Benjamin J. Kapron, Ph.D.

(he/him)

I am an early-career, interdisciplinary scholar of Environmental Studies, bringing Indigenous Studies and Settler Colonial Studies into conversation with Environmental Humanities—including Environmental History, Philosophy, and Ethics. I investigate the ontologies, epistemologies, and other philosophies that generate and uphold settler colonialism. In particular, I confront how the prominence of anthropocentrism in dominant Western thought can influence settlers’ analyses of settler colonialism and create incongruities between Indigenous efforts towards dismantling settler colonialism and settler support for these actions.

 

I am a settler on Turtle Island. My maternal ancestors come from Italy, arriving on Turtle Island in the 1910s and 1920s; and my paternal ancestors come from Poland and the British Isles, arriving on Turtle Island, respectively, in the 1920s and—as far as I have been able to find—as early as the late 1700s, with that branch of my family living largely in Newfoundland for much of their time on Turtle Island.

 

I was born on the Nishnaabeg territory of Bawating or Baawitigong, the “place of the rapids,” known colonially as Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. Just before my third birthday, my family moved with me to the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg territory of Nogojiwanong, “the place at the foot of the rapids,” known colonially as Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, I moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada—a colonial name I have learned is derived from a Kanienʼkehá꞉ka (Mohawk) or Wendat word. However, what is now called “Toronto” is not a singular place and, as territory of the Nishnaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat, the Land encompassed by “Toronto” has many names, only some of which I know.

 

I completed my Ph.D. in Environmental Studies at York University, in Toronto, Canada, in May 2024. My Ph.D. research was supported by a Government of Canada SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship. I also have a Master in Environmental Studies (MES) degree from York University, and an Honour's Bachelor of Science with Distinction from the University of Toronto, double majoring in Philosophy and Zoology.

I previously worked with UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies, including serving as a Managing Editor for several years.

I currently reside and work on the occupied Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation; the Traditional Territories of the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee, notably the Onödowá’ga:’ (Seneca); and the Lands of many Plant, Animal, and other More-than-Human Nations. I am committed to dismantling settler colonialism, and to supporting Indigenous sovereignty, rematriation, and caretaking of these and all Lands facing ongoing colonization.