A talk by environmental historian Gregory T. Cushman and roundtable speaker discussion with Chamoru poet and scholar Craig Santos Perez and multispecies anthropocene scholar Maya Kóvskaya (AMOR MUNDI Multispecies Ecological Worldmaking Lab). Moderated by researcher Myint Than and followed by an audience Q&A.

From the time that humans first set foot on its shores, the Pacific World has had colonial landscapes and seascapes. Pictorial maps have been central to the modern history of representation and conception of this vast region, and they provide a vivid chronicle of colonialist ideologies in action and their contributions to environmental change, aspects of which long predate as well as critique Euro-American penetration of the region. From a decolonial perspective, Pacific landscapes and seascapes are as notable for that which is missing, erased, or out-of-sight as that which is easily visible to the colonial gaze. If earth scientists must insist on demarcating a starting point for the “human epoch” of planetary history, they should look to dramatic absences—to anti-sedimentary formations—at the heart of the Pacific World to place their golden spike, which are symbolic of the extractivism and ruthless quest for power that drives industrial capitalist civilization.