Panganga Pungowiyi, an Indigenous mother and climate geoengineering organizer from Sibokuk in the Dena’ina Islands, shares her community’s historical trauma and resistance against experimental climate technologies deployed without consent. Her powerful testimony reveals how colonial patterns of exploitation continue today through geoengineering experiments that ignore Indigenous sovereignty and knowledge systems.
- Military contamination during the Cold War left lasting environmental damage and health impacts including cancer and Parkinson’s disease
- Climate geoengineering experiments are being conducted in Indigenous territories without free, prior and informed consent
- Researchers spread silica beads on Arctic ice
- Carbon capture technologies primarily benefit fossil fuel companies through enhanced oil recovery rather than addressing climate change
- Indigenous cosmovision views humans as part of nature, not above it, making ecosystem manipulation fundamentally problematic
- Outside researchers fail to understand Arctic ecosystems, where ice movement and marine life cycles would be disrupted by interventions
- True climate solutions require addressing oppression and restoring Indigenous rights rather than technological quick-fixes
Panganga Pungowiyi – short biography
Panganga Pungowiyi is an Indigenous mother from Sivungaq, located on Dena ina lands in so called Anchorage, AK. Panganga has been involved in many grassroots efforts seeking justice for Indigenous people including efforts to protect lands and water from extractive industry, MMIWG, and DVSA against Indigenous Womxn. Social justice and healing are recurring themes woven within Panganga’s personal and professional life. Many years were spent developing and hosting communal healing spaces for historical trauma and Colonial oppression, and most recently Panganga began training as a Tribal Healer in the so-called Bering Strait Region. Healing, justice and advocacy continues in Panganga’s role at IEN as the Climate Geoengineering Organizer.
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ienearth (Indigenous Environmental Network)
- Instagram: https://instagram/ien_earth (Indigenous Environmental Network)
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/ienearth (Indigenous Environmental Network)
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