COLONIALISM AND THE HISTORY OF GEOLOGY: WIDENING THE HISTORICAL LENS THROUGH WHICH WE TEACH

The history of Geology is often presented as a series of ideas developed by white men (and, occasionally, white women). This framing ignores the wider historical context in which Geology has developed: namely, Geology has benefited profoundly from Western colonialism. Colonial expeditions have provided access to land, transport for geologists, and phenomenal volumes of data, specimens, and funding. In return, advances in Geology have fueled extraction of geologic resources, which has both motivated and funded colonial expansion. It is not an accident that the major years for the development of Geology as a science coincided with the rapid expansion of Western colonialism: Geology propelled colonialism, and colonialism fed Geology. This presentation will examine ways that educators can widen our historical lenses to teach the global context of our science. Some examples of this are obvious: in lectures, when we talk about how an idea or principle developed, we can talk about the wider historical context (e.g., Bowen was able to access his field sites in East Africa because of British colonial rule; Suess depended on data sets obtained by colonial expeditions). In the field, we can talk about the ethnogeology and human histories of our sites, including the roles that geologists played in colonial violence (e.g., John Wesley Powell in the North American West, or the routine theft of fossils from Indigenous lands). Less obvious examples of how we, as educators, can widen our historical perspectives include the ways that we curate and display geologic specimens (“where did this mineral come from, and how did it get here?”), the readings we assign (“who publishes on what land?”), and the classroom cultures that we develop with our students. As geology educators, we emphasize to our students that the world we live in is a product of past forces and processes; we need to also help them understand the past forces and processes that shaped the community and knowledge that they are inheriting, so that they can decide what future paths they want that community to take.