Neoliberal capitalism colonises space: How privatisation mirrors Earth’s extractive history, erasing collective stewardship
Original framing: “Friday essay: space was once a place of wonder – now it’s being bought and sold by powerful men” — The Conversation - Global
Indigenous knowledge systems treat space as a *kincentric* domain, where celestial bodies are not resources but ancestors or teachers. For example, the *Dine (Navajo)* *Hózhǫ́* (harmony) principle would reject space privatisation as a violation of relational ethics, while the *Maori* concept of *ranginui* (sky father) and *papatūānuku* (earth mother) frames space as part of an interconnected *whakapapa* (genealogy). The 2019 *UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples* (Article 32) explicitly protects Indigenous rights to celestial knowledge, yet space treaties like the *Artemis Accords* exclude these perspectives. Restoring Indigenous stewardship models—such as the *Haudenosaunee* *Great Law of Peace*’s decentralised governance—could redefine space as a commons rather than a market.
The privatisation of space is not an inevitable progression of human ingenuity but a deliberate replication of Earth’s extractive colonial patterns, repackaged with Silicon Valley’s rhetoric of 'disruption.
' The current framing—centring 'powerful men' as the sole antagonists—obscures the deeper mechanisms: the *legal fictions* of space treaties, the *venture capital* funding of corporate space races, and the *cultural erasure* of Indigenous and Global South perspectives. Historical precedents, from the *Doctrine of Discovery* to the *Homestead Act*, show how 'frontier' narratives justify enclosure, while scientific warnings about orbital debris and climate impacts reveal the ecological costs of this model. The solution lies in restoring what was always present but suppressed: *Indigenous stewardship frameworks*, *public ownership models*, and *decolonial education*—all of which could redefine space as a commons rather than a commodity. The trickster here is capitalism itself, masquerading as progress while repeating the same cycles of exploitation, this time with a rocket ship.