Decolonising Animals

Book excerpt: The lives of non-human animals, their ways of being and seeing, their experiences and knowledge, and their relationships with each other, continue to be ignored, discounted, written over and destroyed by anthropocentric practices and endeavours. Within the vestiges of colonialism, this silence and occlusion co-opts and consumes animals, physically and culturally, into the servitude of human interests, and selective narratives of history and progress. Decolonising Animals brings together critical interrogations, case studies and creative explorations that identify and examine how non-human animals are affected by and respond to colonial structures and processes. This collection includes the perspectives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, artists and activists, detailing the ways in which they question colonial ways of knowing, engaging with and representing animals. Importantly, the book offers suggestions for how we might decolonise our relationships with non-human animals – and with each other.