Development of the first telescopes on Kitt Peak began in the 1950s, less than a century after the invasion of the area by the US military in the “Indian Wars,” and mere decades after the US government redefined the reservation lands. The representatives discussed the telescope with tribal leadership and agreed to pay a modest lease fee of $2,500 per year, even though Kitt Peak is an important part of the identity and culture of the peoples there. It was simply assumed that there was consent for the mountain to be used for astronomy. Since then, legal suits have been brought forward in an effort to revoke the lease, along with protests against further developments, including the building of the VERITAS telescope, which was later relocated.

Today, astronomy and astrophysics are entering the era of Extremely Large Telescopes, a bland phrase for the leap in growth in size of new telescopes and the corresponding increase in their environmental and cultural footprints. This includes plans for (1) the Extremely Large Telescope in Chile, led by the European Southern Observatory, a treaty organization consisting of numerous European nations along with Brazil; (2) the Giant Magellan Telescope, led by the Carnegie Observatory and other astronomy organizations in the United States, with contributions from other nations; and (3) the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), led by the University of California and Caltech in partnership with Canada and a handful of other nations. The first two telescopes are being constructed in the Atacama Desert in Chile, while the TMT is planned for construction on Mauna Kea.

The history of building observatories on Mauna Kea has been discussed in detail by Salazar (2014), and Native Hawaiian protest against the observatories and the development of astronomy facilities on the mountain, which has been happening for decades, has reached a climax with the TMT. The TMT observatory, proposed over twenty years ago at the California Extremely Large Telescope, would be among the largest astronomical optical observatories ever built with an estimated cost of US$1 billion (Nelson 2000). The telescope was originally to be sited in Chile, however it was moved to Mauna Kea, where the State of Hawaii had granted a site for the observatory. This led to more legal challenges by various groups, and protests by Native Hawaiians, who argued that the observatory is not welcome and would be an environmental threat.

The issue came to a head in July 2019. At that time the TMT project had obtained a permit to begin construction of the facility on the mountain. In response, land protectors, comprised of Native Hawaiians and others, set up a peaceful and inspiring blockade on the one road to the summit of Mauna Kea. However, the state chose to respect the telescope first, which led to a number of Native Hawaiian Elders being arrested by Hawaiian police as part of a crackdown (D’Angelo 2019). Those arrests were followed by threats of mass arrests and violence against the remaining land protectors. The land protectors, however, held firm and eventually construction was halted.

During that time, the close relationship between professional astronomy and colonization became crystal clear: as far back as 2015 two senior astronomers sent out an email petition urging their colleagues to support the TMT in which they referred to the protesting Indigenous peoples as “a horde” (Dickerson 2015). Many astronomers and scientists even attempted to frame this as a matter of “science versus religion” and to compare those who were against the TMT as similar to creationists. These were attempts to dismiss Indigenous peoples and their rights as backward and reactionary, and to frame astronomers and telescopes as beneficial and benevolent. Further, the discrimination against the land protectors was not only evident in the United States: at the University of Toronto, emails were broadcast referring to Native Hawaiian protectors as “primitive” and “medieval.” It was clear that Canadian astronomers felt they had a right to Mauna Kea ahead of Native Hawaiians.

In 2020, both the Canadian and American Astronomical Societies began the process of writing decadal plans. These are plans for the astronomical community in both countries for the 2020s that set forth priorities for new observatories on Earth and in space along with planning for training of the next generation of professional astronomers and for building a better field. In that process a number of community papers were presented to support Indigenous rights on Mauna Kea, including Neilson and colleagues (2019) and Neilson and Lawler (2019) in Canada, and Kahanamoku and colleagues (2020) in the United States.

At the time of writing, the future of the TMT on Mauna Kea is uncertain. The National Science Foundation in the United States had begun a consultation and environmental impact statement process in Hawaii that will influence its decision of whether to contribute funding to the project on Mauna Kea.⁵ The future of astronomy on Mauna Kea is unclear, but the history of the conflict over the site is a clear example of the continuing relationship between astronomy and colonization today.

light pollution is colonization

The placement of telescopes on Indigenous land has been a form of colonization for more than a century, but it is not the only way in which astronomy and space intersect with colonization. Light pollution is another form of colonization and has been discussed in a number of forums, including by Hamacher, De Napoli, and Mott (2020). Light pollution is colonization because Indigenous peoples, who have lived on these lands in so-called Canada and United States and elsewhere since time immemorial, have a relationship with the land that spans many millennia, and that relationship extends to the night sky.

Stories like that of Muin and the Seven Bird Hunters are common across Indigenous cultures and peoples, and reinforce relationships between people and the night sky, as well as relationships with the land, water, animals, and each other. But this is a story not only of relationships but also one of responsibilities. We hunt the bear in the fall but not in the summer, when Muin is raising cubs; at that time we share food and medicine with community and more. These lessons reflect a set of Indigenous methodologies for understanding the world around us.

There is no one Indigenous methodology. Every nation has its own perspective on its own way of understanding the land and its own way of understanding science, however one wants to define it. But you know there are some commonalities. For instance, one is the idea that nature is familial: we are related to nature; we are not above it. And this is very important. There are many more commonalities and these have been illustrated in the works of Cajete (2000), Lipe and Lipe (2017), and others. For example, Knowledge (with a capital K) is holistic and active, instead of something siloed and taken; and what is above is reflected below. These are just a few concepts noted by Indigenous scholars that can inform a perspective of the night sky and outer space that differs from the traditional Western view.

The story of Muin and the Seven Bird Hunters in Mi’kmaq’i and the Cree story of the Great Bear (Buck 2018), or other Indigenous stories of the handful of stars that overlap with the Big Dipper, are not commonly seen in the popular culture of Canada. When I teach introductory astronomy courses, the textbooks do not include these stories at all, much less consider them as a way of learning equivalent to Western science. Instead, most, if not all, astronomy textbooks focus on the eighty-eight constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) less than a century ago.⁶ So instead of Muin, we talk about Ursa Majoris, a bear with a long tail. This constellation is an ancient one tracing its roots to early Greek, Roman, and Mediterranean astronomy. The second-century CE astronomer Ptolemy wrote about the constellation in his Almagest, one of the first recorded works of astronomy, and one that has formed the anchor of our understanding of the development of astronomy and physics throughout the centuries. But a bear with a tail is not part of the land in any part of Turtle Island.

Constellations like Ursa Majoris persist because of colonization. The eighty-eight constellations were “defined” by a committee of the IAU that was led by French, Belgian, English, American, and Canadian astronomers, none of whom were Indigenous and only one of whom was a woman. The mandate of the committee was largely to maintain the constellations that were already in the astronomy zeitgeist (Delporte 1930), identified by astronomers such as Ptolemy, Albrecht Dürer (1515), and Freidrich Argelander (1886).⁷ As such, the definition of the constellations we learn about from textbooks and popular media is part of the colonial history of astronomy.

While the constellations colonize the sky, we face more modern challenges to our view of the night sky. Today we live in a world of light. The image of the world at night (page 40) was created by NASA scientists for various studies. This first image might not seem too bad, but all of that light detected by satellites is waste: it is light that is not protecting us but bathing us in photons that hide the night sky. The second image (opposite) shows the city of Houston, Texas, at night. In that image, we can trace highways and urban spread. If you are a person in Houston looking up in the night sky you are unlikely to see many stars. When I lived in Toronto, Ontario, on the clearest of nights I could only see a few stars, but I could see many planes. The problem is similar in Calgary, and even in my new home of St. John’s, Newfoundland, though it must be said clear nights are rarer here.

This light pollution is colonization. As Hamacher, De Napoli, and Mott (2020) write in “Whitening the Sky: Light Pollution as a Form of Cultural Genocide,”

Growing light pollution is damaging human and wildlife connections to the stars, emphasising a need for protecting and preserving dark skies. This is especially problematic in places where Indigenous people have maintained complex, deep-time knowledge systems in which the stars are encapsulated in their cosmologies and epistemologies. The whitewashing of the night sky through colonial policy and practice—without regard to Indigenous people, land, or culture—is an ongoing form of cultural genocide.

The authors highlight the impacts of light pollution on the ways of knowing and ways of living of Indigenous peoples. More succinctly, star stories are part of Indigenous peoples’ relationships with the night sky, but light pollution erases our connection with the night sky and our place in space, and this is simply colonization in another form.

While light pollution erases our stories, the exponential growth of satellites in low Earth orbit threaten to rewrite stories. Companies like Starlink, OneWeb, and Telesat in Canada are building and launching what are called constellations of satellites. There are currently only a few thousand satellites in space, but in the next ten years it could be tens of thousands, and in the next twenty years it could be hundreds of thousands. How long before we have millions of satellites in space orbiting the Earth? These satellites will be looking down at humanity, delivering potentially cheap Internet and other services that benefit people, or maybe they will not. What these satellites will do is impact our views of the night sky, especially those satellites that are so bright that they can be seen by the unaided eye. For astronomers like myself, the prospect of all of these satellites is horrifying, because they blur the images in both optical and radio telescopes and therefore limit exploration of the universe. However, there is an irony: the satellites will make future ground-based telescopes less viable and might lead the professional astronomy community to be less interested in building telescopes on Indigenous lands.

But it should be noted that these satellites impact Indigenous peoples in different ways. For instance, Starlink signed an agreement with a First Nation in the state of Washington to deliver Internet that was of great benefit to their community (Brodkin 2020). In my home of Newfoundland and Labrador, there are individuals using Starlink today for Internet, because it is the best option. It is possible that these satellites can do great things to support some or all Indigenous peoples, but they can also cause great harm. The problem is that no one is really asking the different Indigenous Nations about their wants, their needs, their interests. These constellations of satellites are being launched without real informed consent of Indigenous Nations and peoples.

Another way to view this is through the lens of treaties. Neilson and Ćirković (2021) wrote to the Canadian Space Agency as part of their consultation process regarding Canada’s role in the Artemis mission.⁸ In that work, we noted that any action by Canada, as a nation-state, in outer space must be conducted in consultation with and with the consent of Indigenous peoples living on these lands:

At what height do treaties and agreements with Indigenous peoples end? It is understood that treaties have impact on Indigenous rights and responsibilities with respect to mining, water resources, hunting, etc. but Indigenous communities should be consulted with the impacts on the skies above. This is especially true for satellites that contribute to light pollution, but also satellites that are designed to offer services to communities (such as wireless internet), satellites designed for ground-based or remote imaging such as mapping satellites and LIDAR imaging. The CSA has an obligation to consult with Indigenous communities and Indigenous-led organizations with respect to the legalities of how satellites that impact communities operate.

The point of the statement is that treaties are agreements for sharing rights and responsibilities, and treaties do not have a height limit. For Canada to participate in the coming space economy, then, it must include treaties, consultation, and consent—otherwise, satellites will simply be a new dimension of colonization.

This emphasis on consent and the role of treaties for humanity’s actions in outer space is one way we can live in better relationship with the night sky and with outer space. But the concept of treaties here is not the kind we talk about between nation-states or international agreements like the United Nations Outer Space Treaty. The concept of treaty here is one that outlines our responsibilities for supporting outer space and giving back when we take from space. When we exploit outer space, through the placements of artificial satellites or the taking of samples from the Moon or Mars, or, in the near future, when space mining becomes a reality, this concept of a treaty means we focus on our relationships with space or the Moon, or any other planetary body, and we give back when we take. This idea of reciprocity was highlighted by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) in Braiding Sweetgrass. What do we give back?

It is necessary for the future of humanity that we approach outer space in a different way than we have the Earth. As humanity continues to face the challenges of human-made climate change thanks to the unsustainable exploitation of terrestrial resources, we cannot pretend that continuing the same behaviour in outer space will benefit humanity. The Anthropocene was built on colonization, and in building a cosmic Anthropocene we are simply exporting centuries of colonization to outer space. Unfortunately, that appears to be the goal of many people and companies today.

a future on mars

One of the dreams of the space industry is to build settlements on Mars. Ever since Dr. Wernher von Braun wrote the manual for going to Mars, Das MarsProjekt (The Mars Project), there has been a narrative that sending people to Mars will be the next big step for humanity to become a cosmic species. That desire to go to Mars has been carried into the popular media through stories and movies. There are too many works to cite, but they share a common thread of Mars being the next frontier for humanity.

However, it was not that long ago that these lands we live on now were the frontier. Starting in 1492 with the first visit of Colombus, these lands were the frontier for Europeans to colonize and to tame. But Europeans did not have an easy time at first because the Indigenous peoples were an inconvenience. This was solved by declaring the land terra nullius—that is, nobody’s land. Furthermore, the Catholic Church’s Doctrine of Discovery said that non-Christians were not human, and hence did not have rights. These two legal doctrines enabled colonizers to commit acts of genocide to remove Indigenous peoples from the land. The Western/Eurocentric way of knowing places humans at the top of a hierarchy, meaning those who are deemed to be human can do whatever they choose to those deemed non-human.

Because of these doctrines, there were and continue to be genocides against Indigenous peoples. Furthermore, the hierarchal view of nature has allowed for additional genocides against nature, such as the extinctions of species of plants, animals, and fish, as well as the terraforming of the land by such means as hydroelectric dams, mines, and oil processing—all of which have disproportionally impacted Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island.

That is the frontier envisioned for Mars. Andy Weir’s The Martian (2014) embodies this concept: the novel tells the story of a lone man on Mars who must strive to survive and tame those wild lands; that astronaut is the first pioneer of Mars, and he must use his wits and brilliance to bring life to the dead world. The novel embodies the concept of terra nullius. While it is unlikely that bipedal mammals have evolved on Mars, humanity has only scratched the surface in the search for life on the red planet. There may an abundance of microbial or subsurface life on Mars that we have no idea about in 2024. Do we have a right to settle on Mars, if there is any life there?

This raises a necessary question: Do we have a right to colonize Mars in any way? There is no clear answer to this question, especially if we only think about the definition of life from a Western perspective. What if, instead, we define life from a familial perspective using Indigenous methods? In that concept life is viewed not in isolation but rather in terms of how it relates to its environment. That means we can think of the Earth, as a whole, as a life form, and the Moon and Mars as living beings. How, then, can humanity be so willing to exploit resources through mining on the Moon if the Moon is a living being with rights of its own? What about the rights of Mars? What is in Mars’s best interest? These questions would allow us to re-evaluate our purpose in outer space and our reasons for settling on Mars.

conclusion

Humanity will be a spacefaring species because it already is. The question we face today is what kind of relationship we want to have with outer space, the Moon, Mars, and beyond. For the most part, that relationship is being defined by the rich and powerful people on Earth and by societies built on exploitation and colonization. We cannot expect a better relationship with outer space from those who view the Earth as something to be owned and exploited.

It is important that humanity, and especially the nation-states leading the charge into outer space, listen to Indigenous peoples and their perspectives on outer space. In Canada this means bringing Indigenous peoples and methods to the forefront of policy, and it means building on the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to a point where Indigenous Nations and peoples have equitable access to health, education, and technology, while supporting cultural revitalization, and the opportunity to build the Nation-to-Nation relationship that was promised by treaties.

postscript

I dedicate this essay to the memory of my father, who passed away on December 12, 2022, after years of failing health. We never had the best of relationships, but I know he would be proud of this work.

notes

1. 1. “The Dominion Observatory,” Canada under the Stars, accessed July 25, 2024, http://astro-canada.ca/l_observatoire_federal-the_dominion_observatory-eng.

2. 2. “History,” Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, accessed July 25, 2024, https://www.dunlap.utoronto.ca/about/history/.

3. 3. The author has received funding for research projects from the Dunlap Institute.

4. 4. “The Canada-France-Hawaii Observatory,” Canada under the Stars, accessed July 25, 2024, https://astro-canada.ca/l_observatoire_canada_france_hawai-the_canada_france_hawaii_observatory-eng.

5. 5. “National Science Foundation to Launch EIS Process for Mauna Kea Telescope,” Hawai’i Free Press, July 19, 2022, http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/Articles-Main/ID/32825/National-Science-Foundation-to-Launch-EIS-Process-for-Mauna-Kea-Telescope.

6. 6. “The Constellations,” IAU, accessed July 25, 2024, https://www.iau.org/static/public/constellations/page.html.

7. 7. Funny enough, I had the privilege of working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Argelander Institute for Astronomy at the University of Bonn. Professional astronomy is a small world.

8. 8. “Artemis,” NASA, accessed July 25, 2024, https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/.

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