URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Fall_2021_Melissa-McCarthy

From The Bahamas to Indonesia to the state of Rhode Island, she found that the structures of governance, the decision makers, even the scientific community were deeply colonized, making it nearly impossible to imagine alternatives that might address historical and contemporary injustices.

AMELIA MOORE Associate Professor Marine Affairs

during which over a million enslaved people died. Moore says, “We’re asking scientists who study the Atlantic, particularly Black scientists, what does it mean to think of the ocean as a site of genocidal death and as a graveyard? How do you design ethical scientific research while understanding the ocean as a historical and cultural space?” The film also follows the process of renaming URI’s R/V Resolution, which was named after a ship in the British Royal Navy that infamously traversed the Pacific in the 18th century, to the R/V Narragansett Dawn , named after the Narragansett Tribe, with inference to a historical Tribal newspaper of the same name and to

the people of the northeastern dawn lands. “We wanted to show how complicated and uncomfortable and tense it can be, but also show how scientists are learning and thinking about deconstructing colonial processes and infrastructures guided by Indigenous organizations and representatives,” Amelia Moore explains. “We explore what it means to rename a research vessel to honor Indigenous sovereignty and perpetuity in a region that was basically stolen from Indigenous people. We’re hoping the film will speak to others who are interested in beginning this anti-colonial work of reimagining what is possible to do, and inspire them to do what they can in the spaces they are in.”

FALL | 2021 Page 43