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Michael Higgins: Leftist media says moon mission is a colonial attack on Indigenous beliefs

Man belongs among the stars, even if it offends The Walrus magazine

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Before beginning this article, let us all acknowledge that NASA’s Artemis II space mission is going to be travelling around unceded territory that may well be the traditional home of microbial lifeforms who have lived there peacefully for generations and have no wish to be disturbed, plundered or colonized by aggressive, invasive Western culture. 

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Such is the state of the “colonial outrage industry” these days that it can be tough when reading some articles — especially on April 1 — to decide whether or not they are a joke. 

Michael Higgins: Leftist media says moon mission is a colonial attack on Indigenous beliefs Back to video

So it was that on Wednesday, The Walrus, which touts itself as publishing fact-based journalism and provoking new thinking, ran an article headlined, “With the Artemis II Mission, the Lunar Land Grab Begins.” 

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The article argued that the mission was a colonial expedition, centred on making the rich richer, with the aim of eventually stealing the moon’s natural resources, all while using Nazi technology. The whole space exploration thing, said The Walrus, would also desecrate a site sacred to Earth’s Indigenous population — namely tipiskâwi-pîsim, the Cree name for the moon. 

But if the moon is sacred to the Indigenous population than why not all the planets? After Mother Earth we can have Sister Venus, Brother Mars and Father Mercury. Space itself may well be sacred and so capitalist, colonial adventurers have no right there either. 

If we are to appease the doom-laden, apocalyptic-focused, pessimistic-minded neo-Luddites, such as those at The Walrus, then Man is doomed to never rise from the surface of this planet again.  

One senses that if these people were stuck in the Dark Ages they would complain that there was too much light while also lamenting, “Oh, if only we hadn’t invented the wheel.” 

The Artemis II mission will carry four astronauts, including Canadian Jeremy Hansen, around the moon, ending a 50 year hiatus since the last crewed lunar mission. The mission is being celebrated (well, obviously not by The Walrus) for its spaceflight diversity in that it features the first Canadian (Hansen), the first Black astronaut (Victor Glover) and first woman (Christina Koch) to travel near the moon. 

Excitedly — again, Walrus excepted — the mission could see humans travelling the furthest they have ever been in space with the astronauts aboard Artemis II viewing parts of the moon no human has ever seen. All the while laying the groundwork for returning Man to the surface of the moon and eventually building a permanent settlement there. 

“The amazing part of having crews is they have brains and eyes, and the capacity for thought and reaction,” Barbara Cohen, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland told Nature magazine, adding that they can “take the path of knowledge that is best for science.” 

Obviously, she meant they have colonial brains and eyes, colonial thought processes and that the science was based on concepts not informed by Indigenous knowledge. 

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Thankfully, The Walrus tells us that the real plan is to “transform the moon from a place of imagination to one of profit.” 

The profiteers were the U.S. and the 60 nations who had signed up for the “commercialization” of the moon. Canada was part of the profiteering racket, said The Walrus. 

“In Canada, federal funds are flowing toward research and technological developments in space mining, as well as efforts to put a Canadian-made nuclear reactor on the moon,” it said. 

Oh, the horror, to actually put money toward space technology and exploration! 

But all this space exploration was only a capitalist, colonial concoction, said The Walrus. 

“As space archaeologist Alice Gorman writes, space exploration is an explicitly colonial fantasy, eyeing an ‘untamed wilderness . . . waiting to be filled with value’,” it said. 

Then there was the Nazi thing. “Space exploration has a long and troubled history here on Earth,” said The Walrus, seeming to imply that space exploration on other planets had gone more smoothly. It pointed out that rocket technology first used by the U.S. was developed in Germany by Nazi scientists using slave labour from the concentration camps. 

This may well be true, it probably is. The U.S. actively sought out German/Nazi scientists after the war for their expertise. But are we to reject all the technological advances in the last 80 years if we can point a finger at their unwholesome origins? 

The article also noted that the Navajo had objected to “memorial spaceflights” where cremated remains were deposited on the moon because it was a “profound desecration” of a sacred site. The Navajo have a point, but not on religious grounds. Littering the moon is to be avoided and besides, paying to leave your loved ones on the moon is the height of vulgarity. 

Man is an imperfect creature who has sometimes been an avaricious, empire-building pirate. But he has also been greater than that, much greater. 

When Galileo defied the Inquisition saying Eppur si muove (And yet it moves) he was declaring victory for the newly established truth of science over dogma, dark ignorance and dangerous stupidity. 

And so Man has business among the stars, if for no other reason than knowledge demands it. 

It’s that, or the flat-earthers win. 

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