How African Pasts Can Inspire Alternative Responses to Climate Change: a Creative Writing Experiment

Abstract

How can we use the past to help us solve today’s urgent climate change concerns? Archaeology provides one way forward by providing a long-term view of what worked and what did not work in the past. Indigenous knowledge systems have long curated a range of survival strategies that provide powerful inspiration for thinking differently about sustainability. Inspired by Africanfuturism—or how writers of African descent have creatively reimagined Black futures—we explore how creative writing can mobilize the past to rethink climate change responses. We have designed this piece for use in middle and secondary school science, history, or literature classes. An introductory explanation and “what we know” sections provide teachers with the necessary framing and background knowledge. The two short stories could be assigned to 13–18-year-old students to illustrate the kind of reimagining they might pursue based on archaeological and oral historical information.