colonialism
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John James Audubon Was Never Good
The most famous name in American ornithology is that of a slave owner, grave robber, and fraud who invented birds and falsified scientific results. Birders and ornithologists are grappling with John James Audubon’s legacy today, but problematic behaviour doesn’t stop at a single 19th-century naturalist. Some in the field are considering a complete rethinking of…
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Decolonizing Mars: Are We Thinking About Space Exploration All Wrong?
Interplanetary travel is pitched to us as a good thing. Explorers will visit other planets, which settlers will then colonize. But colonization on our own planet led to the genocide and displacement of cultures and people, economic inequity, and the destruction of environments. What lessons from Earth’s colonialist tragedies can we apply to our interplanetary…
