Time as Kinship

Summary

Indigenous philosopher Kyle Powys Whyte asks what happens when climate change is told “in terms of linear units of time”. Narrated that way, it can “eclipse issues of justice in the energy transition”. Drawing on Indigenous scholars and writers, he tells time instead through kinship, and so “issues of justice are inseparable from the experience of climate change.”

Rationale

Telling time through kinship is interbeing applied to the clock, and leaves a tension we hold: clock-time urgency can trample the relationships that justice depends on.