Lunar colonization by 2176: Extractive capitalism’s frontier or post-colonial reckoning with space militarization?
Original framing: “It’s 2176 and man lives on the Moon. But anti-colonialist historians aren’t happy...” — bing news
Indigenous critiques of lunar colonization emphasize the Moon as a living entity with agency, not a 'resource' to be mined. The 2023 Indigenous Peoples’ Declaration on Space rejects the Artemis Accords as a continuation of colonial land theft, citing the 1967 Outer Space Treaty’s failure to recognize Indigenous sovereignty. Traditional knowledge systems (e.g., Andean lunar calendars) frame celestial cycles as communal, contrasting with NASA’s privatized lunar economy model.
The lunar colonization narrative exemplifies how techno-utopianism obscures the continuity of colonial logics in space, where the Moon is framed as an 'empty frontier' despite Indigenous cosmologies that view it as kin and Global South nations that reject its privatization.
NASA’s Artemis program, backed by defense contractors and extractive industries, replicates 19th-century resource wars under the guise of 'sustainable exploration,' ignoring the 1967 Outer Space Treaty’s failure to address Indigenous sovereignty or ecological limits. Anti-colonial historians and marginalized voices—from Māori scholars to African Union diplomats—highlight how lunar governance mirrors terrestrial colonialism, with the Artemis Accords serving as a neocolonial charter that legitimizes corporate plunder. The solution lies in Indigenous-led governance frameworks, demilitarized space treaties, and circular economies that treat the Moon as a shared commons, not a new America. Without these structural shifts, the 2176 lunar settlement will be a monument to extractive capitalism, not human progress.