Thread by @GroseTimothy

I’m excited to feature two scholar spotlights this month. Guldana Salimjan @YXiaocuo kicks off March and #internationalwomensday with cutting edge work on indigenous knowledge of land and dispossession in nomadic communities of the Junggar Basins (i.e., northern #Xinjiang).

Dr. Salimjan is the Ruth Wynn Woodward Junior Chair at @SFU where she teaches in the Department @SFUGSWS
Guldana’s research includes #Kazakh relationships to their land, CCP discourse and implementation of “ecological civilization,” and Kazakh oral poetry.

Her work has been published in @HumanEcology, Asian Ethnicity, @CA_Survey, and several edited volumes on Xinjiang, post-Communist Central Asia, and Chinese politics. She also writes for public facing platforms under a pseudonym.

Raised in Urumchi & trained at the Minzu University of China, Xinjiang University, & @UBC, and possessing native/near native proficiency in Kazakh, Chinese, Uyghur & English, @YXiaocuo brings unmatched breadth and depth of perspective into her work.

These skills shine through each and every page of her 2021 @HumanEcology article “Naturalized Violence”. In this highly thought-provoking study, Guldana puts a spotlight on the contradictions of the CCP’s “ecological civilization” campaign. link.springer.com/article/10.100…

In it, she demonstrates how the CCP’s “returning pasture to grassland” (退牧还草) and “sedentarization project” (定居工程) actually disrupt (and even destroy) fragile local ecologies and deprive herding communities of a livelihood/culture they’ve cultivated over generations.

Forced into wage labor in urban settlements, former Kazakh herders become more dependent on the state distribution of “affective care,” especially as they are now forced to compete with Han farmers and migrants in the labor market.

To compound economic hardships, a deep sense of loss of their land and indigenous knowledge of herding and hunting--which are obsolete in the eyes of the state--overwhelm many displaced Kazakhs.

This collective grief “demonstrate[s] the embodied relations and ecological knowledge [herders and community elders] have about the grasslands.” @YXiaocuo concludes that the CCP’s ecological civilization campaign does little to dismantle and rearrange the ethnic hierarchy in XJ.

Rather, the CCP targets indigenous knowledge of the land as a “threat” to ecological security therefore justifying the state’s “ecological rehabilitation programs,” which permanently remove indigenous people from their grasslands.

Guldana's research is essential for anyone wanting to understand Kazakh relationships to land, CCP ecological policy, & contemporary forms of colonization. You can also follow her impressive online repository of documents related to the crisis in Xinjiang @ProjectXinjiang

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