Green Hour: Knowing Otherwise: Indigenous Storytelling and Environmental Relations

Event Details
Date: 23.04.2026, 12:00 o'clock  until 23. April 2026, 13:00 o'clock
Location: Raum 101, innocube (Gebäude U), Universitätsstraße 1a, 86159 Augsburg
Organizer(s): Prof. Dr. Simone Müller (Environmental History), PD Dr. Kirsten Twelbeck (American Studies, WZU), Prof. Dr. Jens Soentgen (Philosophy, Chemistry, WZU)
Topics: Internationales, Geografie, Umwelt und Ökologie, Politik und Gesellschaft, Sprache, Literatur und Geschichte, Philosophie und Theologie
Series of events: The Green Hour - A Lunchtime Series by the Environmental Humanities
Event Type: Vortragsreihe
Speaker(s): Dr. Juliane Egerer

Indigenous stories offer a relational way of understanding climate and the living world. This talk shows how narratives from Kalaallit Nunaat, Sápmi, and Turtle Island nurture reciprocity and resilience by listening to the land and more‑than‑human beings.


Environmental and climate issues are usually addressed through scientific, technological, and policy-based approaches developed by dominant cultures. Indigenous peoples across the diversity of their cultures, however, approach these issues first and foremost through stories: narrative practices grounded in relational ethics and ecological balance that inspire further action. This lecture examines how contemporary Indigenous storytelling across various media understands and shapes environmental relations, highlighting the centrality of listening to the stories of the land and more-than-human beings. Drawing on Kalaallit Inuit, Sámi, and Anishinaabe stories from Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), Sápmi, and Turtle Island (North America), it demonstrates how narratives cultivate reciprocity, responsibility, and resilience, even amid ongoing colonial disruptions. Key concepts include Indigenous storywork, terristory—the inseparability of land and story—and Indigenous epistemologies that integrate human, nonhuman, and spiritual worlds across spatio-temporal borders. By engaging stories with humility as living relations rather than objects of study, listeners encounter what “knowing otherwise” entails.

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