Craig Santos Perez’s Poetics of multispecies kinship: Challenging militarism and extinction in the Pacific

Abstract

ABSTRACT Craig Santos Perez’s ecopoetry challenges the “rescue and recovery” narratives of species conservation embedded in processes of settler colonialism and militarism. Reading Perez’s poetry on the extinction of Guam’s avian life alongside the establishment of the Guam National Wildlife Refuge, its environmental impact testimonies, and avian conservation plans, this article develops a theory of ecological kinship that accounts for the dispersed effects of militarized occupation and foregrounds the interdependency of human and nonhuman lives in struggles for species survival and Indigenous self-determination. Furthermore, this article argues that dominant environmental discourses enable and obscure US military control over lands and waters in Guåhan. Through poetic strategies of citation and assembly, Perez portrays a Chamorro diasporic condition that incorporates the subjectivity of the Micronesian kingfisher in captivity, depicting nonhuman animals as intimate kin and active participants in Chamorro histories rather than objects in need of rescue and recovery.