Theory and frameworks Reading List

ABSTRACT: The disarmingly innocuous term 'climate change' expresses a psychosocial defense mechanism that prompts us to recoil when we consider the implications of climate science. When viewed honestly through the lens of traumatology, this deepening existential crisis presents an entirely new, unprecedented, and higher-order category of trauma: Climate Trauma. What is unique about this category of trauma is that it is an ever-present, ever-growing threat to the biosphere, one that calls into question our shared identity: what does it mean to be 'human' in the Anthropocene? Because it is superordinate, Climate Trauma is continually triggering all past traumas - personal, cultural, and intergenerational - and will continue to do so until such time as it is acknowledged.

Whyte names and maps an emerging field he provisionally calls 'Indigenous climate change studies', encompassing the work of Indigenous and allied scholars, knowledge keepers, scientists and leaders supporting Indigenous peoples' capacities to address climate change. The essay surveys Indigenous climate resiliency plans, policy documents, declarations and academic scholarship, arguing that climate change cannot be understood as a purely 'natural' phenomenon but must be situated within processes of extraction, dispossession and settlement that Indigenous communities have long resisted and theorised. Whyte frames Indigenous futurity and decolonisation as central, rather than peripheral, to understanding and responding to the climate crisis, offering a foundational orientation for the wider field.