Disaster Militarism and Indigenous Responses to Super Typhoon Yutu in the Mariana Islands

ABSTRACT On 24 October 2018, Super Typhoon Yutu devastated the Mariana Islands with 185 km/hr winds, unnaturally exposing the ongoing consequences of United States’ colonialism and disaster militarism. Yutu also revealed the local Indigenous responses as resilience rhetorics, characterized by relationality, responsibility, reciprocity, and justice. This essay argues that U.S. media perpetuation of disaster militarism surrounding Yutu must be understood alongside reverberating Indigenous resilience. First, it outlines the Mariana Islands as a U.S. colony; then, it examines U.S. media and the production of ignorance around empire and militarism; and finally, it concludes with Mariana Islands fieldwork to consider how resilience is rhetorically manifested and locally mediated to challenge colonial power, disaster militarism, and to enact Indigenous environmental justice.