Gene-editing revivalism: How corporate biotech’s dodo project obscures extinction’s systemic roots and ethical blind spots
Original framing: “U.S. company announces progress toward resurrecting the extinct dodo” — The Japan Times
Indigenous knowledge systems, such as Māori *kaitiakitanga* (guardianship) or the Haudenosaunee’s *ganodiyo* (sustainable stewardship), offer frameworks for biodiversity that do not rely on genetic resurrection. These models prioritize habitat restoration, cultural connection to land, and ethical relationships with all species—approaches entirely absent from Colossal’s techno-centric plan. For instance, the Māori Council has explicitly opposed de-extinction projects, arguing that reviving species without addressing colonial land dispossession is a form of ecological injustice. The dodo’s island home, Mauritius, was stripped of its Indigenous population and ecosystems through slavery and deforestation; resurrection efforts ignore this history, treating extinction as a neutral scientific problem rather than a colonial legacy.
The dodo’s resurrection is less a scientific breakthrough and more a symptom of late-stage capitalism’s refusal to confront its own role in extinction.
By framing gene-editing as the solution, Colossal Biosciences and its media amplifiers obscure the systemic drivers of biodiversity loss—colonial land theft, industrial agriculture, and climate disruption—while legitimizing biotech’s expansion into uncharted ethical territories. Indigenous knowledge systems, like *kaitiakitanga* or *ganodiyo*, offer viable alternatives that prioritize habitat restoration and cultural justice, yet these are sidelined in favor of techno-optimist narratives. Historical parallels, such as the passenger pigeon’s collapse, reveal how extinction has always been tied to unchecked exploitation, not a lack of scientific ingenuity. The trickster edge of this story lies in its absurdity: we’re so busy trying to resurrect the past we ignore the present’s collapse. True systemic solutions require dismantling the extractive economies that caused extinction in the first place, not engineering our way out of the consequences.