The Time for Reparations from Washington State Is Now! As Non-Human Persons, Orcas Deserve Justice

• Main Author: Safiq, Dr. Alexandrea
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Western CEDAR 2022
• Subjects: Orca
• Online Access: https://cedar.wwu.edu/ssec/2022ssec/allsessions/99; https://cedar.wwu.edu/context/ssec/article/3261/type/native/viewcontent/Orca_Justice_Talk_Safiq.pptx_AWSAccessKeyId_AKIAYVUS7KB2I6J5NAUO_Signature_81sFSEe5afW7axJQhXGKEoQjd_2F4_3D_Expires_1690453767

Conservation biology: a multi-disciplinary science aimed at understanding biodiversity loss with an orientation towards facilitating the protection of species, communities, and ecosystems. Unlike other scientific disciplines, conservation biologists fall into a unique category of socio-ecological influencers (i.e., environmentalists) because the protection of biodiversity, within the context of the Anthropocene, means protecting species from the historically unsustainable exploitation of nature by humans. A shift from domination of nature to an ecosophy based on mutualism has begun. As a result, nature is becoming more frequently viewed as possessing non-human personhood. Given this paradigm shift in western culture to acknowledge what indigenous cultures all over the world have known for millennia means that advocating for conservation science includes dismantling systems that threaten other beings’ right to self-sovereignty. It is this fight that is at the core of many socio-political revolutions—and is at the heart of many environmental causes as well. Washington state has a deep history of ripping away the self-sovereignty of beings’ by commodifying bodies, selling them to a market born out of slave-economics driven by capitalistic greed. More explicitly, I am referring to the capture of wild orca from the Puget Sound that were then sold to Sea World in the 1960s. In this talk, I will discuss the urgent need for Washington state’s government to begin to conceptualize and act upon ecological and economic reparations owed to orca. Drawing on the foundational principles of social movements, focusing on civil rights, animal rights, and the deep ecology movements, I will discuss the need for Washington state policy-makers to apply what conservation psychology terms ‘frame bridging’ and ‘frame aligning’ into wildlife protection plans for orca. The time for honoring the self-sovereignty of non-human persons is now and it begins with orca.