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Indigenous Desettlement Corps

Part 2 Project 2021
Genevieve Mateyko
Columbia University | USA
Alaska is on the frontlines of forced climate migration in the United States. Remote Indigenous communities are making near-impossible decisions about how to continue existing. Introducing renewable energy infrastructural loops shared between the drowning coastal village of Kivalina and other neighbouring settlements along traditional transportation trails, this proposal offers rural citizens in remote regions a second chance at the New Deal, and reframes the act of climate-induced relocation as an opportunity to decolonize processes that have contributed to vulnerability of life in the Arctic.

Through a phased relocation from historically-forced static settlement nodes towards fluid desettled pathways, the Indigenous Desettlement Corps (IDC) creates systems of support and self-preservation within historically disenfranchised Indigenous communities in the Arctic through 4 distinct projects: a continually-looped Utilidor designed for the Arctic wind and permafrost regions; fortified Ice Trails on coastal hunting territories to allow for safe passage on unstable ice; adaptable, energy-independent Housing units with integrated solar, wind and ice capture; and Community Infrastructure that supports decapitalized economies. These projects are supported by the IDC, a proposed addition to the Green New Deal, endeavoring to pivot local wage-earners away from jobs in resource extraction, and towards localized, highly-skilled jobs in renewable energy, and the building of re-strengthened subsistence lifestyles uncoupled from colonized systems.

Genevieve Mateyko

Tutor(s)

2021
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